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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..55e4d5c --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #50895 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50895) diff --git a/old/50895-0.txt b/old/50895-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 15b349d..0000000 --- a/old/50895-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,10895 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rat-Pit, by Patrick MacGill - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Rat-Pit - -Author: Patrick MacGill - -Release Date: January 11, 2016 [EBook #50895] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RAT-PIT *** - - - - -Produced by MWS, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - - - - - THE RAT-PIT - - PATRICK MACGILL - - - - - THE - RAT-PIT - - BY - PATRICK - MACGILL - - [Illustration: colophon] - - NEW YORK - GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY - - Copyright, 1915, - BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY - - - - -INTRODUCTION - - -In the city of Glasgow there is a lodging-house for women known as “The -Rat-pit.” Here the vagrant can get a nightly bunk for a few pence, and -no female is refused admittance: the unfortunate, the sick, and -work-weary congregate under the same roof, breathe the same fetid air -and forget the troubles of a miserable existence in strong drink, the -solace of the sorrowful, or in heavy stupor, the slumber of the -toilworn. The underworld, of which I have seen and known such a lot, has -always appeared to me as a Greater Rat-pit, where human beings, pinched -and poverty-stricken and ground down with a weight of oppression, are -hemmed up like the plague-stricken in a pest-house. - -It is in this larger sense that I have chosen the name for the title of -Norah Ryan’s story. By committing the “great sin” and subsequently by -allowing the dictates of motherhood to triumph over decrees of society, -she became a pariah eternally doomed to the Greater Rat-pit. Whilst my -former book, “Children of the Dead End,” was on the whole accepted as -giving a picture of the life of the navvy, there were some who refused -to believe that scenes such as I strove to depict could exist in a -country like ours. To them I venture the assurance that “The Rat-pit” is -a transcript from life and that most of the characters are real people, -and the scenes only too poignantly true. Some may think that such things -should not be written about; but public opinion, like the light of day, -is a great purifier, and to hide a sore from the surgeon’s eye out of -miscalled delicacy is surely a supreme folly. - -A word about “Children of the Dead End.” I am highly gratified by the -success attained by that book in Britain and abroad. Only in Ireland, my -native country, has the book given offence. Reviewers there spoke -angrily about it, and one went so far as to say that I would end my days -by blowing out my brains with a revolver. The reference to a tyrannical -village priest gave great offence to a number of clergy, but on the -other hand several wrote to me speaking very highly of the book, and I -have been told that a Roman Catholic Bishop sat up all night to read it. -In my own place I am looked upon with suspicion, all because I “wrote a -book, a bad one makin’ fun of the priest,” as an old countryman remarked -to me last summer when I was at home. “You don’t like it, then?” I said. -“Like it! I wouldn’t read it for a hundred pounds, money down,” was the -answer. - -PATRICK MACGILL. - -London Irish, - -St. Albans. - -_Feb. 5th, 1915._ - - - - -CONTENTS - - -CHAPTER PAGE - -I. THE TURN OF THE TIDE 11 - -II. AN UNSUCCESSFUL JOURNEY 29 - -III. ON DOOEY HEAD 37 - -IV. RESTLESS YOUTH 48 - -V. GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY 56 - -VI. SCHOOL LIFE 64 - -VII. PLUCKING BOG-BINE 70 - -VIII. THE TRAGEDY 77 - -IX. THE WAKE 91 - -X. COFFIN AND COIN 98 - -XI. THE TRAIN FROM GREENANORE 108 - -XII. DERRY 119 - -XIII. A WILD NIGHT 126 - -XIV. “BEYOND THE WATER” 137 - -XV. DRUDGERY 147 - -XVI. LITTLE LOVES 157 - -XVII. A GAME OF CARDS 162 - -XVIII. IN THE LANE 170 - -XIX. THE END OF THE SEASON 179 - -XX. ORIGINAL SIN 188 - -XXI. REGRETS 197 - -XXII. ON THE ROAD 202 - -XXIII. COMPLICATIONS 213 - -XXIV. THE RAT-PIT 222 - -XXV. SHEILA CARROL 230 - -XXVI. THE PASSING DAYS 240 - -XXVII. THE NEW-COMER 246 - -XXVIII. THE RAG-STORE 251 - -XXIX. DERMOD FLYNN 262 - -XXX. GROWN UP 272 - -XXXI. DESPAIR 286 - -XXXII. CONFESSION 294 - -XXXIII. ST. JOHN VIII, I-II 303 - -XXXIV. LONGINGS 309 - -XXXV. THE FAREWELL MEETING 315 - - - - - -THE RAT-PIT - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE TURN OF THE TIDE - - -I - -“Have you your brogues, Norah?” - -“They’re tied round my shoulders with a string, mother.” - -“And your brown penny for tea and bread in the town, Norah?” - -“It’s in the corner of my weasel-skin purse, mother.” - -“The tide is long on the turn, so you’d better be off, Norah.” - -“I’m off and away, mother.” - -Two voices were speaking inside a cabin on the coast of Donegal. The -season was mid-winter; the time an hour before the dawn of a cheerless -morning. Within the hovel there was neither light nor warmth; the -rushlight had gone out and the turf piled on the hearth refused to burn. -Outside a gale was blowing, the door, flimsy and fractured, creaked -complainingly on its leathern hinges, the panes of the foot-square and -only window were broken, the rags that had taken their places had been -blown in during the night, and the sleet carried by the north-west wind -struck heavily on the earthen floor. In the corner of the hut a woman -coughed violently, expending all the breath in her body, then followed a -struggle for air, for renewed life, and a battle against sickness or -death went on in the darkness. There was silence for a moment, then a -voice, speaking in Gaelic, could be heard again. - -“Are you away, Norah?” - -“I am just going, mother. I am stopping the window to keep the cold away -from you.” - -“God bless you, child,” came the answer. “The men are not coming in yet, -are they?” - -“I don’t hear their step. Now the window is all right. Are you warm?” - -“Middling, Alannah. Did you take the milk for your breakfast?” - -“I left some for you in the jug,” came the reply. “Will you take it -now?” - -“That is always the way with you, Norah,” said the woman in a querulous -voice. “You never take your meals, but always leave them for somebody -else. And you are getting thinner on it every day. I don’t want -anything, for I am not hungry these days; and maybe it is God Himself -that put the sickness on me so that I would not take away the food of -them that needs it more than I do. Drink the milk, Norah, it will do you -good.” - -There was no answer. A pale-faced little girl lifted the latch of the -door and looked timorously out into the cold and the blackness. The gale -caught her and for a moment she almost choked for breath. It was still -intensely dark, no colour of the day was yet in the sky. The wind -whistled shrilly round the corners of the cabin and a storm-swept bird -dropped to the ground in front of the child. She looked back into the -gloomy interior of the cabin and for a moment thought of returning. She -was very hungry, but remembered her father and brother who would -presently come in from the fishing, probably, as they had come in for -days, with empty boats and empty stomachs. Another fit of coughing -seized the mother, and the girl went out, shutting the door carefully -behind her to stay the wrath of the wind which swept violently across -the floor of the house. - -The sea was near. The tide, sweeping sullenly away from the shore, -moaned plaintively near the land and swelled into loud discordant wrath, -far out at the bar. All round the house a tremulous gray haze enveloped -everything, and the child stole into its mysterious bosom and towards -the sea. The sleet shot sharply across her body and at times she turned -round to save her face from its stinging lash. She was so small, so -frail, so tender that she might be swept away at any moment as she moved -like a shadow through the greyness, keeping a keen lookout for the -ghosts that peopled the mists and the lonely places. Of these phantoms -she was assured. To her they were as true as her own mother, as her own -self. They were around and above her. They hid in the mists, walked on -the sea, roved in the fields, and she was afraid of them. - -Suddenly she called to mind the story of the Lone Woman of the Mist, the -ghost whom all the old people of the locality had met at some time or -another in their lives. Even as she thought, an apparition took form, a -lone woman stood in front of the little girl, barely ten paces away. The -child crossed herself seven times and walked straight ahead, keeping her -eyes fixed on the figure that barred the path. This was the only thing -to be done; under the steady look of the eyes a ghost is powerless. So -her mother had told her, and the girl, knowing this, never lowered her -gaze; but her bare feet got suddenly warm, her heart leapt as if wanting -to leave her body, and the effort to restrain the tremor of her eyelids -caused her pain. The ghost spoke. - -“Who is the girsha[A] that is out so early?” came the question. - -“It’s me, Norah Ryan,” answered the child in a glad voice. “I thought -that ye were the Lone Woman of the Mist or maybe a beanshee.”[B] - -“I’m not the beanshee, I’m the beansho,”[C] the woman replied in a sharp -voice. “D’ye know what that means?” - -“It means that ye are the woman I’m not to have the civil word with -because ye’ve committed a great sin.” - -“Who said that? Was it yer mother?” - -“Then it was,” said the child, “I often heard her say them words.” - -“D’ye know me sin then?” enquired the woman, and without waiting for an -answer she went on: “Ye don’t, of course. This is me sin, girsha; this -is me sin. Look at it!” - -The woman loosened the shawl which was drawn tightly around her body and -disclosed a little bullet-headed child lying fast asleep in her arms. -The wind caught the sleeper; one tiny hand quivered in mute protest, -then the infant awoke and roared loudly. The mother kissed the wee thing -hastily, fastened the shawl again and strode forward, taking long steps -like a man, towards the sea. She was bare-footed; her feet made a -rustling sound on the snow and two little furrows lay behind her. Norah -Ryan followed and presently the older woman turned round. - -“That’s me sin, girsha, that’s me sin,” she said. “That’s a sin that can -never be undone. Mind that and mind it always.... Ye’ll be goin’ into -the town, I suppose?” “That I am,” said the child. “Is the tide full on -the run now?” - -“It’s nearly out. See! the sky is clearin’ a bit; and look it! there’s -some stars.” - -“I don’t like the stars, good woman, for they’re always so cold -lookin’.” - -“Yes, they’re middlin’ like to goodly people,” said the woman. “There, -we’re near the sea and the greyness is risin’ off it.” - -The woman lifted her hand and pointed to the rocky shore that skirted -the bay. At first sight it appeared to be completely deserted; nothing -could be seen but the leaden grey sea and the sharp and jagged rocks -protruding through the snow that covered the shore. The tide was nearly -out; the east was clearing, but the wind still lashed furiously against -the legs and faces of the woman and the girl. - -“I suppose there’ll be a lot waitin’ for the tide,” said Norah Ryan. -“And a cold wait it’ll be for them too, on this mornin’ of all -mornin’s.” - -“It’s God’s will,” said the woman with the child, “God’s will, the -priest’s will, and the will of the yarn seller.” She spoke sharply and -resentfully and again with long strides hurried forward to the shore. - - -II - -How lifeless the scene looked; the hollows white with snow, the -gale-swept edges of the rocks darkly bare! Norah Ryan stepping timidly, -suddenly shrieked as her foot slipped into a wreath of snow. Under her -tread something moved, the snow rose into the air as if to shake itself, -then fell again with a crackling noise. The girl had stepped upon a -sleeping woman, who, now rudely wakened, was afoot and angry. - -“Mercy be on you, child!” roared the female in Gaelic, as she shook the -frozen flakes from the old woollen handkerchief that covered her head. -“Can you not take heed of your feet and where you’re putting them?” - -“It’s the child that didn’t see ye,” said the beansho, then added by way -of salutation: “It’s cold to be sleepin’ out this mornin’.” - -“It’s Norah Ryan, is it?” asked the woman, still shaking the snow from -her head-dress. “And has she been along with you, of all persons in the -world?” - -“Is the tide out yet?” asked a voice from the snow. - -A face like that of a sheeted corpse peered up into the greyness, and -Norah Ryan looked at it, her face full of a fright that was not unmixed -with childish curiosity. There in the white snow, some asleep and some -staring vacantly into the darkness, lay a score of women, some young, -some old, and all curled up like sleeping dogs. Nothing could be seen -but the faces, coloured ghastly silver in the dim light of the slow -dawn, faces without bodies staring like dead things from the welter of -snow. An old woman asleep, the bones of her face showing plainly through -the sallow wrinkles of the skin, her only tooth protruding like a fang -and her jaw lowered as if hung by a string, suddenly coughed. Her cough -was wheezy, weak with age, and she awoke. In the midst of the heap of -bodies she stood upright and disturbed the other sleepers. In an instant -the hollow was alive, voluble, noisy. Some of the women knelt down and -said their prayers, others shook the snow from their shawls, one was -humming a love song and making the sign of the cross at the end of every -verse. - -“I’ve been travelling all night long,” said an old crone who had just -joined the party, “and I thought that I would not be in time to catch -the tide. It is a long way that I have to come for a bundle of -yarn--sixteen miles, and maybe it is that I won’t get it at the end of -my journey.” - -The kneeling women rose from their knees and hurried towards the channel -in the bay, now a thin string of water barely three yards in width. The -wind, piercingly cold, no longer carried its burden of sleet, and the -east, icily clear, waited, almost in suspense, for the first tint of the -sun. The soil, black on the foreshore, cracked underfoot and pained the -women as they walked. None wore their shoes, although three or four -carried brogues tied round their necks. Most had mairteens (double thick -stockings) on their feet, and these, though they retained a certain -amount of body heat, kept out no wet. In front the old woman, all skin -and bones and more bones than skin, whom Norah had wakened, led the way, -her breath steaming out into the air and her feet sinking almost to the -knees at every step. From her dull, lifeless look and the weary eyes -that accepted everything with fatalistic calm it was plain that she had -passed the greater part of her years in suffering. - -All the women had difficulty with the wet and shifty sand, which, when -they placed their feet heavily on one particular spot, rose in an -instant to their knees. They floundered across, pulling out one foot and -then another, and grunting whenever they did so. Norah Ryan, the child, -had little difficulty; she glided lightly across, her feet barely -sinking to the ankles. - -“Who’d have thought that one’s spags could be so troublesome!” said the -beansho. “It almost seems like as if I had no end of feet.” - -“Do you hear that woman speaking?” asked the aged female who led the -way. “It’s ill luck that will keep us company when she’s with us: her -with her back-of-the-byre wean!” - -“You shouldn’t fault me for me sin,” said the beansho, who overheard the -remark, for there was no effort made to conceal it. “No, but ye should -be thankful that it’s not yourself that carries it.” - -The sun was nearing the horizon, and the women, now on the verge of the -channel (dhan, they called it), stood in silence looking at the water. -It was not at its lowest yet; probably they would have to wait for five -minutes, maybe more. And as they waited they came closer and closer to -one another for warmth. - -The beansho stood a little apart from the throng. Although tall and -angular, she showed traces of good looks which if they had been tended -might have made her beautiful. But now her lips were drawn in a thin, -hard line and a set, determined expression showed on her face. She was -bare-footed and did not even wear mairteens, and carried no brogues. Her -sole articles of dress were a shawl, which sufficed also for her child, -a thick petticoat made of sackcloth, a chemise and a blouse. The wind -constantly lifted her petticoat and exposed her bare legs above the -knees. Some of the women sniggered on seeing this, but finally the -beansho tightened her petticoat between her legs and thus held it -firmly. - -“That’s the way, woman,” said the old crone who led the party. “Hold -your dress tight, tighter. Keep away from the beansho, Norah Ryan.” - -The child looked up at the old woman and smiled as a child sometimes -will when it fails to understand the purport of words that are spoken. -Then her teeth chattered and she looked down at her feet, which were -bleeding, and the blood could be seen welling out through the mairteens. -She shivered constantly from the cold and her face was a little drawn, a -little wistful, and her grey eyes, large and soft, were full of a tender -pity. Perhaps the pity was for her mother who was ill at home, maybe for -the beansho whom everyone disliked, or maybe for herself, the little -girl of twelve, who was by far the youngest member of the party. - - -III - -“It’s time that we were tryin’ to face the water in the name of God,” -said one of the women, who supported herself against a neighbour’s -shoulder whilst she took off her mairteens. “There is low tide now.” - -All mairteens were taken off, and raising their petticoats well up and -tying them tightly around their waists they entered the water. The old -woman leading the party walked into the icy sea placidly; the others -faltered a moment, then stepped in recklessly and in a second the water -was well up to their thighs. They hurried across shouting carelessly, -gesticulating violently and laughing loudly. Yet every one of them, with -the possible exception of the woman in front, was on the borderland of -tears. If they had spoken not they would have wept. - -Norah Ryan, who was the last to enter the water, tucked up her dress and -cast a frightened glance at those in front. No one observed her. She -lifted the dress higher and entered the icy cold stream which chilled -her to the bone. At each successive step the rising water pained her as -a knife driven into the flesh might pain her. She raised her eyes and -noticed a woman looking back; instantly Norah dropped her clothes and -the hem of her petticoat became saturated with water. - -“What are ye doin’, Norah Ryan?” the woman shouted. “Ye’ll be wettin’ -the dress that’s takin’ ye to the town.” - -The child paid no heed. With her clothes trailing in the stream she -walked across breast deep to the other side. Her garments were soaked -when she landed. The old woman, placid fatalist, was pulling on her -mairteens with skinny, warty hands; another was lacing her brogues; a -third tied a rag round her foot, which had been cut by a shell at the -bottom of the channel. - -“Why did ye let yer clothes drop into the dhan?” croaked the old woman. -She asked out of mere curiosity; much suffering had driven all feeling -from her soul. - -“Why d’ye ask that, Maire a Crick (Mary of the Hill)?” enquired the -beansho. “It’s the modest girl that she is, and that’s why she let her -clothes down. Poor child! she’ll be wet all day now!” - -“Her petticoat is full of water,” said Maire a Crick, tying the second -mairteen. “If many’s a one would be always as modest as Norah Ryan -they’d have no burden in their shawls this day.” - -“Ye’re a barefaced old heifer, Maire a Crick,” said the beansho angrily. -“Can ye never hold yer cuttin’ tongue quiet? It’s good that ye have me -to be saying the evil word against. If I wasn’t here ye’d be on to some -other body.” - -“I’m hearin’ that Norah Ryan is a fine knitter entirely,” someone -interrupted. “She can make a great penny with her needles. Farley -McKeown says that he never gave yarn to a soncier girl.” - -“True for ye, Biddy Wor,” said Maire a Crick grudgingly. “It’s funny -that a slip of a girsha like her can do so much. I work meself from dawn -to dusk, and long before and after, and I cannot make near as much as -Norah Ryan.” - -“Neither can any of us,” said several women in one breath. - -“She only works about fourteen hours every day, too,” said Biddy Wor. - -“How much can ye make a day, Norah Ryan?” asked the beansho. - -“Three ha’pence a day and nothing less,” said the girl, and a glow of -pride suffused her face. - -“Three ha’pence a day!” the beansho ejaculated, stooping down and -pulling out the gritty sand which had collected between her toes. “Just -think of that, and her only a wee slip of a girl!” - -“That’s one pound nineteen shillin’s a year,” said Maire a Crick -reflectively. “She’s as good as old Maire a Glan (Mary of the Glen) of -Greenanore, who didn’t miss a stitch in a stockin’ and her givin’ birth -to twins.” - -The party set off, some singing plaintively, one or two talking and the -rest buried in moody silence. It was now day, the sun shot up suddenly -and lighted the other side of the bay where the land spread out, bleak, -black, dreary and dismal. In front of the party rose a range of hills -that threw a dark shadow on the sand, and in this shadow the women -walked. Above them on the rising ground could be seen many cabins and -blue wreaths of smoke rising from the chimneys into the air. A cock -crowed loudly and several others joined in chorus. A dog barked at the -heels of a stubborn cow which a ragged, bare-legged boy was driving into -a wet pasture field ... the snow which lay light on the knolls was -rapidly thawing ... the sea, now dark blue in colour, rose in a long -heaving swell, and the wind, blowing in from the horizon, was bitterly -cold. - -“When will the tide be out again?” asked Judy Farrel, a thin, -undersized, consumptive woman who coughed loudly as she walked. - -“When the sun’s on Dooey Head,” came the answer. - -An old, wrinkled stump of a woman now joined the party. She carried a -bundle of stockings, wrapped in a shawl hung across her shoulders. As -she walked she kept telling her beads. - -“We were just talkin’ of ye, Maire a Glan,” said Biddy Wor. “How many -stockin’s have ye in that bundle?” - -“---- Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our -death, Amen,” said the woman, speaking in Gaelic and drawing her prayer -to a close; then to Biddy Wor: “A dozen long stockings that I have been -working on for a whole fortnight. The thread was bad, bitter bad, as -the old man said, and I could hardly get the mastery of it. And think of -it, good woman, just think of it! Farley McKeown only gives me thirteen -pence for the dozen, and he gives other knitters one and three. He gave -my good man a job building the big warehouse in Greenanore, and then he -took two pence off me in the dozen of stockings.” - -“You don’t say so!” - -“True as death,” said Maire a Glan. “And Farley is building a big place, -as the old man said. He has well nigh over forty men on the job.” - -“And what would he be paying them?” - -“Seven shillings a week, without bit or sup. It is a hard job too, for -my man, himself, leaves here at six of the clock in the morning and he -is not back at our own fire till eight of the clock at night.” - -“Get away!” - -“But that isn’t all, nor the half of it, as the man said,” Maire a Glan -went on. “Himself has to do all the work at home before dawn and after -dusk, so that he has only four hours to sleep in the turn of the sun.” - -“Just think of that,” said Maire a Crick. - -“That’s not all, nor half of it, as the old man said,” the woman with -the bundle continued. “My man gets one bag of yellow meal from Farley -every fortnight, for we have eight children and not a pratee, thanks be -to God! Farley charges people like yourselves only sixteen shillings a -bag, but he charges us every penny of a gold sovereign on the bags that -we get. If we do not pay at the end of a month he puts on another -sixpence, and at the end of six months he has three extra shillings on -the bag of yellow meal.” - -“God be praised, but he’s a sharp one!” said the beansho. - -“Is this you?” asked the woman with the bundle, looking at the speaker. -“Have you some stockings in your shawl too?” - -“Sorrow the one,” answered the beansho. - -“But what have ye there?” asked Maire a Glan; then, as if recollecting, -she exclaimed: “Oh, I know! It is the wean, as the man said.... And is -this yourself, Norah Ryan?” - -“It’s myself,” replied the child, and her teeth chattered as she -answered. - -“The blush is going from your cheek,” said Maire a Glan. “And your -mother; is she better in health? They’re hard times that are in it now,” -she went on, without waiting for an answer to her question. “There are -only ten creels of potatoes in our townland and these have to be used -for seed. God’s mercy be on us, as the old man said, but it was a bad -year for the crops!” - -“It couldn’t have been worse,” said Judy Farrel, clapping her thin hands -to keep them warm. “On our side of the water, old Oiney Dinchy (that’s -the man who has the dog that bit Dermod Flynn) had to dig in the pratee -field for six hours, and at the end of that time he had only -twenty-seven pratees in the basket.” - -“If the crows lifted a potato in Glenmornan this minute, all the people -of the Glen would follow the crow for a whole week until they got the -potato back,” said old Maire a Crick. “It’s as bad now as it was in the -year of the famine.” - -“Do you mind the famine year?” asked Norah Ryan. The water was streaming -from the girl’s clothes into the roadway, and though she broke into a -run at times in her endeavour to keep pace with the elder women, the -shivering fits did not leave her for an instant. The wind became more -violent and the sleet which had ceased for a while was again falling -from the clouds in white wavy lines. - -“I mind the bad times as well as I mind yesterday,” said Maire a Crick. -“My own father, mother, and sister died in one turn of the sun with the -wasting sickness and the hunger. I waked them all alone by myself, for -most of the neighbours had their own sick and their own dead to look -after. But they helped me to carry my people to the grave in the coffin -that had the door with hinges on the bottom. When we came to the grave -the door was opened and the dead were dropped out; then the coffin was -taken back for some other soul.” - -“At that time there lived a family named Gorlachs at the foot of Slieve -a Dorras,” said Maire a Glan, taking up the tale; “and they lifted their -child out of the grave on the night after it was buried and ate it in -their own house. Wasn’t that the awful thing, as the old man said?” - -“I wouldn’t put it past them, for they were a bad set, the same -Gorlachs,” said Maire a Crick. “But for all that, maybe it is that there -wasn’t a word of truth in the whole story.” - - -IV - -Norah Ryan, who was now lagging in the rear, got suddenly caught by a -heavy gust of wind that blew up from the sea. Her clothes were lifted -over her head; she tried to push them down, and the weasel-skin purse -which she held in her hand dropped on the roadway. The penny jingled -out, the coin which was to procure her bread in Greenanore, and she -clutched at it hurriedly. A sudden dizziness overcame her, her brain -reeled and she fell prostrate to the wet earth. In an instant the -beansho was at her side. - -“Norah Ryan, what’s coming over ye?” she cried and knelt down by the -girl. The child’s face was deathly pale, the sleet cut her viciously, -and her hands, lying palm upwards on the mire, were blue and cold. The -beansho tried to raise her but the effort was too much; the child which -the woman carried impeded her movements. Maire a Crick now hurried up -and the rest of the women approached, though in a more leisurely -fashion. - -“Mother of God! What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” asked the old woman -anxiously. “What has come over the child atall, atall? She’s starving,” -the old body went on, kneeling on the roadway and pressing her warty -hands on the breast of the young girl. “She’s starving, that’s it. In -her own home she hardly eats one bite at all so that her people may have -the more. So I have heard tell.... Norah Ryan, for God’s sake wake up!” - -The girl gave no heed, made no sign. The sleet sang through the air and -the women gathered closer, shielding the little one with their bodies. - -“What’s to be done?” asked the beansho. Biddy Wor told how people were -cured of fargortha (hunger) at the time of the famine, but little heed -was paid to her talk. The beansho unloosened her shawl, wrapped her -offspring tightly in it and handed the bundle to one of the women, who -crossed herself as she caught it. - -“Now up on my back with the girsha,” said the beansho authoritatively, -stooping on her knees in the roadway and bending her shoulders. “Martin -Eveleen has a house across the rise of the brae and I’ll carry her -there.” - -Three of the party lifted Norah and placed her across the beansho’s -shoulders. - -“How weighty the girsha is!” one exclaimed; then recollecting said: -“It’s the water in her clothes that’s doing it. Poor girsha! and it’ll -be the hunger that’s causing her the weakness.” - -The beansho with her burden on her shoulders hurried forward, her feet -pressing deeply into the mire and the water squirting out between her -toes. The rest of the party following discussed the matter and, being -most of them old cronies, related stories of the hunger that was in it -at the time of the great famine. Again it faired, the sun came out, but -the air was still bitterly cold. - -A cabin stood on the crest of the hill and towards this the beansho -hurried. Strong and lank though she was, the burden began to bear -heavily and she panted at every step. At the door of the house she -paused for a moment to collect her strength, then lifted the latch and -pushed the door inwards. A man, shaggy and barefooted, hurried to meet -the woman and stared at her suspiciously. - -“What do you want?” he asked in Gaelic. - -“It’s Norah Ryan that’s hungry, and she fainted on the road,” explained -the beansho. - -“In with her then,” said the man, standing aside. “Maybe the heat of the -fire will take her to. Indeed there’s little else that she can get -here.” - -Inside it was warm and a bright fire blazed on the cabin hearth. In a -corner near the door some cows could be heard munching hay, and a dog -came sniffing round the beansho’s legs. A feeling of homeliness pervaded -the place and the smell of the peat was soothing to the nostrils. - -“Leave her down here,” said the woman of the house, a pale, sickly -little creature, as she pointed to the dingy bed in the corner of the -room near the fire. Several children dressed in rags who were seated -warming their hands at the blaze rose hurriedly on the entrance of the -strangers and hid behind the cattle near the door. - -“Is it the hunger and hardships?” asked the man of the house as he -helped the beansho to place the inert body of the little girl on the -bed. - -“The hunger and hardships, that’s it,” said Maire a Crick, who now -entered, followed by the rest of the women. - -“Then we’ll try her with this,” said the man, and from behind the -rafters of the roof he drew out a black bottle which he uncorked with -his fingers. “It’s potheen,” he explained, and emptied some of the -contents into a wooden bowl. This he held to the lips of the child who -now, partly from the effects of the heat and partly from the effects of -the shaking she had received on the beansho’s back, awakened and was -staring vacantly around her. The smell of the intoxicant brought her -sharply to her senses. - -“What are ye doin’?” she cried. “That’s not right, and me havin’ the -holy pledge against drink!” - -The man crossed himself and withdrew the bowl, whereupon the woman of -the house brought some milk from the basin that stood on the dresser, -and this being handed to Norah Ryan, the child drank greedily. The -beansho gave her a piece of bread when the milk was consumed. - -“Where is me purse?” asked Norah suddenly. “It’s lyin’ on the road and -the brown penny is in the clabber. Where are we atall?” - -“In Martin Eveleen’s house, the house of a decent man,” said the -beansho. “Eat yer bit of bread, child, for ye’re dyin’ of hunger.” - -For a moment the child looked earnestly at the bread, then, as if -stifling the impulse to return it, she began to eat almost savagely. -Maire a Crick placed the purse and penny which she had lifted from the -road by the bedside and withdrew to the door, already sorry perhaps for -having wasted so much time on the journey. The beansho found her baby, -kissed a crumb into its mouth, tied it up again in her shawl and, when -Norah had eaten the bread, both went to the door together. - -“God be with ye, decent people,” said the child. “Some day I hope to be -able to do a good turn for you.” - -“We’re only glad to be of help to a nice girsha,” said the man, taking -down a bottle of holy water from the roof-beam. He made the sign of the -cross, dipped his fingers in the bottle, and shook the holy water over -the visitors. - -“God be with yer journey,” he said. - -“And God keep guard over your home and everything in it,” Norah and the -beansho made answer in one voice. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -AN UNSUCCESSFUL JOURNEY - - -I - -The hour was half-past ten in the forenoon. In the village (“town” the -peasantry called it) of Greenanore two rows of houses ran parallel along -a miry street which measured east to west some two hundred yards. At one -end of the street were the police barracks and at the other end the -workhouse. Behind the latter rose the Catholic chapel, and further back -the brown moors stretched to the hills which looked down upon the bay -where the women crossed in the early morning. - -The houses in the village were dull, dirty and dilapidated. There were -eight public-houses, a few grocers’ shops, a smithy where the -blacksmith, who mended scythes or shod donkeys, got paid in kind for his -services. The policemen, one to every fifty souls in the village, -paraded idly up and down the street, their heavy batons clanking against -their trousers, and their boots, spotlessly clean, rasping eternally on -the pavement. Their sole occupation seemed to be the kicking of -unoffending dogs that spent their days and nights in a vain search for -some eatable garbage in the gutter. The dogs were skeletons; and when -kicked they would slink quietly out of the way, lacking courage either -to snap or snarl. Even a kick brought no yelp from them, they were -almost insensible to every feeling but that of the heavy hunger which -dulled their natural activity. At night they were silent ghosts -prowling about looking for a morsel to eat. Now and again they howled -mournfully, sitting on their haunches in a circle; and when the people -heard the lonely sound they would say: “There, the dogs are crying -because they have got no souls.” - -A little pot-bellied man stepped briskly along the street of the -village, one gloved hand grasping a stout stick, the other, also gloved, -sunk in the capacious pocket of a heavy overcoat. He walked as if he -lacked knee-joints, throwing the legs out from his hips, but, save for -this, there was nothing remarkable about the man except perhaps his -stoutness. The people of Greenanore, battling daily against the terrible -spectre of hunger, had no time to grow fat, yet this man measured forty -inches round the waist. In the midst of extreme poverty he, strange to -say, had grown corpulent and rich. His name was Farley McKeown, now -possessor of £200,000, part of it invested in South American Railways -and part of it in the Donegal Knitting Industry, and nearly all of it -earned in the latter. - -Farley McKeown was now seventy years of age and unmarried. At one time, -years before, he had his desires as most young men have, and the sight -of a comely girl going barefooted to Greenanore imparted a fiery and not -unpleasant vigour to his body and caused strange but not unnatural -thoughts to enter into his mind. He was then a young man of twenty, -thoughtful and ambitious. Although his father was poor, the boy, -educated by some hedge schoolmaster, showed promise and evinced a desire -to become a priest. “It is an easy job,” he said to himself, “and a -priest can make plenty of money.” Farley McKeown desired to make money -anyway and anyhow. - -When the black potato blight, with the fever and famine that followed -it, spread over Donegal, Farley McKeown saw his chance. By dint of -plausible arguments he persuaded a firm of Londonderry grain merchants -to ship a cargo of Indian meal to Greenanore and promised to pay for the -consignment within two years from the date of its arrival. When the -cargo was landed on Dooey Head the people hailed it as a gift from God -and the priest blessed Farley McKeown from the altar steps. The peasants -built a large warehouse for McKeown, and in return for the work they -were allowed a whole year in which to pay for their meal. Meanwhile the -younger generation went off to America, and money flowed in to Donegal -and Farley McKeown’s pocket. At the end of two years he had paid the -grain merchants, but the peasants found to their astonishment that -_they_ had only paid interest on the cost of their food. They were in -the man’s clutches, always paying for goods received and in some strange -way never clear of debt. This went on for years, and Farley McKeown, a -pillar of the Church and the friend of the holy priest, waxed wealthy on -the proceeds of his business. - -Then he started a knitting industry and again was hailed by the priest -as the saviour of the people. From far and near, from the most southerly -to the most northerly point of Donegal the peasant women came to -Greenanore for yarn, crossing arms of the sea, mountains and moors on -their journey, and carrying back bundles of yarn to their homes. The -journey was in many cases thirty miles each way, and these miles were -tramped by women between a sleep and a sleep, often with only one meal -in their stomachs. - -The daughters of Donegal are splendid knitters. But how difficult to -make are those wonderful stockings when there is nothing but the peat -fire or the rushlight to show the women the dreary and countless -stitches that go to make the whole marvellous work. How quick those -irons flash in the firelight, how they tinkle, tinkle one against -another as the nimble fingers wind the threads around them, but alas! -how wearying the toil! And the time usually taken to make a pair of -socks was sixteen hours, and the wages paid for sixteen hours’ work was -a penny farthing. - - -II - -Farley McKeown strutted along the street, inflating his stomach with -dignity as he walked and casting careless looks around him. All those -whom he met saluted him, the men raised their hands to their caps, the -women bowed gravely, and the children, when they saw him coming, ran -away. An old sow, black and dirty from her wallow in some near midden, -rushed violently into the street and grunted as she mouthed at the grime -in the gutter. A peasant boy, dressed in trousers and shirt, got hold of -one of the young pigs and the animal squealed loudly. This startled the -mother and she peered round, her little stupid eyes blinking angrily. On -seeing that one of her young was possibly in danger she charged full at -the youth, who, hurriedly dropping the sucker, sought the safety of a -near doorway. A few hens rushed off with long, remarkable strides that -made one wonder how the spider-shanked, ungainly birds saved themselves -from toppling over. A rooster--a defiant Sultan--who did not share in -the trepidacious exit of his wives, crowed loudly and looked valiantly -at the sow, as much as to say: “I, for one, am not the least afraid of -you.” The boy finding himself safe ventured out again into the street, -but coming face to face with Farley McKeown hurried off even more -rapidly than when pursued by the sow. The man noticed the doubtful mark -of respect which the youth showed him, purred approvingly and smiled, -the smile giving him the appearance of an over-fed, serious frog. - -McKeown walked along the street towards a spacious three-storied -building containing many large windows and heavy, painted doors. This -was the warehouse in which he stored his yarn. One door was open, and in -front of this a crowd of barefooted women and children were standing, -most of them holding large bundles of stockings which they frequently -changed from one hand to another. They did not dare to rest their -bundles on the street, which was wet with the slabbery sleet of -mid-November. - -Farley McKeown came to the door and from there surveyed the women with a -fixed stare. They shuffled uneasily, a few crossed themselves, and one, -a young girl, ventured to say: “It’s a cold morning this, Farley -McKeown, thanks be to God!” - -The merchant made no answer. To see those creatures, shrinking before -his gaze, filled him with a comfortable sense of importance. They were -afraid of him, just as he was afraid of God, and he thought that he must -be like God in their eyes. He fixed another withering glance on the -crowd, then turned and hurried upstairs to the top floor, there to enter -a room where two young men were seated over a desk struggling with long -rows of figures in dirty ledgers. A peat fire blazed brightly in one -corner of the room, and the cheerful flame was a red rag to the eyes of -the proprietor. He looked sternly at the fire, then at the clerks, then -at the fire, then back to the clerks again. - -“Warm here, isn’t it?” he exclaimed. “Yes, it’s warm, very warm; very -comfortable indeed, isn’t it? It’s nice to have a fire on a cold -morning, very nice indeed. If you were working in your fathers’ fields -you’d have a fire out by your sides, you’d carry a fire about in your -pockets all day, you would indeed. Is it not enough for you to have a -roof over you?” he cried in an angry tone, his voice rising shrilly; “a -roof over your head and four good walls to keep the winds of heaven away -from your bodies? No, it isn’t, it isn’t, it isn’t atall, atall! I gave -you orders not to put a fire on till I came into the office myself, and -what do I see here now? One would think that it’s not me that owns this -business. Who does own it, I’d like to know! Is it me or is it you?” - -Gasping for breath, he flopped down suddenly into a chair, and drawing -off his gloves he stuffed them into the pocket of his coat. Then taking -an account book he stroked out several figures with his pen, while -between every pen stroke he turned round and shouted: “Is it me that -owns this business or is it you? Eh?” - -After a while he ceased to speak, probably forgetting his rage in the -midst of the work, and for two hours there was almost total silence save -for the low scratchings of pen on paper and the occasional grunt which -emanated from the throat of Farley McKeown. Suddenly, however, he -stopped in the middle of his work and looked at the skylight above, -through which snow was falling, and some of it skiting off the -window-ledge dropped on the top of his head, which being bald was -extremely sensitive to climatic changes. Then he gave an order slowly -and emphatically: - -“Dony McNelis, close the window.” - -One of the clerks, a tall lank youth, rose like a rubber ball, bounded -on top of his seat and closed the window with a bang. On stepping down -to resume his work, he noticed the crowd of women, now greatly increased -by the party which had crossed the bay in the morning, standing huddled -together in the street. The sleet was falling thickly--it was now more -snow than sleet--and the clothes of the women were covered with a fleecy -whiteness. The clerk paused in his descent and looked at the women, then -he spoke to the yarn-seller. - -“Would it not be better to attend to these women now?” he asked. “Some -of them have been out on the cold street since the dawn.” - -Farley McKeown turned round sharply. “Is this my business or is it -yours?” he cried, rising from the chair and stamping his feet on the -floor. “Mine or yours, eh? Have I to run like a dog and attend to these -people, have I? I’ve kept them from death and the workhouse for the last -forty years, have I not? And now you want me to run out and attend on -them, do you? I’ve taken you, Dony McNelis, into my office out of pure -charity, and how much money is it that your mother owes me? Couldn’t I -turn her out of house and home at a moment’s notice? And in face of that -you come here and tell me how to run my own business. Isn’t that what -you’re trying to do? Eh?” - -The boy sat down without a word, and catching a piece of waste paper off -the table, he crumpled it angrily in his hand; then rising again he -confronted his master. - -“There are women out there from Tweedore and Frosses,” he said. “They -have travelled upwards of thirty miles, hungry, all of them, I’ll go -bail, and maybe not a penny in their pockets. If they don’t catch the -tide when it’s out they’ll have to sleep on the rocks of Dooey all -night, and if they do there’ll be more curses on your head in the -morning than all the masses ever said and all the prayers ever prayed -will be fit to wash away. It’s nearly one of the clock now, and they’ll -have to race and catch the tide afore it’s on the turn, so it would be -the best thing to do to attend to them this minute.” - -The youth stood for a moment after he had delivered this speech, the -longest ever made by him in his life, and seemed on the point of saying -something more vehement. All at once, however, he sat down again and -went on with his work as if nothing unusual had happened. - -Farley McKeown was a superstitious man. He feared the curse of an angry -woman as much as he feared the curse of a priest of the Catholic Church. -And those women would curse him if they slept all night on Dooey Head. -For a moment he glared angrily at Dony McNelis, then went to the window -facing the street, opened it and looked out on the shivering creatures -assembled in the falling snow. - -“Are there many Tweedore and Frosses people here?” he shouted. - -“There’s a good lot of us here, and we’re afraid that we’ll be a wee bit -late for the tide if we don’t get away this very minute,” said a voice -from the crowd. Maire a Crick, the fatalist, was speaking. - -“Have ye any stockings with ye?” - -“Sorrow the one has one that’s not on her feet, save Maire a Glan, and -she doesn’t come from our side of the water,” Maire a Crick answered. -“When we were here the last day we couldn’t get a taste of yarn and we -had to sleep all night on the rocks of Dooey. All night, mind, Farley -McKeown, and the sky glowering like a hangman and the sea rushing like -horses of war up on the strand. God be with us! but it will be a cold -place on a night like this. For the love of Mary, give us some yarn, -Farley McKeown,” said the old woman in a piteous voice. “Twenty-four -hours have passed since I saw bread or that what buys it.” - -McKeown turned round to his clerks. “Is there much yarn down below?” he -asked. - -“Plenty,” said Dony McNelis, wiping his pen on his coat-sleeve. - -“If they had my yarn with them and miss the tide, they’d ruin the -stuff,” thought Farley McKeown; then turning to the women he shouted in -a loud voice: “There’s no yarn for the Tweedore and Frosses women this -day. Maybe if they come to-morrow or the day after they’ll get some.” - -Having said these words he shut the window. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -ON DOOEY HEAD - - -I - -Outside, the women who had taken up their stand at dawn were still -changing their bundles of stockings from one hand to another and -sheltering them under their shawls whenever they changed them. All the -time they kept hitting their feet sharply against the gritty street, -trying to drive the cold and the numbness away. On the other side of the -pavement a policeman stood for a moment and eyed them disdainfully, then -marched on, his baton striking soberly against his leg. One of the -party, a handsome girl, stepped out from the crowd and lifting her dress -well over her ankles wrung the water from her petticoats. A young fellow -passing on a donkey-cart looked shyly at the girl and shouted: “Lift -them a bit higher, girsha; just a little bit!” Whereupon the maiden -blushed, dropped her dress as if it was red-hot and returned hurriedly -to her companions. - -The Tweedore and Frosses women had gone away, speaking loudly and -lamenting over their ill-luck. Many of them were eating white bread (a -new importation into Greenanore), but without butter to give it relish -or liquid to wash it down. The bread cost a penny a chunk and one penny -represented a whole day’s wages to most of the women. Norah Ryan walked -with them, but in her lagging gait could be detected great weariness, -and in her eyes there were traces of tears. The poor child of twelve, -who felt her suffering very keenly, offered to share her dry crust with -Maire a Crick, who had no money, and the old woman looked greedily at -the bread for a moment but refused to accept it. - -The party hurried clear of the town, their bare feet pattering loudly on -the road. Suddenly they encountered the parish priest, Father Devaney, -an old, grey-haired, sleek-looking fellow, with shiny false teeth and a -pot-belly like McKeown. He pulled his rosary from his pocket and began -to pray when he observed his parishioners. - -“Tweedore and Frosses people,” he cried genially, turning his eyes from -the rosary cross to the women, “have ye got no yarn this good day? No. -That’s a pity, but believe me when I say that Mr. McKeown is doing his -very best for the whole lot of ye. He’s a good man, a sturdy man, a -reliable man, and there’s not his equal, barrin’ the priests themselves, -in all Ireland. Are you the daughter of James Ryan of Meenalicknalore?” -he asked, turning to Norah Ryan. - -“That I am, father,” answered the child. - -“Does he forget about the money that I’m wanting for the building of my -new house?” asked the old man in a severe tone of voice. “I want five -pounds from every family in the parish, and I’m not givin’ them one year -or two years, but a whole five years in which to pay it. They’re most of -them payin’ up now like real good Christians and Catholics, for they -want to see their own soggarth’s house a good house, a strong house and -a substantial house. But there is some of my own flock, and James Ryan -is one of them, that won’t give a penny piece to the soggarth who is -goin’ to save their souls for them. Listen, girsha! Tell James Ryan when -you get home that the first pound should be paid at Michaelmas and it’s -now long past Hallowe’en. Tell him that I pray every night for them -that’s not behind in comin’ forward to help the priest at the buildin’ -of his house, the soggarth’s house and the house of all his people. Tell -James Ryan that there’s no prayer for him as yet, but if he hurries up -with just one pound----” - -The priest suddenly spied the beansho staring at him, and he noticed -that there was a look of unfeigned contempt in her eyes. He observed the -bundle in her shawl, and suddenly recollected that it was the woman’s -child--the talk of the parish barely six months before. The priest -looked at the woman fixedly for a moment, then knowing that all the -party was watching him intently, he raised his hand and made the sign of -the cross on his forehead. This was as much as to say, “God save me from -this woman, for there is nothing good in her.” Old Maire a Crick crossed -herself in imitation of the soggarth and cast a look of withering -contempt at the beansho. Norah Ryan also raised her hand, but suddenly -it was borne to her that the action of Maire a Crick was very unseemly, -and she refrained from making the sign of the cross. Of course the -priest was right in what he had done, she knew; the people were -forbidden to see anything wrong in the ways of the soggarth. - -Suddenly the old man turned away. He walked off a short distance, his -head sunk on his breast and his hands clasped behind his back, the -rosary dangling from his fingers. Perhaps he was deep in thought, or -maybe he was saying a prayer for the beansho; the poor woman, buried -beneath her weight of sin and sorrow, had no doubt filled him with -compassion. What would he, the father of the flock, not do to make -lighter the woman’s burden? All at once he paused, turned round and -faced the women who were staring after him. - -“Norah Ryan!” he called, and his voice was pregnant with priestly -gravity. “If yer father doesn’t send me the pound before the end of the -next month he’ll have no luck in this world and no happiness in the -next. Tell him that I, meself, the parish priest, said these very -words.” - -Having thus spoken, the good man went on his way, telling his beads; -perhaps counting by their aid the number of sovereigns required for the -construction of his mansion. - -“That will make some people sit up if they don’t sink into their -brogues,” said Maire a Crick, glancing in turn at Norah Ryan and the -beansho. “Mother of Jesus, to have the priest talking to one like that! -Who ever heard the likes of it?” - -“Do you know how much the priest is goin’ to spend on a lav-ha-thury for -his new house?” asked the beansho drily. - -“Lav-ha-thury?” said Judy Farrel. “What’s that?” - -“Old Oiney Dinchy of Glenmornan said that it is a place for keeping holy -water,” said Maire a Crick. - -“Holy water, my eye!” said the beansho. “It’s the place where the priest -washes himself.” - -“I’ve heard of them washin’ themselves away in foreign parts all over -and every day,” said a woman. “But they must be far from clean in them -places. They just go into big things full of water just as pigs, God be -good to us! go into a midden. Father McKee, I wish him rest! used to -wash his hands in an old tub, and that’s all the washin’ ever he did, -and wouldn’t ye think that a tub was good enough for this man? But what -am I talking about!” exclaimed the woman, making the sign of the cross. -“Isn’t it the priest that knows what is best to do?” - -“He’s goin’ to spend two hundred and fifty pounds on his lav-ha-thury, -anyway,” said the beansho. “Two hundred and fifty pounds on one single -room of his house! Ye’ll not fill yer own bellies and ye’ll give him a -bathroom to wash his!” - -“Mercy be on us!” exclaimed Biddy Wor, staring aghast at the beansho. -“Ye’re turnin’ out to be a Prodisan, Sheila Carrol. Talkin’ of the -priest in that way! No wonder, indeed, that he puts the cross on his -forehead when he meets you.” - -“No wonder, indeed!” chimed a chorus of voices. - -“The sun, God forgive me for callin’ it a sun! will be near Dooey Head -this minute,” Maire a Crick reminded the party, who had forgotten about -the tide in the heat of the discussion. Now they hurried off, breaking -into a run from time to time, Judy Farrel leading, her little pinched -figure doubling up almost into a knot when she coughed. Last in the race -were Norah Ryan and Maire a Crick. - - -II - -The darkness was falling as the women raced down the crooked road that -ran to Dooey foreshore. A few birch bushes, with trembling branches -tossing hither and thither like tangled tresses, bounded the road at -intervals. The sky was overcast with low-hanging, slatey clouds, and in -the intervening distance between foreshore and horizon no separate -object could be distinguished: everything there had blended together in -grey, formless mistiness. There was hardly a word spoken; the pattering -of bare feet, Judy Farrel’s cough and the hard, laboured breathing of -the elder women were all that could be heard. - -One of the party, well in advance, barefooted and carrying her shoes -hung round her neck with a piece of string, struck her toe sharply -against a rock. - -“The curse of the devil!” she exclaimed; then in a quieter voice: “It’s -God’s blessin’ that I haven’t my brogues on my feet, for they would be -ruined entirely.” - -A belated bird cried sharply and its call was carried in from the sea -... somewhere in the distance a cow lowed--the sound was prolonged in a -hundred ravines ... the bar moaned fretfully as if in a troubled sleep -... the snow ceased to fall and some stars glittered bright as diamonds -in the cold heavens. - -“Mother of God! It’s on the turn,” Maire a Crick shouted, and hurried as -rapidly as her legs would permit down the hill. At intervals some of the -party following her would stumble, fall, turn head over heels and rise -rapidly again. They came to the strand, raced across it, making little -noise with their feet as they ran and with their bodies as they fell. -Norah Ryan’s head shook fitfully from side to side as she tried to keep -pace with her companions. - -They were not aware of the proximity of the dhan until they were in the -water and splashing it all around them. When half-way across Maire a -Crick found the water at her breast; another step and it reached her -chin. Those behind could only see a black head bobbing in the waves. - -“Come back, Maire a Crick!” Biddy Wor shouted. “Ye’ll be drownded if ye -go one step at all further.” - -The old woman turned, came back slowly and solemnly, without speaking a -word. - -On reaching the strand she went down on her knees and raised her eyes to -heaven, looking up through the snowy flakes that were now falling out of -the darkness. Then she spoke, and her voice, rising shrill and terrible, -carried far across the dhan: - -“May seven curses from the lips of Jesus Christ fall seven times seven -on the head of Farley McKeown!” - -The waves rolled up to her feet, stretching out like black, sinuous -snakes; a long, wailing wind, that put droumy thoughts into the hearts -of those who listened to it, swept in from the sea. Behind on the shore, -large rocks, frightful and shapeless, stood out amidst stunted bushes -that sobbed in dismal unison. The women went back to the rocks, passing -through bent-grass that shook in the breeze like eels. All around the -brambles writhed like long arms clutching at their prey with horrible -claws. A tuft of withered fern flew by in the air as if escaping from -something which followed it, and again the cry of the solitary sea-bird -pierced the darkness. - -Between the clefts of a large rock, which in some past age had been -split by lightning, the women, worn out with their day’s journey, sat -down in a circle, their shawls drawn over their heads and their feet -tucked well up under their petticoats. The darkness almost overpowered -Norah Ryan; she shuddered and the shudder chilled her to the heart. It -was not terror that possessed her but something more unendurable than -terror; it was the agony of a soul dwarfed by the immensity of the -infinite. She was lonely, desperately lonely. In the midst of the women -she was far from them. They began to speak and their voices were the -voices of dreams. - -Maire a Crick, speaking in Gaelic, was telling a story, while wringing -the water from her clothes, the story of a barrow that came across the -hills of Glenmornan in the year of the famine, and on the barrow, which -rolled along of its own accord, there was a large coffin with a door at -the bottom of it. Then another of the party told of her grandfather’s -wake and the naked man who came to the house in the middle of the night -and took up a seat by the chimney corner. He never spoke a word but -smoked the pipe of tobacco that was handed to him. When the cock crew -with the dawn he got up from his seat and went out and away. Nobody knew -the man and no one ever saw him again. - -“We might get shelter in one of the houses up there,” said Norah Ryan, -rousing herself and pointing to the hill above, where the short-lived -rushlights flickered and shone at intervals in the scattered cabins. - -“We might,” said Maire a Crick, “we might indeed, but it’s not in me to -go askin’ a night’s shelter under the roof of a Ballybonar man. There -was once, years ago, a black word between the Ballybonar people and the -people of our side of the water. Since then we haven’t darkened one -another’s doorsteps, and we’re not going to do it now.” - -“Maybe someone on our side will send a boat across,” said the beansho. - -“Maybe they’ll do that if they’re not at the fishin’,” Judy Farrel -answered. “And when are they not at the fishin’? They’re always out on -the diddy of the sea and never catching a fish atall, atall!” - -“We’ll walk about; it will keep our feet warm.” - -“And maybe fall down between the rocks and break our bits of legs.” - -The rushlights on the hill above went out one by one and the darkness -became intense. The Ballybonar people had gone to bed. One of the women -on the rock began to snore loudly, and those who remained awake envied -her because she slept so soundly. - -“I suppose Farley McKeown will have a feather bed under him now,” said -Maire a Crick with a broken laugh. It seemed as if she was weeping. The -beansho, who was giving suck to her babe, turned to Norah Ryan who sat -beside her. - -“What are you thinking of, Norah?” she asked in Gaelic. - -“I’m just wondering if my mother is better,” answered the child. - -“I hope she is,” said the beansho. “Are you sleepy? Would you like to -sleep like the earth, like the ground under you?” - -“In the grave you mean?” - -“No, no, child. But like the world at night; like the ground under you? -It’s asleep now; one can almost hear it breathing, and one would like to -sleep with it. If ever you think that the earth is asleep, Norah, be -careful. Maybe when you grow up some man will say to you: ‘I like you -better than anyone else in the world.’ That will be very nice to listen -to, Norah. Maybe you’ll walk with the man on a lonely moor or on the -strand beside the sea. It will be night, and there will be many stars in -the sky, and you’ll not say they’re cold then as you said this morning, -Norah. All at once you’ll stop and listen. You’ll not know why you -listen for everything will be so quiet. But for a minute it will come to -you that the earth is asleep and that everything is in slumber. That -will be a dangerous hour, child, for then you may commit the mortal sin -of love.” - -“Was that your sin, Sheila Carrol?” asked Norah Ryan, calling the woman -by her correct name for the first time. - -“That was my sin, Norah.” - -“But you said this morning----” - -“Never mind what I said this morning,” answered the woman in a tone of -mild reproof. “I’m only saying that the ground under us and around us is -now sleeping.” - -“The ground sleeping!” exclaimed Maire a Crick, who overheard the last -words of the conversation. “I never heard such silly talk coming out of -a mouth in all my life before.” - -“Neither have I,” said Norah Ryan, but she spoke so low that no one, not -even the beansho, heard her. - -Maire a Crick sang a song. It told of a youth who lived in Ireland “when -cows were kine, and pigs were swine and eagles of the air built their -nests in the beards of giants.” When the youth was born his father -planted a tree in honour of the event. The boy grew up, very proud of -this tree, and daily he watered and tended it, and one day the boy was -hung (why the song never stated) from the branches of his own tree. - -“There never was a man hung either in Frosses or Tweedore,” said the -woman who had just been snoring. “Never a mother’s son!” - -“So I have heard,” Maire a Crick remarked, pulling her feet well up -under her petticoats. “In Frosses and Tweedore there never was a tree -strong enough to bear the weight of a man, and never a man with a body -weighty enough to break his own neck.” - -Having said this the old woman, who came from the south of Donegal, -chuckled deep down in her throat, and showed the one remaining tooth -which she possessed in a hideous grin. - - -III - -About the hour of midnight the heavens cleared and the moon, hardly -full, lighted up the coast of Western Donegal. On the bosom of the sea a -few dark specks moved to and fro, and at intervals the splash of oars -could be heard. When the oars were lifted out of the sea the water, -falling from them, looked like molten silver. - -“Norah will be warm in bed by now,” said a voice. - -“If she caught the tide when it was standing,” a voice clearer and -younger replied. - -“If she caught the tide,” repeated the first speaker in a thoughtful -tone; then after a short silence, “Does not the land look black, back -from the sea?” - -The youth studied the shore-line attentively, allowing his oar to trail -through the water. “Mother of God! but it looks ugly,” he replied. “I -hate it! I hate it more than I hate anything!” - -On shore most of the women were now asleep amongst the rocks, their -shawls drawn tightly over their heads and their feet tucked up under -their petticoats. Maire a Crick, still awake, hummed a tune deep down in -her throat, and Judy Farrel coughed incessantly. One white, youthful -face was turned to the heavens, and the moon, glancing for a moment on -the pale cheeks of the sleeper, caused a tear falling from the closed -eyelids to sparkle like a pearl. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -RESTLESS YOUTH - - -I - -James Ryan’s cabin lay within half a mile of the sea, and his croft, a -long strip of rock-bespattered, sapless land, ran down to the very -shore. But this strip of land was so narrow that the house, small though -it was, could not be built across, and instead of the cabin-front, an -end gable faced the water. In Frosses most of the land is divided into -thin strips, for it is the unwritten law that they who have no land -touching the sea may not lift any sea-weed to manure their potato -patches. In Frosses some of the crofts, measuring two miles in length, -are seldom more than eight paces in width at any point. - -All over the district gigantic boulders are strewn, huge rocks that -might have been flung about in play by monstrous Giants who forgot, when -their humour was at an end, to gather them up again. Between these rocks -the people till for crops, plots of land which seldom measure more than -four yards square, and every rock conceals either a potato patch or -cornfield. It was said years ago that Frosses had twenty-one blades of -grass to the square foot, but this was contradicted by a sarcastic -peasant, who said that if grass grew so plentifully with them they would -all be wealthy. - -Fishing was indulged in, but very little fish was ever landed: Scottish -and English trawlers netted the fish off-shore, and few were picked up -by the peasantry, whose boats and nets were of the most primitive -pattern. The nets were bad, the boats, mere curraghs, were -untrustworthy, and a great deal of the fishermen’s time was usually -spent in baling out water. At best fishing was for them an almost -profitless trade. They had no markets and no carts to send their fish to -town. For the most part the fishers used the fish themselves or traded -them in kind with their neighbours. - -On the morning following the women’s visit to Greenanore two men came up -from the sea towards the door of James Ryan’s cabin. One was an old man, -bearded and wrinkled, whose brows were continually contracting as is the -habit with those who live by the sea and look on the wrath of many -winds. He was dressed in a white wrapper, a woollen shirt, open at the -neck, trousers folded up to the knees, and mairteens. The other was a -youth of nineteen, dark-haired, supple of limb and barefooted. In the -two men a family likeness might be detected; they were father and son, -James Ryan and his only boy, Fergus. There were now only four in the -family; death had taken away most of the children before they were a -year old. - -Fergus opened the door of the cabin, to be met with the warm and -penetrating breath of the cattle inside. The cows, always curious to see -a new-comer, turned round in their beds of fresh heather and fixed their -big, soft eyes on the youth. Beside the cow nearest the door, a young -calf, spotted black and white, turned round on long, lank, awkward legs -and sniffed suspiciously; then, finding that no danger was going to -befall him, snuggled up against his mother, who commenced to lick her -offspring with a big rough tongue. Suddenly a pig ran in from the -outside, rushed between the youth’s legs and disappeared under the bed. -Its back was bleeding as if a dog had bitten it. - -“Is not the pig’s flesh like a human’s?” said Fergus, turning to his -father. “White; almost without hair and it bleeds just like a man’s. I -hate pigs; I wish we could live without keeping them.... Oh! here is -Norah at the fire. Have you just got up?” - -The child, shivering from cold, was sitting on the hassock, her hands -spread out to the peat blaze. - -“She has only just come in from the other side of the water,” said the -mother, who was sitting up in bed, knitting stockings. “She lay out all -night, poor creature! Twenty-seven women in all were lying out on the -snow. And she got no yarn! Thanks be to God! but it’s a bad time.” - -“A bad time, a hard time, a very hard time!” said the old man, sitting -down on an upturned creel and taking off his mairteens. “No yarn! and -there was not a fish in all the seas last night.” - -“None but the ones we didn’t catch,” said Fergus. “It is that dirty -potato-basket of a boat that is to blame.... Are you cold, Norah?” - -“I am only shivering; but the fire will do me good.” - -“She didn’t ate one bit of her breakfast yesterday,” said the mother. -“Left it all for you when you came in from the sea, she did!” - -Norah blushed as if she had been caught doing something wrong; then -drank from the bowl of milk which was placed on the floor beside her. -The father looked greedily at the bowl; the mother spoke. - -“It is nice and warm, that milk,” said the old woman. “I wish we had -more of it, but at this time of the year the milk runs thin in the cow’s -elldurs. But even if we had got enough bread, never mind milk, it would -not be so bad.... And there is not one bit for you this morning.... Do -you know what the soggarth says, Shemus?” - - -II - -The husband looked at his wife, and an expression of dread appeared on -his face. “What does he say, Mary?” - -“He is offering up no prayers for your soul.” - -“Mother of God, be good to me!” - -“You must pay him that pound at once, he says.” - -“But barring what we are saving up for the landlord’s rent, bad scran to -him! we have not one white shilling in the house.” - -“That does not matter to the priest, the damned old pig!” exclaimed -Fergus, who had been looking gloomily at the roof since he had spoken to -Norah. - -“Fergus!” the three occupants of the house exclaimed in one breath. - -“What’s coming over the boy at all?” the mother went on. “It must be the -books that Micky’s Jim takes over from Scotland that are bringing ruin -to the gasair.” - -“It is common sense that I am talking,” Fergus hotly replied. “What with -the landlord, Farley McKeown, and the priest, you are all in a nice -pickle!” - -“The priest, Fergus!” - -“Robbing you because he is a servant of the Lord; that is the priest’s -trick,” the youth exclaimed. “We are feeding here with the cows and the -pigs and we are not one bit better than the animals ourselves. I hate -the place; I hate it and everything about it.” - -“Sure you don’t hate your own people?” asked Norah, rising from her seat -and going timidly up to her brother. “Sure you don’t hate me, Fergus?” - -“Hate you?” laughed the young man stroking her hair with an awkward -hand. “No one could hate you, because you are a little angel.... Now run -away and sit down at the fire and warm yourself.... They are going to -make you a nun, they say.” - -There was a note of scorn in his voice, and he looked defiantly at his -mother as he spoke. - -“What better than a nun could she be?” asked the mother. - -“I would rather see her a beggar on the rainy roads.” - -“What is coming over you atall, Fergus?” asked the old man. “Last night, -too, you were strange in your talk on the top of the sea.” - -“How much money have you in the house?” Fergus asked, taking no heed of -his father’s remark. “Ten shillings will be enough to take me out of the -country altogether.” - -“Fergus, what are you saying?” asked his mother. - -“I am going away from here and I am going to push my fortune.” He looked -out of the window and his eyes followed the twist of the road that ran -like a ribbon away past the door of the house. - -“But, Fergus dear--!” - -“It does not matter, maghair (mother), what you say,” remarked the -youth, interrupting his mother. “I am going away this very day. I have -had it in my head for a long while. I’ll make you rich in the years to -come. I’ll earn plenty of money.” - -“That’s what they all say, child,” the mother interposed, and tears came -into her eyes. “It’s more often a grave than a fortune they find in the -black foreign country.” - -“Could any place under the roof-tree of heaven be as black as this,” -asked the youth excitedly. “There is nothing here but rags, poverty, and -dirt; pigs under the bed, cows in the house, the rain coming through the -thatch instead of seeping from the eaves, and the winds of night raving -and roaring through wall and window. Then if by chance you make one gold -guinea, half of it goes to Farley McKeown and the priest, and the other -half of it goes to the landlord.” - -“But Farley McKeown doesn’t get any money from us at all,” said the -mother in a tone of reproof. “It is him that gives us money for the -knitting.” - -“Knitting!” exclaimed Fergus, rising to his feet and striding up and -down the cabin. “God look sideways on the knitting! How much are you -paid for your work? One shilling and threepence for a dozen pairs of -stockings that takes the two of you more than a whole week to make. You -might as well be slaves; you are slaves, slaves to the very middle of -your bones! How much does Farley McKeown get for the stockings in the -big towns away out of here? Four shillings a pair, I am after hearing. -You get a penny farthing a pair; a penny farthing! If you read some of -the books that comes home with the harvestmen you would not suffer -Farley McKeown for long.” - -“That is it,” said the mother, winding the thread round her -knitting-irons. “That is it! It is the books that the harvestmen take -home that puts the boy astray. It is no wonder that the priest condemns -the books.” - -“The priest!” said the youth in a tone of contempt. “But what is the -good of talking to the likes of you? How much money have you in the -house?” - -“Sure you are not going to leave us?” Norah exclaimed, gazing with large -troubled eyes at her brother. - -“I am,” snapped Fergus. “I am going away this evening. I’ll tramp the -road to Derry and take the big boat from there to Scotland or some other -place beyond the water. What are you crying for? Don’t be a baby, Norah! -I’ll come back again and make you a lady. I’ll earn big piles of money -and send it home at the end of every month.” - -James Ryan looked at his wife, and a similar thought struck both of them -at the same instant. The son had some book learning, and he might get on -well abroad and amass considerable wealth, which he would share with his -own people. The old man drew nearer to the fire and held out his bare -feet, which were blue with cold, to the flames. - -“If Fergus sends home money I’ll get a good strong and warm pair of -boots,” he said to himself; then asked: “How much money is there in the -teapot, Mary?” - -“Twelve white shillings and sevenpence,” answered the wife. “No, it is -only twelve shillings and sixpence. Norah took a penny with her to the -town yesterday.” - -“I have a ha’penny back with me,” said the child, drawing a coin from -her weasel-skin purse. “I only spent half of the money on bread -yesterday because I was not very hungry.” - -“God be merciful to us! but the child is starving herself,” said the old -woman, clutching eagerly at the coin which her daughter held towards -her. “You can have half a gold guinea, Fergus, if you are going out to -push your fortune.” - - -III - -In the evening when the moon peeped over the western hills, Fergus Ryan -tied his boots round his neck, placed three bannocks in a woollen -handkerchief and went out from his father’s door. The mother wept not -when he was leaving; she had seen so many of her children go out on a -much longer journey. Norah accompanied Fergus for a short distance and -stopped where the road streaked with very faint lines of light merged -into the darkness. The moon rose clear off the hills ... lights could -be seen glowing in the distance ... a leafless birch waved its arms in -the breeze ... somewhere a cow was lowing and far away, across the -water, a Ballybonar dog howled at the stars. - -“I never thought that I could like the place as much as I do now,” -Fergus said in English. - -“It’s the way with everyone when they’re going away,” answered his -sister. “And I’m sick at heart that ye are goin’, Fergus. Is Derry far -away?” - -“A longish way--” - -“Out beyont the moon, is it?” asked the child, pointing at the hills and -the moon above them. - -“Maybe,” said the youth; then in a low voice: “D’ye know what they do in -other countries when they are saying ‘Good-bye’?” - -“Then I don’t,” answered Norah. - -“They do this,” said the young man, and he pressed his lips against his -sister’s cheek. - -“But they never do that here,” said the girl, and both blushed as if -they had been discovered doing something very wrong. “I’ll say a long -prayer for you every night, when you are away, Fergus.” - -The boy looked at her, rubbed one bare foot on the ground and seemed on -the point of saying something further; then without a word he turned and -walked off along the wet road. Norah kept looking after him till he was -out of sight, then, with her eyes full of tears, she went back to her -home. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY - - -I - -Towards the end of the following year a great event took place in -Frosses. It was reported that a registered letter addressed to “James -Ryan, Esquire, Meenalicknalore” was lying in Frosses post-office. Norah -heard the news and spoke of it to her father. - -“No one but your own self can get the letter,” she said. “That is what -the people at the post-office say. You have to write your name down on -white paper too, before the letter crosses the counter.” - -“And is it me, a man who was never at school, that has to put down my -name?” asked James Ryan in a puzzled voice. - -“It will be a letter from the boy himself,” said the old woman, who was -sitting up in bed and knitting. Now and again she placed her bright -irons down and coughed with such violence as to shake her whole body. -“And maybe there is money in the same letter. It is not often that we -have a letter coming to us.” - -“We had none since the last process for the rent and that was two years -aback,” said the husband. “Maybe I will be going into Frosses and -getting that letter myself now.” - -“Maybe you would,” stammered his wife, still battling with her cough. - -James Ryan put on his mairteens and left the house. Norah watched him -depart, and her eyes followed him until he turned the corner of the -road; then she went to the bedside and sitting on a low stool commenced -to turn the heel of a long stocking. - -“How many days to a day now is it since Fergus took the road to Derry?” -asked the old woman. “I am sure it is near come nine months this very -minute.” - -“It is ten months all but sixteen days.” - -“Under God the day and the night, and is it that?” - -“That it is and every hour of it.” - -“He will be across the whole flat world since he left,” said the mother, -looking fixedly at an awkward, ungainly calf which had just blundered -into the house, but seeing far beyond. “He will maybe send five pounds -in gold in the letter.” - -“Maybe. But you are not thinking of that, mother?” said Norah. - -“And what would _you_ be thinking of, then?” asked the old woman. - -“I am wondering if he is in good health and happy.” - -“The young are always happy, Norah. Are you not?” - -“Sometimes. I am happy when out in the open, listening to the birds -singing, and the wind running on the heather.” - -“Who ever heard of a person listening to things like those? Are you not -happy in God’s house on a Sunday?” - -“Oh, I am happy there as well,” answered Norah, but there was a hint of -hesitation in the answer. - -“Everyone that is good of heart is happy in God’s house,” said the -mother. “Have you turned the heel of the stocking yet?” - -“I am nigh finished with the foot, mother.” - -“My own two eyes are getting dim, and I cannot hurry like you these -days,” said the woman in the bed. “Run those hens from the house, and -the young sturk too.... I wonder what he is coming in here for now, the -rascal?” - -“Maybe he likes to be near the fire,” said the child, looking at the -spotted calf that was nosing at a dish on the dresser. “When Micky’s Jim -built a new byre it was not easy to keep the cattle in it, for they -always wanted to get back into the warm house again.” - -With these words she rose and chased the young animal out of doors, -while a few stray hens fluttered wildly about in making their exit. “The -cows like the blaze,” Norah went on as she came back and took up her -seat by the fire. “Every evening they turn round and look at it, and you -can see their big soft eyes shining through the darkness.” - -“It is the strange things that you be noticing, alannah, but what you -say is very true,” said the mother. “It will be a letter from Fergus, I -suppose, with five gold guineas in it,” she went on. “Maybe he will be -at the back of America by now.... If he sends five gold guineas we will -make a holy nun of you, Norah, and then you can pray day and night with -no one at all to ask you to do anything but that alone.” - -“I might get tired of it, mother.” - -“Son of Mary, listen to her! Tired of saying your prayers, you mean? -There is that sturk at the door again. Isn’t he the rascal of the -world?” - - -II - -Darkness had fallen before James Ryan returned from Frosses post-office, -which was over four miles away. He entered the cabin, breathing heavily, -the sweat streaming from his brow and coursing down his blood-threaded -cheeks. He had run most of the way back, and in his hand he carried the -letter, the first which he had received for two whole years. - -“Mercy be on us, but you are out of breath!” said his wife, laying down -her knitting irons, a fault of which she was seldom guilty, save when -eating or sleeping. “Put one of the rushlights in the fire, Norah, and -read the letter from foreign parts. Is it from the boy himself?” - -“Maybe it is,” answered the man, seating himself as usual on an upturned -creel in the centre of the cabin. “The man at the post-office, Micky -McNelis, first cousin he is to Dony McNelis that works with Farley -McKeown, says that it is from a far part, anyway. ‘You must put down -your own name,’ said Micky to me, in English. ‘I cannot write, for I -never had a pen in my hand,’ said I. ‘You have to make your mark then,’ -said he. ‘I don’t know how to do that either,’ said I. ‘I’ll write your -name and you have to put a line down this way and a line down that way -after what I write,’ said he, and, just by way of showing me, he made a -crooked cross with his pen on a piece of paper. Then I made my mark and -a good mark it was too, for Micky himself said as much, and I got the -letter there and then into my own two hands. If it is from the boy there -is not one penny piece in it.” - -“Why would you be saying that now?” - -“I could not feel anything inside of it,” said the man. “If there were -gold pieces in it I could easily find them through that piece of paper.” - -The rushlight was now ready; the father took it in his hand and stood -beside Norah, to whom he gave the letter. The woman leant forward in the -bed; her husband held up the light with a shaky hand; dim shadows danced -on the roof; the young sturk again entered the house and took up his -stand in the corner. Norah having opened the letter proceeded to read: - - “DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER AND NORAH, - - “I am writing to say that I am well, hoping to find you all at home - in the same state of health. I am far away in the middle of England - now, in a place called Liverpool where I have a job as a dock - labourer--” - -“Micky’s Jim had that kind of job the year before last in Glasgow,” said -the mother. - - “The work is hard enough, heaven knows, but the pay is good. I came - here from Derry and I have been working for the most part of the - time ever since. I intended to write home sooner but between one - thing and another, time passed by, but now I am sending you home - twelve pounds, and you can get gold in Frosses post-office for the - slip of paper which I enclose----” - -“Under God the day and the night!” exclaimed the woman in the bed. - - “A pound of this money is for Norah, and she can buy a new dress - for it. See and don’t let her go to Greenanore for yarn any more, - or it will be the death of her, sleeping out at night on the rocks - of Dooey. - - “I hope my mother is well and that her cold is getting better. I - spend all my spare time reading books. It is a great, great world - once you are away from Donegal, and here, where I am, as many books - as one would want to carry can be had for a mere song----” - -“Getting things for a song!” said the man. “That is like the ballad -singers----” - - “It would be nice to hear from you, but as I am going away to - America on the day after to-morrow, I have no fixed address, and it - would be next to useless for you to write to me. I’ll send a letter - soon again, and more money when I can earn it. - -“Your loving son -“FERGUS.” - - - - -III - -“This is the paper which he talks about,” said Norah, handing a money -order to her mother. - -“A thing like that worth twelve pounds!” exclaimed the old woman, a look -of perplexity intensifying the wrinkles of her face. “I would hardly -give a white sixpence, no, nor a brown penny for the little thing. Glory -be to God! but maybe it is worth twelve golden sovereigns, for there are -many strange things that come out of foreign parts.” - -“Alive and well he is,” said Norah, reading the letter over again. -“Thank God for that, for I was afraid that he might be dead, seeing that -it took him so long to write home. Wouldn’t I like to see him again!” - -“It will be worth twelve pounds without a doubt,” said the husband, -referring to the money order, as he threw the rushlight which was -burning his fingers into the fire. “I once heard tell that a man can get -hundreds and hundreds of guineas for a piece of paper no bigger than -that!” - -“Mother of God!” exclaimed the old woman, making the sign of the cross -and kissing the money order rapturously. - -“Poor Fergus!” said Norah, laying down the letter on the window-sill and -taking up her needles. “It is a pity of him so far away from his own -home!” - -“Twelve gold sovereigns!” said the mother. “A big pile that without a -doubt. Hardly a house in Frosses has twelve pounds inside the threshold -of its door. Put out that animal to the fields,” she called to her -husband. “We’ll have to build a new byre and not have the cattle in the -house any longer. A funny thing indeed to have them tied up in a house -along with people who can get twelve pounds in bulk from foreign parts! -No decent body would dream of such a thing as having them tied up here -now! Norah, leave down that stocking. Let me never see you knitting -under this roof again.” - -“Why, mother?” - -“You are going to be a nun, a holy nun, Norah, and nuns never knit; they -just pray all day long and all night too. You have to set about and go -to school again. You are not to be like other people’s children any -more, knitting stockings in the ashes. You are going to be a nun--and -there never was a nun in Frosses yet!” - -“I would like to go to school again,” said the child, clinking her irons -nervously and following with her eyes the blue flames that rose from the -peat fire and disappeared in the chimney. “There is a map of the world -in the school, hanging on the wall, and one can see Liverpool on it and -America as well. I could look at them and think that I am seeing Fergus -away in foreign parts, so far from his own home.” - -“And there is a pound due to the priest this minute,” said the old man, -who had just chased the calf out into the darkness. “It would be well to -give the soggarth the money in the morning.” - -“And you’ll go to school again to-morrow,” repeated the mother, who was -following up some train of thought, and who, curiously enough, made no -mention of her son since the letter had been read. “You’ll go again -to-morrow and learn well. The master said that you were getting on fine -the last time you were there and that it was a sin to take you away from -the books.” - -Having said this, the old woman lay back in her bed with a sigh of -relief, the man closed the door of the house, and drawing near to the -fire he held out his feet to the blaze. Norah, glad to be released from -the labour of the knitting irons, looked into the flames, and many -strange pictures came and went before her eyes. From time to time the -woman in the bed could be heard speaking. - -“Twelve pounds for a piece of paper!” she would exclaim. “Mother of God! -But there is strange things in foreign lands!” - -Suddenly Norah arose and approached the bed. “Am I a good girl, mother?” -she asked, with a slight catch in her voice. - -“What silliness is entering your head?” enquired the old woman. “Who -said that you were not good?” - -“You said that good people were happy in God’s house, but I am not -always happy there.” - -“Did I say that?” asked the mother, who had forgotten all about the -remark. “Maybe I did say it, maybe indeed. But run away now and don’t -bother me, for I am going to sleep.” - -“A little bit of paper to be worth twelve pounds!” she mumbled to -herself, after a short interval of silence. “Mother of God! but there -are many strange things in foreign parts of the world!” - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -SCHOOL LIFE - - -I - -On the Monday of the week following Norah Ryan went to school again. She -had been there for two years already but left off going when she became -an adept at the needles. Master Diver had control of the school; he was -a fat little man, always panting and perspiring, who frightened the -children and feared the priest. On the way to school he cut hazel rods -by the roadside, and when in a bad mood he used them on the youngsters. -After he had caned three or four children he became good tempered, when -he caned half a dozen he got tired of his task and allowed the remainder -(if any remained) to go scot free. Some of the boys who worked in their -spare time at peat saving and fishing had hands hard as horses’ hooves. -When these did something wrong their trousers were taken down and -awkward chastisement was inflicted with severe simplicity in full view -of a breathless school. - -The school consisted of a single apartment, at one end of which, on a -slightly elevated platform near the fire, the master’s desk and chair -were placed. Several maps, two blackboards, a modulator, which no one, -not even the master himself, understood, and a thermometer, long -deprived of its quicksilver, hung on the walls. In one corner were the -pegs on which the boys’ caps were hung; on a large roof-beam which -spanned the width of the room the girls’ shawls were piled in a large -heap. The room boasted of two wide open fireplaces, but only one of -these was ever lighted; the other was used for storing the turf carried -to school daily by the scholars. The room was swept twice weekly; then a -grey dust rose off the floor and the master and children were seized -with prolonged fits of sneezing. Outside and above the door was a large -plate with the inscription, - - GLENMORNAN NATIONAL SCHOOL. 1872. - -Over the plate and under the eaves of the building a sparrow built its -nest yearly, and it was even reported that a bat took up its daily -residence in the same quarter. - -From his seat beside the fire in the schoolroom the master watched his -pupils through half-closed eyes, save when now and again he dropped into -a sound sleep and snored loudly. Asleep he perspired more freely than -when awake. He was very bald, and sometimes a tame robin that had been -in the schoolhouse for many years fluttered down and rested on the -skinny head which shone brilliantly in the firelight. There the robin -preened its feathers. Now and then a mouse nibbled under the boards of -the floor, and the children stopped their noisy chatter for a moment to -listen to the movements of the little animal. - -Prayers were said morning and evening. The children went down on their -knees, the master prayed standing like a priest at the altar. The -prayers of the morning were repeated in English, those of the evening in -Gaelic. - -Norah Ryan took her place in the third standard. In the class the boys -stood at top, the girls at bottom, and those of each sex were ranged in -order of merit. Norah, an apt pupil, easily took her place at the head -of the girls, and the most ignorant of the boys, a youth named Dermod -Flynn, was placed beside her. Although this lad got caned on an average -three times a day, he never cried when he was beaten; still, Norah Ryan -felt mutely compassionate for him when she heard the sharp hazel rod -strike like a whiplash against his hand. His usual punishment consisted -of four slaps of the rod, but always he held out his hand for a fifth; -this, no doubt, was done to show the master that he did not fear him. -Dermod could not fix his mind on any one subject; there was usually a -far-away look in his eyes, which were continually turning towards the -window and the country outside. On the calf of his left leg a large red -scar showed where he had been bitten by a dog, and it was known that he -would become mad one day. When a man is bitten by an angry dog he is -sure to become mad at some time or another. So they say in Frosses. - -The third class was usually ranged for lessons in a semi-circle facing -the map of the world, which, with the exception of the map of Ireland, -was the largest in the school. On the corners of the map were pictures -of various men and animals with titles underneath; which, going the -round of the two hemispheres, could be read as follows: Dromedary; A -Russian Moujik; Wild Boar; A Chinaman; Leopard; An Indian; Lion; A Fiji -Islander; etc., etc. - - -II - -One day the master asked Dermod Flynn if he knew what race of people -lived in Liverpool. As usual Dermod did not know. - -“Dockers and Irishmen,” Norah Ryan, whose mind reverted to the letter -which had been received from Fergus, whispered under her breath. - -“Rockets and Irishmen,” Dermod blurted out. - -No one laughed: a rocket had never been seen in Glenmornan, and it would -have surprised none of the children if Dermod were correct; it would -have surprised none of them if he were wrong. The master reached for the -hazel rod. - -“Hold out your hand, Dermod Flynn,” he commanded and delivered four -blows on the boy’s palm. Flynn held out his hand for a fifth slap: the -master took no notice. - -“Now, Norah Ryan, hold out your hand,” said the master. “Promptin’ is -worse than tellin’ lies.” - -Norah received two slaps, much lighter than those delivered to the boy. -The master knew that she was going to be a nun one day, and he respected -her accordingly, but not to such an extent that he could refrain from -using the rod of correction. - -Dermod Flynn turned and stared at Norah. A red blush mantled her cheeks, -and she looked at him shyly for a moment; then her lashes dropped -quickly, for she felt that he was looking into her very soul. He -appeared self-possessed, impervious to the pain of the master’s -chastisement. After a while Norah looked at him again, but he was gazing -vacantly out of the window at a brook tumbling from the rocky hills that -fringed the further side of the playground. - -When school was dismissed and the scholars were on their way home, -Dermod spoke to Norah. - -“Why did you help me in the class to-day?” he asked. - -She did not answer but turned away and stared at the stream falling from -the dark rocks. - -“It’s like white smoke against a black cloud,” he said following her -gaze. - -“What is?” - -“The stream falling from the rocks.” - -On the day following Dermod got into trouble again. His class was asked -to write an essay on fire, and Dermod sat biting his pen until the -allotted time was nearly finished. Then he scribbled down a few lines. - -“A house without fire is like a man without a stomach; a chimney without -smoke is like a man without breath, for----” - -That was all. Dermod pondered over the word “stomach” for a while and -felt that it made the whole sentence an unseemly one. He was stroking -out the word when the master, awakening from his sleep, grabbed the -essay and read it. He read it a second time, then took down a hazel rod -from the nail on which it hung. The ignorance of the boy who wrote such -a sentence was most profound. The master caned Dermod. - -Norah Ryan made rapid progress at her work, and when she went home in -the evening she sat down on the hassock and learned her lessons by the -light of the peat fire. She considered old Master Diver to be a very -learned man, but somehow she could not get herself to like him. “Why -does he beat Dermod Flynn so often?” she asked herself time and again, -and whenever she thought of school she thought of Dermod Flynn. - -Her mother, who had improved in health, now that there was food to eat, -brought a looking-glass from Greenanore one day. She paid fourpence -halfpenny for it in “McKeown’s Great Emporium,” the new business which -had just been started by the yarn merchant. Norah dressed her hair in -front of this glass, and one day when engaged in the task, she said: “I -wish I could see Dermod Flynn now!” Perhaps she really meant to say: “I -wish Dermod Flynn could see me now!” In any case she got so red in the -face that her mother asked her what was wrong. - -Shortly afterwards Dermod Flynn’s school troubles came to an end. His -class was standing as usual, facing the map of the world, and Master -Diver asked Dermod to point out Corsica. The boy did not know where -Corsica was; he stared at the map, holding the idle pointer in his hand. - -“Point out Corsica!” the master repeated, and seized the youth by the -ear, which he pulled vigorously. The blood mounted to the boy’s cheeks, -and raising the pointer suddenly he hit the master sharply across the -face. - -“You’ve killed him, Dermod Flynn!” Norah Ryan gasped involuntarily. The -old fellow put his hands over his face and sank down limply on the form. -Blood trickled through his fingers ... a fly settled on his bald head -... the scholars stared aghast at their fallen master. Dermod gazed at -the old man for a moment, then seizing his cap he rushed out of the -schoolroom. Most of the boys followed the example, and when the master, -who only suffered from a slight flesh wound, regained his feet and -looked round, the school was almost deserted. - -Dermod Flynn did not return again, and after his departure Norah found -that she did not like the school so much as formerly. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -PLUCKING BOG-BINE - - -I - -The May of 1903 came round, and on every twelfth day of May the young -boys and girls of Donegal start for the hiring fair of Strabane. The -rumour went that Dermod Flynn was going now, but no one knew for -certain; the Flynns being a close-mouthed people gave no secrets away. -On the evening preceding the twelfth, Norah heard of Dermod’s intended -departure and that night she was long in falling asleep. Her bed was -made on the floor beside the fire; a grey woollen blanket served a -double debt to pay, and was used as a blanket and sheet. But the -sleeping place was not cold; the heat of the fire and the breath of the -kine kept it warm. - -The first bird was twittering on the thatch and the first tint of dawn -was tingeing the sky when Norah awoke, sat up in bed and threw part of -the blanket aside. At the further end of the house where it was still -dark cattle were stamping, and bright eyes could be seen glowing like -coals. The child rose, went to the window, pulled up the blind and -looked out on the sea. She stood there for a moment rapt in reverie, her -pure white bosom showing above her low-cut cotton chemise and her long -tresses hanging down loosely over her shoulders. She was now fourteen. - -Her short reverie came to an end; she crossed herself many times and -proceeded to dress, taking unusual care with her hair, weaving it into -two long plaits, and polishing her boots carefully. These, the second -pair of her life, were studded with nails which she liked to hear -rasping on the ground as she walked. At night she noticed that the nails -were bright and shiny; in the mornings they were always brown with rust. -She recollected, not without a certain amount of satisfaction, that she -was the only girl wearing shoes at Frosses school. But she could well -afford it; Fergus had sent twenty pounds to his parents and three pounds -to herself since he left home. - -Her father and mother were asleep in the bed; the former snoring loudly, -the latter coughing drowsily from time to time. The cat, which had been -in the house since Norah could remember, was curled atop of the blanket -and fast asleep. - -A movement occurred in the bed as Norah finished her toilet; the cat -stirred itself, stretched its front legs, spreading out its claws, -yawned and fell asleep again. - -“Son of Mary! but you are up early, Norah!” exclaimed her mother, -sitting up in bed; then seeing the cat she gave the blankets a vigorous -shake and cried: “Get out, you little devil! You lie in bed as if you -were a person and no less!” - -“I am going to pull bog-bine on the hills of Glenmornan for your -sickness, mother.” - -“But would it not be time enough for you to go there come noon?” - -“It is as well to go now, mother.” - -“Then it is, alannah, if you have the liking for it,” said the old -woman. “See and turn the cattle into the holm below the Holy Rocks -before you go away.” - -“I will do that, mother.” - -“And put the blind up on the window again, for the light is getting into -my eyes.” - -Norah untied the cattle from their stakes and opened the door. The old -brindled cow went out first, lazily lashing her legs with her long tail, -and smelt the door-post as she passed soberly into the open. The second -cow, a fawn-grey beast, was followed by a restless, awkward calf that -mischievously nudged the hindquarters of the animal in front with its -nose. The Ryans possessed three cattle only, and the byre which the old -woman had wanted erected was now in process of construction. - -When the young calf got into the field he jumped exultantly into the air -and rushed madly off for the distance of a hundred yards; then, planting -his forefeet squarely in the earth, as suddenly stopped and turned round -to look at the two cows. Surprised that they had not followed him, he -scampered back to where they were cropping noisily at the short grass, -and with his head dunted the brindled cow on the belly. The old animal -turned round, her mouth full of grass, and gave a reproving nudge with -her warm, damp nose which sent the calf scampering off again. - -The houses of Meenalicknalore were arranged in a row on the top of a -brae that swept down to the sea, shoving its toes into the water. A curl -of smoke rose from some of the houses; others gave no hint of human -activity. “A chimney without smoke is like a man without breath,” quoted -Norah. “I wonder how Dermod Flynn thinks of things like that; and to-day -he is goin’ away all alone by himself across the mountains.” - -She came to the Three Rocks; three large masses of limestone, one long -and perpendicular, the other two squat and globular, which the peasantry -supposed to represent the Holy Trinity. Here Norah said her prayers, one -“Our Father” and three “Hail Mary’s” in front of each of the two -smaller stones, and the Apostles’ Creed in front of the large rock in -the centre. When her prayers were finished she drove the cattle into a -holm, put a bush in the gap and resumed her journey. - -The sun had just risen ... a wind cool and moist blew in from the bosom -of the sea ... little tufts of thistledown trembled through the air, -dropped to the ground, rose again and vanished in the distance ... wrens -chirped in the juniper ... frogs chuckled in the meadows ... a rabbit -with eyes alert, ears aback and tail acock ran along the roadway and -disappeared under a clump of furze ... clouds floating across the sky -like large, lazy, wingless birds slowly assumed a delicate rosy tint -until they looked like mother-of-pearl inside a giant shell. - -Norah, very excited and very happy, stood for a moment to look into a -clear well by the roadside. On her face was the expectant look of a -sweet kitten that waits for the ball to be thrown to it; her two plaits -of hair hung over her shoulders, one delicate strand that had fallen -away fluttering in the breeze. She looked approvingly into the calm -water at the laughing face that smiled up to her. - -“How good to be out here, to be alive, to be young,” she seemed to say -to herself. “Everything is so fair, so beautiful, so wonderful!” - - -II - -About six o’clock Norah entered Glenmornan. Here she met three boys and -two girls bound for the rabble market of Strabane. One of the boys was -whistling a tune, the other two chattered noisily; the girls, who were -silent, carried each a pair of hob-nailed boots hung over their -shoulders. - -“Good luck to your journey,” said Norah Ryan, by way of salutation. - -“And to yours,” they answered. - -“Are there lots of ones a-goin’ this mornin’?” she asked in English. - -“Lots,” answered one of the girls, making the sign of the cross on her -brow. “Two gasairs of Oiney Dinchy’s, one of Cormac of the Hill’s ones, -seven or more from the townland of Dooran, and more besides.” - -“Many goin’ from Glenmornan?” - -“Lots,” said the boy who had been whistling. - -Norah waited for him to proceed, but finding that he remained silent, -she enquired as to who was going. - -“Condy Dan, Hudy Neddy, Columb Kennedy, Unah Roarty and”--the boy paused -for a moment to scratch his head--“and Dermod Flynn, the gasair that -struck Master Diver with the pointer.” - -“Well, good luck to yer journey,” said Norah, shaking the hand of each -of them in turn. “May God be with ye all till ye come back!” - -“And with yerself for ever.” - -The crooked road twisted round copse and knoll, now bordering the river, -now rising well up on the shoulder of the hill, and along this road -Norah hurried, her hands hanging idly by her side and her plaits when -caught by an errant breeze fluttering over her shoulders. Half-way along -the Glenmornan road she met Dermod Flynn. - -“Where are ye for this mornin’, Dermod?” she asked. She knew where he -was going, and after speaking felt that she should not have asked him -that question. - -“Beyond the mountains,” answered the youth with a smile which showed his -white teeth. In one hand he carried a bundle, in the other an ash-plant -with a heavy knob at the end. The young fellows of Glenmornan had got -into a habit of carrying sticks in imitation of the cattle drovers who -came once every month to the fair of Greenanore. - -“Ye’ll not come back for a long while, will ye?” Norah asked. - -“I’m never goin’ to come back again,” Dermod answered. At this Norah -laughed, but, strangely enough, she felt ready to cry. All that she -intended to say to him was forgotten; she held out her hand, stammered a -confused good-bye and hurried away. - -“His eyes are on me now,” she said several times to herself as she -walked away, and every time she spoke a blush mounted to her cheeks. She -wanted to look back, but did not do so until she came to the first bend -of the road. There she turned round, but Dermod Flynn had gone from -sight and a great loneliness entered the girl’s heart. A steer with -wide, curious eyes watched her from a field beside the road, the water -sang a song, all its own, as it dropped from the hills, and the Glen -River, viewed from the point where Norah stood, looked like a streak of -silver on a cloth of green. But the girl saw and heard none of these -things, her eyes were fixed on the crooked road which ran on through -holt and hollow as far as the village of Greenanore, and miles and miles -beyond. - -She stood there for a long time lost in reverie. Dermod Flynn was gone -now, and he would never come back again. So he had told her. Suddenly -she recollected why she had come out on the journey. “To pluck bog-bine -it was,” she murmured. “I am after forgetting that!” - -She went across the river by the ford and climbed the hill. From the top -of the knoll she could see the train steam out from the station of -Greenanore. In it were the children bound for the rabble market of -Strabane. Norah stared and stared at the train, which crawled like a -black caterpillar across the brown moor, leaving a trail of white smoke -behind it. - -“I’m after forgettin’ that I came out to pluck bog-bine,” she repeated -when the train had disappeared from sight, and taking off her boots, she -picked her way across the soft and spongy moor. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -THE TRAGEDY - - -I - -Often a youth leaves Donegal and goes out into the world, does well for -a time, writes frequently home to his own people, sends them a sum of -money in every letter (which shows that he is not a spendthrift), asking -them for a little gift in return, a scapular blessed by the priest, or a -bottle of water from the holy well (which shows that he has not -forgotten the faith in which he was born); but in the end he ceases to -write, drops out of the ken of his people and disappears. The father -mourns the son for a while, regrets that the usual money-order is not -forthcoming, weeps little, for too much sentiment is foreign to the -hardened sensibilities of the poor; the mother tells her beads and does -not fail to say one extra decade for the boy or to give a hard-earned -guinea to the priest for masses for the gasair’s soul. Time rapidly -dries their tears of regret, their sorrow disappears and the more -pressing problems of their lives take up their whole interests again. In -later years they may learn that their boy died of fever in a hospital, -or was killed by a broken derrick-jib, or done to death by a railway -train. “Them foreign parts were always bad,” they may say. “Black luck -be with the big boat, for it’s few it takes back of the many it takes -away!” - -A year had passed by since James Ryan last heard from Fergus his son. No -word came of the youth, and none of the Frosses people, great -travellers though the young of Frosses were, had ever come across him in -any corner of the world. - -“We are missing the blue pieces of paper,” Mary Ryan said to her husband -one evening in the late autumn, fully three years after Fergus’s -departure. She now spent her days sitting at the fire, and though her -health was not the best it had greatly improved within recent years. -“They were the papers!” she exclaimed. “They could buy meal in the town -of Greenanore and pay the landlord his rent. Maybe the gasair is dead!” - -“Maybe he is,” the husband answered. He was a man of few words and fewer -ideas. Life to him, as to the animals of the fields, was naturally -simple. He married, became the father of many children, all unnecessary -to an overcrowded district, and most of them were flicked out by death -before they were a year old. Once every eighteen months James Ryan’s -wife became suddenly irritable and querulous and asked her husband to -leave the house for a while. The cattle were allowed to remain inside, -the husband went out and walked about in the vicinity of his home for -two or three hours. From time to time he would go up to the door and -call out: “Are you all right, Mary?” through the keyhole. “I am all -right, Shemus,” she would answer, and the man would resume his walk. -When the wife allowed him to come in he always found that his family had -increased in number. - -One day a child was born to him, and its third breath killed it. It was -the seventh, and the year was a bad one. Potatoes lay rotting in the -fields, and the peat being wet refused to burn. Somehow James Ryan felt -a great relief when the child was buried. Twelve children in all were -born to him, and ten of these died before they reached the age of three. -“The hunger took them, I suppose,” he said, and never wept over any of -his offspring, and even in time forgot the names of most of those who -were dead. The third who came to him was the boy Fergus; Norah was the -youngest of all. - -“Maybe, indeed, he is dead,” he repeated to his wife. “I suppose there -is nothing for it but to put out the curragh to the fishing again.” - -“And never catch anything,” said his wife, as if blaming him for the -ill-luck. “It is always the way.... If Fergus would send a few gold -guineas now it would be a great help.” - -“It would be a great help.” - -“We could keep Norah at school for another year.” - -“We could.” - -“And then send her to the convent like a lady.” - -“Just.” - -“When are you going to put the curragh out again?” - -“Maybe this very night,” answered the husband. “It is now Michaelmas a -week past. There were blue lights seen out beyond the bar last night, -and a sea-gull dropped from the sky and fell dead on the rocks of Dooey. -The same happened ten years ago, and at that time there was a big catch -out by Arranmore.” - -“Then you had better go out to-night, for there is not much money in the -tea-pot this minute.” - -“The byre cost a big penny,” said James Ryan, and he spoke as if -regretting something. - -“It did that, and the house does not look half as well with the cattle -gone from it.” So saying the woman turned over some live turf on the -pile of potatoes that was toasting beside the fire, and rising emptied -part of the contents of a jug of milk into a bowl. “It is a wonder that -Norah is not in,” she remarked. “She should be back from school over an -hour ago.” - - -II - -At that moment Norah entered, placed her cotton satchel and books on the -window sill, and sat down to her meal. She was a winsome girl, neat, -delicate and good-looking. She had grown taller; her tresses were -glossier, her clear grey eyes, out of which the radiance of her pure -soul seemed to shine, were dreamy and thoughtful. She was remarkable for -a pure and exquisite beauty, not alone of body, but of mind. She was -dressed in peasant garb, but her clothes, though patched and shabby, -showed the lines of her well-formed figure to advantage. Her feet were -small, an unusual thing amongst country children who run about -bare-footed, and her dainty little hands matched her feet to perfection. -Her accomplishments were the knowledge of a few Irish songs and country -dances, and her intellectual gifts could be summed up in the words, -simple innocence. - -“Are you getting on well with your lessons, Norah?” asked the father. - -Every day for the last two years, on her return from school, he asked a -similar question and took no heed of the answer, which was always the -same. - -“I am getting on very well, father.” - -“He’s going out to the fishing to-night,” said the mother, handing a -bowl of milk to Norah and pointing her finger at her husband. - -“Any letter from Fergus?” asked the girl. - -“Never a word,” said the mother. “Maybe one will be here to-morrow.” - -“To-morrow never comes,” said James Ryan. He had heard somebody use this -phrase years ago and he repeated it almost hourly ever since. “It is off -on the curragh that I am going now.” - -He rose and went out. The dusk had fallen and a heaven of brilliant -stars glittered overhead. A light gust of wind surged up angrily for a -moment and swept along the ground, crooning amidst rock and boulder. -Outside James Ryan stood for a moment and looked up at the sky, his -thoughts running on the conversation which had just taken place inside. -“To-morrow never comes,” he repeated and hurried towards the sea. - -Mary Ryan lit the paraffin lamp which hung from the great beam that -stretched across the middle of the house. The rushlight was now used no -longer; the oil lamp had taken its place in most of the houses in -Frosses. Norah finished her meal and turned to her books. For a long -while there was silence in the cabin, but outside the wind was rising, -whirling round the corners and sweeping in under the door. - -“Tell me a story, mother,” Norah said, putting her books aside and -curling up like a pretty ball on the earthen floor in front of the fire. - -“All right, I will tell you a story, silly baby that you are!” said the -old woman, sitting down on the hassock by the hearth. “Will it be about -the wee red-headed man with the flock of goats before him, and the flock -of goats behind him, and the salmon tied to the laces of his brogues for -supper?” - -“Not that one, a maghair, I know it myself.” - -“Will it be about Kitty the Ashy pet who said ‘Let you be combing there, -mother, and I’ll be combing here,’ and who went up the Bay of Baltic, -carrying the Rock of Cattegat on her shoulders?” - -“I know that one, mother.” - -“And the Bonnie Bull of Norway you know as well. Then it will be about -the cat that would not dress its whiskers if it wasn’t in front of the -biggest looking-glass in all the world. The biggest looking-glass in -all the wide world is the broad ocean in a calm.” - -“Not that one, mother.” - -“You are hard to please this very night. I will tell you the story of -the little green-coated boy who wandered on the rainy roads.... There’s -the wind rising. Mercy of God be on your father if the sea is out of -order!” - -Mary Ryan began the story which she knew by heart, having heard it so -often from the lips of her own mother. Here, it may be remarked, most of -the folk stories of Donegal are of Norwegian or Danish origin and have -in many cases been so well preserved that the Scandinavian names of -people and places are retained in the stories until the present day. - -“Once upon a time when cows were kine and when eagles of the air built -their nests in the beards of Giants, a little green-coated boy with a -stick in his hand and a bundle of bannocks over his shoulder went out on -the rainy roads to push his fortune----” - - -III - -“I’m going to marry a prince when I get very old, mother,” said Norah, -interrupting the story-teller. “Prince Charming, for that’s what the -girl did in the fairy stories when she grew up and got old at twenty or -twenty-one. She was very poor at first and did nothing grand, but -stopped at home, sweeping the floor and washing dishes. Then one night -an old woman came down the chimney and told the girl to go to a dance, -and the girl didn’t leave the dance in time and she lost one of her -slippers and--Oh! it was a great story, mother. I read it in a book that -Fergus had.” - -“You were reading those books, too!” - -“Just only that one, mother, and Fergus didn’t like it at all. He said -it was very silly!” - -“So it was, alannah, when it put thoughts like that into your head. -Marry Prince Charming, and you going to be a holy nun! Nuns never marry -like that.” - -“Don’t they? Well, I’ll not marry a Prince Charming. I’ll marry one of -the White Horsemen who are under the mountain of Aileach.” - -“But nuns never marry anybody.” - -“They don’t?” exclaimed Norah in a puzzled voice. Then with childish -irrelevance: “But tell me the story about the White Horsemen of Aileach, -mother. That’s the best story of all.” - -“Long, long ago, when the red-haired strangers came to Ireland, they put -nearly everybody to the sword; the old and young, the fit and feeble, -and mind you, Ireland was in worse than a bad way,” the mother began, -drifting easily into her narrative. “Ireland was a great place in those -days with castles and kings. Kings, Norah! There were five of them; now -there isn’t even one in the four corners of the country. But the -red-haired strangers came like a storm from the sea and there was no -standing before them. Red were their swords, red as their hair, but not -with rust but with the blood of men, women, and children. And the -chieftains of Ireland and the men of Ireland could make no stand against -the enemy atall. ‘What am I to do?’ cried the Ardrigh, the top king of -the whole country, speaking from the door of his own castle. ‘There will -soon be no Ireland belonging to me, it will all go to the red-haired -strangers.’ Then up spoke an old withered stick of a man, that nobody -knew, and who had been listening to the words of the King. - -“‘Have you asked the Chieftain of the White Horsemen for help?’ - -“‘I never met him, decent stranger,’ answered the King. ‘I know him -not.’ - -“‘Go to the sea when it strikes in storm on the coast of Tir Conail,’ -said the old man to the King, ‘and call out to Maanan MacLir for aid and -he’ll send to your help his ten score and ten white horsemen. You’ll see -the white horses far out, rearing on the top of the waves, every steed -pawing the ocean and all mad for the fight before them.’ - -“Well, to cut a long story short, the King did as he was told and called -to the White Horsemen to come and help him, and they came, ten score of -them and ten, with their shields shining like polished silver and lances -bright as frosty stars. Down from the North they rode, driving the foe -on in front of them, and never was seen such a rout, neither in the days -that went before nor the days that came after. The White Horsemen cut -their way right through mountains in their haste to get to the other -side; for nothing could stand against their lances. Nobody could go as -quickly as them, not even the red-haired strangers who were in such a -hurry to get out of their way. - -“And when victory was theirs, the White Horsemen came back here to Tir -Conail again and stood on the verge of the ocean while Maanan MacLir -headed his horse out on the waves. But lo, and behold! the steed could -no longer gallop across the water. The poor animal sank into the sea and -the chieftain was nearly drowned. At that moment a voice, nobody knew -where it came from, called to Maanan MacLir: - -“‘Long enough has the sea called for the rest and quiet that was not -given to it by the white horses of MacLir. Never more will the sea bend -under them; now it will break apart and let them through!’ - -“When they heard these words the White Horsemen turned away from the -sea and went galloping to the foot of the Mountain of Aileach. When they -arrived there the mountain raised itself upon one side just like the lid -of a kettle and Maanan MacLir and his White Horsemen disappeared under -it. Since that day they have never been seen again.” - -“But the mountain didn’t close on top of them, did it?” asked Norah. - -“Of course it did. Isn’t it closed to this very day?” - -“And will it be a true story?” - -“True, child!” exclaimed the mother. “Sure the mountain is there to this -very hour. And besides, Saint Columbkille talks about it in his -prophecies.” - -“Then the White Horsemen will come out again?” - -“They’ll come out when the great war comes,” said the mother. “And that -will be when there are roads round every mountain like the frills round -the cap of an old woman. It will start, the great war, when the nights -lengthen and the year grows brown, between the seasons of scythe and -sickle; murder and slaughter, madder than cattle in the heat of summer, -will run through the land, and the young men will be killed and the -middle-aged men and the old. The very crutches of the cripples will be -taken out to arm the fighters, and the bed-ridden will be turned three -times three in their beds to see if they are fit to go into the field of -battle. Death will take them all, for that is how it is to be; that way -and no other. And when they’re all gone it will be the turn of the White -Horsemen, who have been waiting for the great war ever since they chased -the red-haired strangers from the country. They’ll come out from under -Aileach when the day arrives, ten score and ten of them with silver -shields and spears, bright as stars on a frosty night. They’ll fight the -foe and win and victory will come to Ireland. These are the words of -the great saint, Columbkille.” - -“Are the White Horsemen very tall, mother?” asked Norah, her eyes alight -with enthusiastic interest. - -“Tall is not the word!” - -“High as a hill?” - -“Higher!” - -“As Sliab a Tuagh?” - -“It’s as nothing compared to one of the men of Maanan MacLir.” - -“Then I’ll marry one of the White Horsemen,” said Norah, decision in her -clear voice. “I’ll live in a castle, polish his lance and shield, -and--Who will that be at the door?” - - -IV - -Norah paused. Someone was moving outside as if fumbling for the latch; -then a tall, heavily-bearded man pushed the door of the cabin inwards -and entered, bringing with him a terrific gust of wind that almost shook -the house to its foundations. On his face was a scared look, and his -clothes were dripping wet, although it was not raining. - -“Was it himself?” cried the old woman, alluding to her husband and -speaking to the man who entered. It was evident from the tone in which -she spoke that she anticipated something terrible. - -“It was himself,” said the man in a low, hoarse voice. “He’s coming on -the flat of two oars. God bless us! But it is a black heart that the sea -has.” - -With these words the visitor went out again, and the excited voices of -men could be heard floating on the wind. - -“It’s your father, Norah,” said the old woman. “He went down with the -curragh, I’m thinking; down through the black water. Mother of God! but -it’s the sea that has the black heart! There they are coming with him. -Open the door wider, Norah!” - -The girl, who had risen from her seat, pulled the door inwards and -placed a stone against the sill to keep it open. She felt as if a -thousand pins were pricking her legs; her head was heavy, her fingers -felt enormous and when they pressed against the door it seemed to Norah -as if they did not belong to her at all. Outside it was very dark, the -heavens held no stars and it looked as if the howling gale had whirled -them away. In the darkness a torch swayed in the wind, and behind the -torch black forms of men and white, pallid faces could be discerned. -Norah’s mind turned to the stories which her mother had been telling -her. She knew it was wrong to think of them at that moment but she felt -an inordinate desire to laugh at something; what she wanted to laugh at -she did not know; why she wanted to laugh she could not fathom. - -“Are they coming, Norah?” asked the old woman, rising from her seat and -hobbling with difficulty towards the door. “Mother of Christ! but the -hand of God is heavy on me this night of nights! Children of my own and -man of my own, all, all going away from me! I’ll see the last of them go -down into the grave before me, for with my hard cough and the long -sickness I’ll outlive them all: that is the will of God. Ten sons and -daughters of my body; every one of them gone, and one away in black -foreign parts.... Are they coming, Norah?” - -The woman reached the door and leant against the jamb for support. The -torch was flaring outside and very near. - -“Watch that you don’t set the thatch on fire!” a voice cried. - -Two men entered the house, the water streaming from their clothes and -each holding a burdened oar in his hands. Across the oars a sail was -bound tightly, and cold in death on the sail lay James Ryan, his grey -beard sticking out stiffly, his eyes open, his head shaking from side to -side, his bare feet blue with the cold. The oars, which brushed sharply -against the old woman in passing, were laid on the floor and the dead -man was placed on the bed. - -“I’m sweatin’ like a pig!” said one of the bearers, and he rubbed his -wrinkled brow violently with the back of his hand. - -“Watch the thatch!” someone outside shouted. The torch was extinguished -and a crowd of men entered the cabin. An old red-haired fisherman lifted -the oars; the sail was rolled into a bundle and carried out again. Pools -of water formed on the floor and tracks of wet feet showed all over it. -The old woman hobbled back to her bed and gazed long and earnestly at -her husband; some of the men took off their hats; one was smoking, -another dressed a bleeding foot and told how he hit it against a sharp -rock when carrying the dead man up from the sea; several of the -neighbouring women were already in the house. Maire a Crick was on her -knees by the bedside. - -“I am used to it now,” said the old woman, as she sorted the blankets on -the bed with her withered hands. “Ten sons and daughters, and another -away and maybe never hearing from him again.... Himself said when he was -going out that the morrow never comes.” - -She sat down on the edge of the bed, ran her fingers over the wet -clothes of her husband, opened his vest, put her hand on his heart, -shook her head sadly and buttoned the coat again. - -“Just when he was putting out the wind caught him, and he dropped like a -stone over the side of the curragh,” the red-haired fisherman was -saying. “But the boat was no good anyway. It is one of the Congested -Districts Board’s boats that he should have.” - -“Where would he get the money to buy one?” asked Maire a Crick, turning -round from the prayer which she was saying for the dead man. - -“The money can be paid in instalments,” answered the red fisherman. He -spoke the Gaelic, as nearly everybody in Frosses did, but the words -“instalments” and “Congested Districts Board” were said in English. “Ten -pounds the new boats cost, and there is five years allowed for paying -the money.” - -“The Congested Districts Board is going to be a great help,” someone -remarked. - -“Is the curragh safe?” asked Mary Ryan, turning round. She was still -sitting beside the bed, turning over the clothes with lean, shaky -fingers. - -“It is at the bottom,” said a neighbour, Eamon Doherty by name. “It was -rotten anyhow, and it hadn’t been in wet water for close on two -years.... Now, I wonder what made Shemus go out on it?” - -“Nothing atall, atall left,” said the old woman in a feeble voice. “If I -only had the curragh even.... And himself dead after all the times that -the sea has bent under him! Never to see him again, never! Isn’t it hard -to think that a thing like that could be?” - -Whereupon, saying this she began to cry, at first quietly, but -afterwards, as if getting warmed to the task, more loudly, until her -sobs could be heard a hundred yards away from the house. - -“If I only had the curragh left!” she repeated time and again. - -Norah approached the bed timidly. She had been weeping silently by the -door ever since the corpse had been carried in. Death was here in the -house; it had already taken possession of her father. And it was with -her also. Not to-night nor to-morrow, but at the end of forty years or -of fifty, and was it not all the same? And what was this death? She did -not know; she only thought it cruel and strange. Her own helplessness in -face of such a crisis almost overpowered her. For death there was no -help, from it there was no escape. It was all powerful and terrible. -To-morrow and to-morrow might come and go, but her father would lie -still and unheeding. He would not return, he could not return. This fact -hammered at her mind, and the cruelty of her own thoughts tortured her. -She tried to think of something apart from the tragedy, but ever her -mind reverted to the one and same dreadful subject. Of a great fact she -was certain; one that would never be contradicted. Her father was dead; -thousands of years might pass and one truth would still remain -unquestioned. Her father was dead. “To think of it!” she said in a low -voice. “Dead for ever!” - -She went down on her knees by the bedside but could not pray. God was -cruel; He had no mercy. She sobbed no longer, but with wide, tearless -eyes she gazed at the face of her father. It had now become yellow, the -lips blue, the nose was pinched and the eyes sunken. The water from his -clothes was dripping underneath the bed, and she could hear the -drip-drip of it falling on the floor. - -Everything in the house had suddenly taken on a different aspect. The -bed appeared strange to her; so did the fire, the low droning voices of -the neighbours, and the play of light and shadow on the walls. The old -cat sitting on top of the dresser, gazing down at her, had a curious -look in its wide-open eyes; the animal seemed to have changed in some -queer way. Outside the wind was beating against the house and wailing -over the chimney. Never in her life before had she heard such a -melancholy sob in the wind. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - -THE WAKE - - -I - -Several more neighbours, men, women, and children, were now coming in. -With eyes fixed straight ahead they approached the corpse, went down on -their knees on the wet floor by the bedside and said their prayers, -crossing themselves many times. Those who carried the dead body up from -the sea drew near to the fire and dried their sodden garments in the -midst of a cloud of vapour that almost hid them from view. Eamon Doherty -remarked that Ireland would have Home Rule presently, and a loud -discussion mingled with many jokes was soon in progress. - -“The Irish will never agree,” said old Oiney Dinchy, a one-eyed ancient -who had just risen from his knees by the bedside. “That is the worst of -the Irish; they never agree. Look at them now in the House of Commons; -one member is always fighting against another member, and it was ever -the same, for contrairiness is in their blood to the very last drop of -it.” - -“There is always bound to be two parties,” said Master Diver with -dogmatic assurance. “In England and America there are always two -parties, sometimes more.” - -“They’ll never get on, then,” said Eamon Doherty. “There are no two -parties in the holy Church, and that’s why it gets on so well.” - -The door opened and Sheila Carrol, the beansho, entered, her child, now -a chubby little boy of three, toddling at her heels. Without looking -round she went down on her knees by the bedside, and a couple of women -who were praying crossed themselves and rose hurriedly. A few of the -younger men winked knowingly and turned their thumbs towards the -new-comer. Old Mary Ryan muttered something under her breath and turned -a look of severe disapproval on the kneeling woman, then on the little -boy who had run forward to the fire, where he was holding out his hands -to the blaze. - -“Who’ll be the ones that will go to Greenanore and get tea, bread, -snuff, and tobacco for the wake?” asked Mary Ryan. - -“I’ll go if Eamon Doherty comes along with me,” said old Oiney Dinchy, -getting to his feet and putting a live peat to the bowl of his pipe. - -“The two of you always get drunk if you go to Greenanore together,” said -the old woman. “I’d as soon send the----” she pointed with her thumb -over her shoulder at the beansho but did not mention her name, “to -Greenanore, as send you two.” - -“It is not everyone that would be treated that way if they offered to -help a person,” Eamon Doherty remarked in a loud voice to Oiney Dinchy. - -“I’ll go if Willie the Duck comes with me,” said a long, lank, shaggy -youth, rising from one corner of the room and stretching his arms. - -“You’re the man for the job, Micky’s Jim,” answered Mary Ryan, coming -from the bedside and tottering through the press of neighbours to the -dresser where the Delft tea-pot stood. She raised the lid, dipped her -hand into the tea-pot and drew out a fistful of money. - -“Four shillings for tea,” she began to calculate; “eight-pence for -sugar; five shillings for loaves of bread; four shillings and sixpence -for tobacco, and sixpence for snuff, and--How much potheen did you get -for your father’s wake, Eamon Doherty?” - -“Four gallons and no less,” Eamon answered in a surly tone of voice. - -“Two gallons of potheen, Micky’s Jim, and get it as cheap as you can,” -said the old woman, turning to the long-limbed youth. “From what I hear -Martin Eveleen sells good potheen. Get it from him, for it was Martin, I -wish him luck! that helped Norah when she took the fargortha on the road -to Greenanore three winters agone.” - -The money was handed to Micky’s Jim, and he left the house followed by -Willie the Duck, a small man, dark and swarthy, with a hump on his left -shoulder, and a voice, when he spoke, that reminded one of the quacking -of ducks. - -“Thirty-four shillings in all,” mumbled Mary Ryan as she took her way -back to the fireside. “It costs a lot to bury a body, and there will -never be left one at all to bury me, never a one at all. If only the -curragh was left me it would be something.” - -Meanwhile Norah had slipped out, and went from house to house borrowing -candlesticks (Meenalicknalore townland consisted of thirty families and -there were only two candlesticks amongst them), baskets of peat, holy -water, a lamp, extra chairs, stools, and many other things required for -the wake. - - -II - -At midnight the cabin was cleared of everybody but the washers of the -dead, Eamon Doherty and Master Diver. Oiney Dinchy was very angry -because Mary Ryan did not ask him to give a hand at the washing of her -husband. - -“It wasn’t as if Shemus and me weren’t good friends,” said Oiney. “And -besides, I have washed more dead men in a year of my life than all -washed by Eamon and Master Diver put together.... And to think that I -wasn’t allowed to help at the washin’ to-night!” - -The men and women who had left the cabin went down on their knees at the -doorstep and recited the Rosary. The night being very dark the young men -drew near the girls and tickled them on the bare feet while they prayed. -When admittance was again possible the dead man lay in the bed, his body -covered with a white sheet and a large black crucifix resting on his -breast. His clothes were already burned in the fire, it being a common -custom in Frosses to consign the clothes of the dead to the flames on -the first night of the wake. - -About two o’clock in the morning provisions came from Greenanore. The -house was now crowded, and several games such as “The Priest of the -Parish,” “Catch the Ten,” and “Put your fingers in the Crow’s Nest” were -in progress. An old man who sat in the corner was telling a story of the -famine, and a few mischievous boys were amusing themselves by throwing -pieces of peat at his hat. - -While tea was being made, the rosary was again started. Micky’s Jim, a -trifle the worse for liquor, went down on his knees on a chair and gave -out the prayers. The mischievous boys turned their attentions from the -old man to Jim, who was presently bombarded by a fire of turf. One went -past his ears; one hit him on the back, another on the head, a third on -the brow. Jim got angry. - -“Pray away yourselves and be damned to you!” he roared at the kneeling -house and, jumping off the chair, he sat down in a corner from which he -had a view of the whole party. Prayers came to an abrupt conclusion; -the chair was taken by the beansho, who placed her child between its -legs, and the little boy, who had shown a wonderful propensity for -running to the bedside and pulling the corpse by the beard, was held a -fast prisoner. Four or five women moved about hurriedly preparing tea; -whisky was served without skimp or stint, but pipes were found to be -scarce; one had to do for three persons, each pulling at it in turn. - -The old man in the corner took up the famine story at a point where the -prayers had interrupted the recital. It told of a corpse that rose from -the bed of death, sat down at the table, lifted a bowl of tea, drank it -and went back to bed again. “And the man was dead all the time,” said -the story-teller. - -Willie the Duck, speaking in a quavering voice, began to ask riddles: -“What bears but never blossoms?” he enquired. - -“The hangman’s rope,” was the answer. - -“What tree never comes to fruit?” he asked. - -“The gallows-tree,” was the answer. - -“This is the best guess of the night,” said Willie, taking a pinch of -snuff and sneezing violently. “No one will be able to answer it.... In -the morning four legs; at noon two legs; in the evening three legs and -at night four legs; and what would that be?” - -“It’s a man,” said Eamon Doherty, looking round with a triumphant -glance. “In his young days a man walks on his hands and knees, when he -grows up he walks on two legs; when he gets older he walks on three -legs, two and a stick; and if he lives long enough he’ll walk on -crutches, God be good to us! and that’s four legs!” - -“You’re a man with a head, Eamon,” said Willie the Duck. “And how did -you guess it atall?” - -“I heard the same guess often and I knew the answer every time,” Eamon -replied, and a smile of satisfaction lit up his face. - -About four o’clock in the morning most of the men and a few of the -ancient females were drunk. Mary Ryan had fallen asleep by the fire, her -head touching the white ashes of her husband’s clothes. Norah placed a -pillow under her mother’s head and took up a seat near her, gazing in -turn at the silent figure which lay in the bed and the blue flames -chasing one another up the black chimney. - -Two lamps, one at each end of the house, spluttered dismally; the wind -outside battered loudly against the door and wailed over the chimney. -Oiney Dinchy was asleep and snoring loudly, and two youngsters blackened -his face with soot. The beansho slept, and her child, long since -released from the prison of the chair, was blubbering fitfully. On the -damp earth of the mid-floor a well-made young woman slumbered, the naked -calves of her finely formed legs showing. Micky’s Jim slapped the legs -with his hand; the girl awoke, put down her dress until it covered her -toes, made a face at the tormentor and went to sleep again. Beside -Norah, old Master Diver, now remarkably rotund, was asleep, his bald -head hanging to one side and a spittle slobbering from his lips. - -Norah looked round at the sleepers, saw the stiff legs stretched on the -floor, the long, awkward arms hanging loosely over the backs of the -chairs, the bowls and the upturned whisky glasses on the table; heard -the loud snoring, the rustle of petticoats as a woman changed her -position on a stool, the crackle of falling peat on the hearth, the -whimpering of the beansho’s child, and the sound made by the lips of a -sucking babe pulling at its mother’s breast. - -The strange fear, that which had taken possession of her three years -before on the rocks of Dooey, seized her again. To her all things seemed -to lack finish as they lacked design. A vague sense of repulsion -overcame the girl as she gazed at the sleepers huddled on form and -floor. She shuddered as if in a fever and approached the bed; there the -awful stillness of the dead fascinated her. She was looking at the dead, -but somehow Death had now lost its terror: it was the living who caused -her fear. She knelt down and prayed. - - - - -CHAPTER X - -COFFIN AND COIN - - -I - -For two days and nights the neighbours came in, prayed by the bedside, -drank bowls of tea, smoked long white clay pipes and departed, only to -return later and renew the same performance. A coffin and coffin-bearer, -the latter shaped like a ladder, the sides of which were cushioned to -ease the shoulders of the men who carried it, were procured. On the -rungs of the coffin-bearer a number of notches, three hundred and -fifty-two in all, told of the bodies carried on it to the grave. The -bearer had been in service for many years and had been used by most of -the families in Frosses. The man who made it was long dead; number -seventy-seven represented his notch on the rungs. - -On the morning of the third day Oiney Dinchy and Micky’s Jim lifted the -dead man from the bed and placed him in the coffin. Before the lid was -screwed down, Mary Ryan knelt over the coffin, gripping the side near -her with thin, long fingers, which showed white at the joints, and -kissing her husband she burst into a loud outcry of grief. Norah, more -reserved in her sorrow, knelt on the floor, said a short prayer and then -kissed the face of the corpse as her mother had done. - -The lid was fastened, but here an interruption occurred. The wife wanted -to look at her husband for “just one other minute.” With a gesture of -impatience old Oiney Dinchy, who was discussing the best means of -catching flukes and tying the coffin, lifted the lid again and stood -silently by, his hat drawn down well over his eyes. Mary Ryan gave vent -to another outburst of grief; the coffin was again closed and lifted on -the wooden bearer. An idle child was busily engaged in counting the -notches. - -“Seventy-seven; that’s for the man who made it,” someone was saying. - -“Listen, Micky’s Jim,” whispered Mary Ryan as the youth passed her, -going towards the door with a basket of pipes and tobacco. - -“Well, Mary, what is it?” Jim asked. - -“Was this a good year beyond the water?” - -Jim went yearly to the potato-digging in Scotland, taking with him a -squad of men and women from his own country, and over these he was -master while they were at work. - -“It was not so very bad,” said Jim cautiously. He was afraid that the -old woman might ask the loan of money from him. - -“Next year I have a mind to send Norah.” - -“And not to make a nun of her, after all?” - -Norah was piling peat on the fire, lifting them from the floor and -dropping them into the flames. As she bent down Jim noticed every -movement of her body and paid very little attention to the words of the -old woman. Norah, having finished her task, stood upright; Jim waited -eagerly for a repetition of her former movement, but seeing that she was -weeping he turned his attention to the task of getting the coffin -through the doorway. - -Norah would be a light girl for heavy work on the Scottish farms, Jim -thought, as he stooped down and lifted a rung of the bearer. Could he -take her with him? That was a ticklish question. She was clever with -the needles, he knew, but she had not done any heavy manual work for -the last two years. Learning lessons was to Jim an idle task. But the -movement of her body, and especially of her legs when bending over the -fire, appealed to Jim. The grace of her carriage, the poise of her head, -the soft hair that fell over her shoulders, all these found favour in -the eyes of the healthy young man. - -“My cripes, I’ll take her with me next year!” he said under his breath. -He spoke in English and had learned many strange oaths abroad. - - -II - -Outside a large crowd of people were waiting; the women dressed in red -flannel petticoats and woollen shawls, the men in white wrappers and -corduroy trousers. The coffin bearer was raised on high; four men placed -their shoulders under it; a bottle of holy water was sprinkled over -bearers and burden indiscriminately; the men and women crossed -themselves many times, and the mournful procession started. - -Mary Ryan stood at the door and watched it wending its way across the -dreary, uneven fields, past the Three Rocks, now getting lost in some -hollow, again rising to the shoulders of a hillock, the coffin swaying -unevenly on the shoulders of the bearers, the red petticoats of the -women in the rear shaking in the breeze. The widow, almost too weak to -move, was with difficulty restrained from going to the churchyard. -Norah, having arranged the hassock in the corner for her mother, had -followed the procession, and now the old woman thought that she could -detect her child a quarter of a mile away, following in the rear of the -party. Micky’s Jim, who had not gone away yet, was engaged in sorting a -rope on the thatch which had been blown askew by the wind of the -previous nights. - -“I’ll overtake the funeral, Mary,” he said when he completed the work. -“I was just making the thatch strong against the breeze and I have tied -a broken rope.” - -“Mother of God be good to you, Jim, but it is yourself that has the -kindly heart!” said Mary in a tremulous whisper. “Could you take Norah -with you beyond the water next year?” - -Jim called to mind the movements of the girl’s body when she stooped to -lift peat for the fire, and the remembrance filled him with pleasure. -“When next summer comes round, I’ll see, Mary Ryan,” he answered. “If -there is a place to spare in the squad I’ll let you know and your Norah -will have the very first chance of it.” - -“Mother of God bless you, Jim, for the kindness is in you!” said the old -woman. “It is me that is the lone body this very minute, with never a -penny in my house and not even the old curragh left to me to make a -penny by.” - -“Well, I’m off, Mary,” said Jim. “The coffin is going out of sight and -they’ll be needing new blood under it.” He hurried across the fields, -his long legs covering an enormous spread of earth at every stride. Over -the brae he hurried, and at the turn of the road halted for a moment and -looked back at Mary Ryan’s cabin. The woman still stood at the door, one -hand shading her eyes, looking towards the Frosses churchyard, which lay -more than three miles away. “Thinkin’ that she could get anything for an -old curragh!” he muttered contemptuously, as he resumed his stride. -“She’s an old fool; but Norah! Ah! she’s a soncy lass, and she was good -to look at when making that fire!” - - -III - -The graveyard, surrounded by a stone wall, broken down in several -places, served as a grazing plot for bullocks, donkeys, and sheep, as -well as for the burial place of the dead. A long walk, lined with -stunted hazel bushes, ran half-way through the yard, and at the end a -low stone vault, hardly higher than a man’s head, stood under the shadow -of an overhanging sycamore. - -The funeral procession was delayed on the journey, and Father Devaney, -round-faced and red-cheeked, stamped up and down while waiting its -arrival. He had come all the way from Greenanore and was in a hurry to -get back again. The morning was cold and caused him to shiver a little, -and when he shivered he clapped his hands vigorously, the palm of one -against the back of the other. - -His large mansion, complete now and habitable, had not been fully paid -for yet, and most of his parishioners were a pound or two in arrears; -when this money came to hand matters would be much better. Old Devaney -had developed a particularly fine taste in wine and cigars and found -these very expensive; and at present he called to mind how James Ryan -was two pounds in arrears with the mansion tax. The old priest knew that -this money would never come to hand; the widow was ill, no word had been -heard of Fergus for years, and Norah Ryan was a light slip of a girl who -would probably never earn a penny. Devaney knew all the affairs of his -flock, and he stamped up and down the graveyard, a little angry with the -dead man who, being so long in coming to his last home, had kept him -waiting for thirty minutes. - -The funeral came in sight, creeping up over the brow of the hill that -rose near at hand, the bearers straining under their burden as they -hurried across the uneven ground, with the coffin rising and falling on -their shoulders like a bark in a storm at sea. The gate of the graveyard -was already open; the procession filed through, Father Devaney stepping -out in front, his surplice streaming in the wind. The good man thought -of the warm dinner waiting for him at home, and being in a hurry to get -done with the burial service he walked so quickly that the bearers could -hardly keep up with him. On the floor of the little vault in the centre -of the graveyard the coffin was set down and the basket of snuff, pipes, -and tobacco was handed round. All the men took pipes, filled them with -rank plug and lit them; the older women lit pipes also, and everybody, -with the exception of the priest and Norah Ryan, took snuff. - -“Hurry up!” said Father Devaney. “Ye can smoke after ye do yer duty. It -would be well if ye were puttin’ yer hands in yer pockets now and -gettin’ yer offerin’s ready.” - -Immediately a stream of silver descended on the coffin. All the mourners -paid rapidly, but in turn, and the priest called out their names as they -paid. A sum of ten pounds seventeen shillings was collected, and this -the priest carefully wrapped up in a woollen muffler and put into his -pocket. - -“Now hurry up, boys, and get a move on ye; and open the grave!” he -shouted, making no effort to hide his impatience now that the money was -safely in his keeping. He felt full of the importance of a man who knows -that everybody around him trembles under his eyes. Three or four young -fellows were digging the grave and joking loudly as they worked; a crowd -of men stood round them, puffing white clouds of smoke up into the air. -Many of the women were kneeling beside graves that held all that -remained of one or another near and dear to them. Norah Ryan stood -alone with the priest, her dark shawl drawn over her white forehead, and -a few stray tresses, that had fallen over her face, shaking in the -breeze. - -“It is a black day this for you, Norah, a black day,” said the priest, -speaking in Gaelic. Two tears coursed down the girl’s cheeks, and she -fixed a pair of sorrowful grey eyes on the man when he spoke. - -“Don’t cry, girsha beag (little girl),” said the priest. “It is all for -the best, all for the best, because it is the will of God.” - -He looked sharply at the girl, who, feeling uncomfortable in his -presence, longed to be away from the man’s side. She wondered why she -had not gone off to the other end of the graveyard with Sheila Carrol, -whom she could now see kneeling before a black wooden cross that was -fast falling into decay. But it would be wrong to go away from the side -of her father’s coffin, she thought. - -“Any word from Fergus of late?” the priest was asking. - -“No; not the smallest word.” - -That Mary Ryan owed him two pounds, and that there was very little -possibility of ever receiving the money, forcibly occurred to the priest -at that moment. “Ye’ll not be in a good way at home now?” he said aloud. - -“There’s hardly a white shilling in the house,” answered the girl. - -“Is that the way of it?” exclaimed the priest, then seemed on the point -of giving expression to something more forcible, but with an effort he -restrained himself. “Well, it cannot be helped, I suppose, but there are -two pounds owing for the building of my new house.” - - -IV - -“The grave is ready,” said Micky’s Jim, approaching the priest and -saluting. The youth was perspiring profusely; his shirt open at the neck -exposed his hairy chest, on which beads of sweat were glistening -brightly. - -“In with the coffin then,” said the priest, taking a book from his -pocket and approaching the open grave. A pile of red earth, out of which -several white bones protruded, lay on the brink, and long earthworms -crawled across it. The coffin was lowered into the grave with a rope. -Norah wept loudly; old Oiney Dinchy remarked that the bones belonged to -her grandparents whom she did not remember. - -“Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return,” the -priest chanted in a loud, droning voice. Norah, kneeling on the wet -ground, her head bent down over her bosom, so that her hair hung over -her shoulders, saw nothing but the black coffin which was speedily -disappearing under the red clay, and heard nothing but the thud of the -earth as it struck the coffin. - -The priest took his departure; the grave was filled up and the crowd -began to disperse. - -“Come away home now,” said Sheila Carrol to Norah, who was still -kneeling on the wet ground. The girl rose without a word, brushed her -dress with a woollen handkerchief and accompanied the beansho from the -churchyard. - -“Don’t cry, Norah,” said Sheila, observing that tears were still falling -down the cheeks of her companion. “Everyone must die and go away just -the same as if they had never been at all, for that is the will of God. -How is yer mother this morning?” - -“Much the same as she was always,” said Norah. “She cannot get rid of -her cough, and she has shiverin’ fits of late.... Hasn’t the sea the -black heart?” - -“Black enough, indeed, my child,” said the beansho. “Your mother will -feel it a big lot?” - -“Not so much,” said the girl. “She’ll soon be with him, she’s thinkin’.” - -“At the wake I heard her say that she would be the last of the family to -die. What put that into her head?” - -“I don’t know what put it into her head, but if I were to die on the wet -road this very minute I wouldn’t care one haet.” On Norah’s face there -was a look of infinite sadness, and the pathos of her words cut Sheila -to the heart. - -“Don’t speak like that, Norah Ryan,” she exclaimed. “Death is black and -bitter, but there are things much worse than death, things far, far -worse.” - -They had now reached a stile, and far in front the soft caishin (path) -wound on by rock and rath across the broad expanse of moor. Several -people, walking one after another, were in front; the soft ooze was -squirting under their feet and splashing against their ankles. In the -midst of the heather a young bullock lay chewing the cud, and looked -upon the passers-by with that stupid, involved look peculiar to the ox; -a moor-cock, agitated and voluble, rose into the air and chattered as it -swept across the brown of the moor. - -“I’m goin’ to leave Ireland come Candlemas,” said the beansho, pulling -her feet wearily out of the mire. - -“And where would ye be goin’ to then, Sheila Carrol?” - -“Beyont the water.” - -“Mercy be on us, and are ye goin’ surely?” - -“True as death, I’m goin’,” said Sheila Carrol with rising voice. “I’m -sick of this place--not the place itself but the people that’s in it, -them with their bitin’ tongues and cuttin’ talk, them that won’t let -those that do them no harm a-be. Nothin’ bad enough that they wouldn’t -put past me, the same Frosses people. For me it’s always the hard word -that they have; even the priest himself when he meets me on the high -road crosses himself as if he met the red-hot devil out of hell. But did -he refuse my shillin’ to-day?... Even at the wakes the very people point -their thumbs at me when I go down on my own two knees to say a prayer -for the dead.... But what am I talkin’ about! Why should I be tellin’ my -own sorrows to one that has heavy troubles of her own to bear.... I’m -goin’ beyont the water come next Candlemas, anyway, Norah Ryan!” - - - - -CHAPTER XI - -THE TRAIN FROM GREENANORE - - -I - -When one is leaving home every familiar object seems to take on a -different aspect and becomes almost strange and foreign. The streets, -houses, and landscape which you have gazed on for years become in some -way very remote, like objects seen in a dream, but under this guise -every familiar landmark becomes dearer than ever it has been before. So -Norah Ryan felt as she was leaving home in the June of 1905 bound for -the potato fields of Scotland. - -“Is this the road to Greenanore, the road that our feet took when goin’ -to the town for the stockin’ yarn?” she asked herself several times. “It -is changed somehow; it doesn’t seem to be the same place, but for all -that I like it better than ever. Why this is I do not know; I seem to be -in a dream of some kind.” - -Her thoughts were confused and her mind ran on several things at the -same time; her mother’s words at leave-taking, the prayer that the child -might do well, the quick words of tearless farewell spoken at the -doorstep; and as she thought of these things she wondered why her mother -did not weep when her only child was leaving her. - -The girl was now walking alone to the village of Greenanore. There she -would meet all the members of the party, and every step of the journey -brought a thousand bygone memories vividly to her mind. Fergus she -thought of, his good-bye at the cross-roads, the dog whining in -Ballybonar, the lowing cow, the soft song of the sea. Would she ever see -Fergus again? Where had he been all these years? Looking into the -distance she could see the mountains that hemmed Glenmornan, and light -clouds, white and fleecy as Candlemas sheep, resting on the tops of -them. Further down, on the foothills, the smoke of peat-fires rose into -the air, telling of the turf-savers who laboured on the brown bogs at -the stacks and rikkles. Norah thought of Dermod Flynn; indeed she called -him to mind daily when gazing towards the hills of Glenmornan, -recollecting with a certain feeling of pride the boy’s demeanour at -school and his utter indifference towards personal chastisement. The -dreamy eyes of Dermod and his manner of looking through the school -window at nothing in particular fascinated her; and the very remembrance -of the youth standing beside her facing the map of the world always -caused a pleasant thrill to run through her body. Now, as she looked at -the hills of Glenmornan, the incidents of the morning on which she went -to pull bog-bine there came back to her mind, and she wondered if Dermod -Flynn thought the hills so much changed on the day when he was setting -out for the rabble of Strabane. - -A large iron bridge, lately built by the Congested Districts Board, -spanned the bay between Frosses and Dooey. Norah crossed over this to -the other side, where the black rocks, sharp and pointed, spread over -the white sand. It was here that the women slept out on the mid-winter -night many years ago; and now Norah had only a very dim remembrance of -the event. - -Up to the rise of the hill she hurried, and from the townland of -Ballybonar looked back at Frosses: at the little strips of land running -down to the sea, at the white lime-washed cabins dotted all over the -parish, at Frosses graveyard and the lone sycamore tree that grew there, -showing like a black stain against the sky. Seeing it, she thought of -her father and said an “Our Father” and “Hail Mary” for the repose of -his soul. Then her eye roved over Frosses again. - -“Maybe after this I’ll never set my two eyes on the place,” she said, -then added, “just like Fergus!” - -The thought that she might never see the place again filled her with a -certain feeling of importance which up to now had been altogether -foreign to her. - - -II - -At the station she met the other members of the potato squad, fifteen in -all. Some were sitting on their boxes, others on the bundles bound in -cotton handkerchiefs which contained all their clothes and toilet -requisites. The latter consisted of combs and hand-mirrors possessed by -the women, and razors, the property of the men. Micky’s Jim was pacing -up and down the platform, his hands deep in his trousers’ pockets and a -heavy-bowled wooden pipe in his mouth. From time to time he pulled the -pipe from between his teeth, accompanying the action with a knowing -shrug of his shoulders, and spat into the four-foot way. - -“Is this yerself, Norah?” he exclaimed, casting a patronising glance at -the girl as she entered the railway station. “Ye are almost late for the -train. Did ye walk the whole way?... Ah! here she comes!” - -The train came in sight, puffing round the curve; the women rose from -their seats, clutched hastily at their bundles and formed into a row on -the verge of the platform; the men, most of whom were smoking, took -their pipes from their mouths, hit the bowls sharply against their -palms, thus emptying them of white ash; then, with a feigned look of -unconcern on their faces, they picked up their belongings with a leisure -which implied that they were men well used to such happenings. They were -posing a little; knowing that those who came to see them off would tell -for days in Frosses how indifferently Mick or Ned took the train leading -to the land beyond the water. “Just went on the train with no more -concern on their faces than if they were going to a neighbour’s wake!” -the Frosses people would say. - -The train puffed into the station, the driver descended from his post, -yawned, stretched his arms, and surveyed the crowd with a look of -superior disdain. The fireman, with an oil-can in his hands, raced along -the footplate and disappeared behind the engine, only to come back -almost immediately, puffing and wiping the sweat from his face with a -piece of torn and dirty rag. - -“All aboard!” Micky’s Jim shouted in an excited voice, forgetting pose -for a moment. “Hurry up now or the train will be away, leavin’ the -biggest half of ye standin’ here. A train isn’t like Oiney Dinchy’s -cuddy cart; it hasn’t to stop seven times in order to get right started. -Hurry up! Go in sideways, Willie the Duck; ye cannot go through a door -frontways carrying a bundle under yer oxter. Yer stupid ways would drive -a sensible man to pot! Hurry up and come on now! Get a move on ye, every -one of the whole lot of ye!” - -Presently all, with the exception of the speaker, were in their -compartments and looking for seats. Micky’s Jim remained on the -platform, waiting for the train to start, when he could show by boarding -it as it steamed out of the station that he had learned a thing or two -beyond the water in his time; a thing or two not known to all the -Frosses people. - -A ticket collector examined the tickets, chatting heartily as he did so. -When he found that Norah had not procured hers he ran off and came back -with one, smiling happily as if glad to be of assistance to the girl. A -lady and gentleman, tourists no doubt, paced up and down the platform, -eyeing everybody with the tourists’ rude look of enquiry; a stray dog -sniffed at Micky’s Jim’s trousers and got kicked for its curiosity; the -engine driver yawned again, made the sign of the cross on his open mouth -and mounted to his place; the whistle sounded, and with Micky’s Jim -standing on the foot-board the train steamed out of the station. - -Norah, who had never been on a train before, took up her seat near the -window, and rubbed the pane with her shawl in order to get a better view -of the country, which seemed to be flying past with remarkable speed. -The telegraph wires were sinking and rising; the poles like big hands -gripped them up, dropped them, but only to lift them up again as threads -are lifted on the fingers of a knitter. - -There were eleven people in the compartment, four women and seven men. -One of the latter, Eamon Doherty, was eating a piece of dry bread made -from Indian meal; the rest of the men were smoking black clay pipes, so -short of shank that the bowls almost touched the noses of the smokers. -But Jim’s pipe was different from any of these; it was a wooden one, -“real briar root” he said, and was awfully proud of it. It had cost -three shillings and sixpence in a town beyond the water, he now told the -party, not indeed for the first time; but none of the listeners believed -him. Two of the women said their prayers; one wept because she was -leaving Ireland, and Norah Ryan spent her time looking out of the -window. - - -III - -“Who’ll take a drink?” asked Micky’s Jim, pulling a half-bottle of -whisky from his pocket and drawing out the cork with his fingers. “Good -stuff this is, and I’m as dry as the rafters of hell.... Will ye have a -wee drop, Willie the Duck?” - -“No, sure,” answered Willie, who was sitting beside the weeping woman, -his one leg across the other, and his hands clasped over his stomach. “I -would take it if I hadn’t the pledge against drink, indeed I would. Aye, -sure!” - -“Aye sure, be hanged!” Jim blurted out. “Ye’ve got to take it, for it’s -die-dog-or-eat-the-gallows this time. Are ye goin’ to take it?” - -“No, sure----” - -“Why d’ye always say ‘Aye, sure’ and ‘No, sure’ when talking to a -person?” asked Jim, replacing the cork in the bottle, which he now tried -to balance on the point of his finger. “Is it a habit that ye’ve got -into, Willie the Duck?” - -“Aye, sure,” answered Willie, edging away from Micky’s Jim, who was -balancing the bottle successfully within an inch of the roof. “Ye’ll let -that bottle fall on me head.” - -“Aye, sure,” shouted Micky’s Jim and shook the bottle with perilous -carelessness, holding out the free hand in case it should fall. “It -wouldn’t crack a wooden head anyhow.” - -“That’s Brockagh station that we’re comin’ into now, as the man said,” -remarked one of the women who had been praying. The woman was Maire a -Glan, who had been going beyond the water to work for the last four or -five years. Things were not going well at home; her husband lay ill -with paralysis, the children from a monetary point of view were useless -as yet--the oldest boy, thin and weakly, a cripple from birth, went -about on crutches, the younger ones were eternally crying for bread. -Maire a Glan placed the rosary round her neck and took a piece of oaten -bread from the bundle at her feet. - -“Will ye have a wee bit to eat, Norah Ryan?” she asked. - -“My thanks to ye, Maire a Glan, but I’m not hungry,” answered Norah, -rubbing the window where her breath had dimmed it. - -“I thought that ye might be, seeing that yer eye is not wet on leavin’ -home,” said the woman, breaking bread and putting a bit of it in her -mouth. “There, the train is stopping!” she went on, “and I have two -sisters married within the stretch of a mile from this place.” - -“Aye, sure,” said Willie the Duck with his usual quack. “I know both, -and once I had a notion of one of them, meself.” - -“Lookin’ for one of God’s stars to light yer pipe with, as the man -said,” remarked the woman contemptuously, fixing her eyes on the poor -fellow’s hump. “Ye have a burden enough on yer shoulders and not to be -thinkin’ at all of a wife.” - -“Them that carries the burden should be the first to complain of it,” -said Willie the Duck, edging still further away from Micky’s Jim, who -was now standing up and balancing the whisky bottle on the point of his -nose. The women tittered, the men drew their pipes from their mouths and -gave vent to loud guffaws. The train started out from Brockagh station, -a porter ran after it, shut a door, and again Norah Ryan watched the -fields run past and the telegraph wires rise and fall. - -“I’ll bet that not one of ye knows who’s comin’ to join us at Derry,” -said Micky’s Jim, tiring of his play and putting the bottle back in his -pocket, after having taken a sup of its contents. - -“Who?” asked several voices. - -“Dermod Flynn from Glenmornan.” - -“I haven’t seen that gasair for the last two years or more,” said -Murtagh Gallagher, a young man of twenty-five, who came from the -townland of Meenahalla in the parish of Frosses. “If I mind right, he -was sort of soft in the head.” - -A faint blush rose to Norah Ryan’s cheek, and though she still looked -out of the window she now failed to see the objects flying past. The -conversation had suddenly become very interesting for her. - -“He has been working with a farmer beyont the mountains this long -while,” said Micky’s Jim. “But I’m keepin’ a place for him in the squad, -and ye’ll see him on the Glasgow boat this very night. Ye have said that -he was soft in his head, Murtagh Gallagher. Well, that remark applies to -me.” - -Jim spat on his hands, rose to his feet, shoved his fist under Murtagh’s -nose and cried: “Smell that! There’s the smell of dead men off that -fist! Dermod Flynn soft in the head, indeed! I’ll soft ye, ye--ye -flat-nosed flea-catcher ye!” - -“I was only making fun,” said Murtagh. - -“Make it to his face then!” - -“D’ye mind how Dermod Flynn knocked Master Diver down with his fist in -the very school?” asked Judy Farrel, who was also one of the party. - -“Aye, sure,” said Willie the Duck. “But it wasn’t with his fist but with -a stick that he struck Master Diver, and mind ye he made the blood to -flow!” - -“_I’ll_ soon make blood to flow!” said Micky’s Jim, still holding his -fist under Murtagh Gallagher’s nose. - -“I was only in fun,” Gallagher repeated. “Ye’re as hasty as a briar, -Jim, for one cannot open his lips but ye want to blacken his eyes.” - -“Now sit down, Micky’s Jim,” said Maire a Glan. “It’s not nice to see -two people, both of them from Donegal, fighting when they’re away from -home.” - -“Fightin’!” exclaimed Jim, dropping into his seat and pulling out his -pipe. “I see no fightin’.... I wish to God that someone would fight.... -Sort of soft in the head, indeed!... I never could stand a man from -Meenahalla, anyway.” - - -IV - -The train sped on. House, field, and roadway whirled by, and Norah, -almost bewildered, ceased to wonder where this road ran to, who lived in -that house, what was the name of this village and whether that large -building with the spire on top of it was a church (Bad luck to it!) or -chapel (God bless it!). - -“I’ll see him again,” she thought, her mind reverting to Dermod Flynn. -“I wonder how he’ll look now; if his hair is still as curly as when he -was at Frosses school.... Two years away from his own home and the home -of all his people! Such a long while, and now he’ll know everything -about the whole world.” Mixed with these lip-spoken words was the -remembrance of her mother all alone in the old cabin at Frosses, and a -vague feeling of regret filled her mind. - -“Are you getting homesick, Norah?” Maire a Glan enquired, speaking in -Gaelic, which came more easily than English to her tongue. “It’s not the -dry eye that always tells of the lightest heart, I know myself.” - -“Old Oiney Dinchy has a fine daughter,” Eamon Doherty was saying. - -“She’s as stuck-up as Dooey Head,” piped Judy Farrel in a weak, thin -voice. - -“Micky’s Jim has a notion of her, I hear,” remarked Willie the Duck. -“But what girl hasn’t Jim a notion of?” - -Jim cleaned out the bowl of his pipe with a rusty nail and fell asleep -while engaged on the task. The conversation went on. - -“Old Farley McKeown is goin’ to get married to an English lady.” - -“A young soncy wench she is, they say!” - -“Think of that, for old Farley! A wrinkled old stick of seventy! Ah! the -shameless old thing!” - -“It’ll be a cold bed for the girl that is alongside of him. She’ll need -a lot of blankets, as the man said.” - -“Aye, sure, and she will that.” - -“But he’s the man that has the money to pay for them.” - -Norah, deep in a dreamy mood, listened idly to snatches of song, the -laughter, and the voices that seemed to be speaking at a very remote -distance; but after a while, sinking into the quiet isolation of her own -thoughts, the outside world became non-existent to the young girl. She -was thinking of Dermod; why he persisted in coming up before her mind’s -eye she could not explain, but the dream of meeting with him on the -streets of Derry exerted a restful influence over her and she fell into -a light slumber. - -“It’s the soncy girl she looks with the sleep on her.” - -Almost imperceptibly Norah opened her eyes. The transition was so quiet -that she was hardly aware that she had slept, and those who looked on -were hardly aware that she had wakened. It was Maire a Glan who had been -speaking. The train now stood at a station and Micky’s Jim was walking -up and down the platform, his pipe in his mouth and his hands deep in -his trousers’ pockets. Facing the window was a bookstall and a -white-faced girl handing to some man a newspaper and a book with a red -cover, Norah recollected that Fergus often read books with red covers -just like the one that was handed over the counter of the bookstall. -That it was possible to have a shop containing nothing but books and -papers came as a surprise to Norah Ryan. Over the bookstall in white -letters was the station’s name--STRABANE. Of this town Norah had often -heard. It was to the hiring market of Strabane that Dermod Flynn had -gone two years ago. Other two trains stood at the station, one on each -side, and both full of passengers. - -“Where are all those people going, Maire a Glan?” asked Norah. - -“Everywhere, as the man said,” answered the old woman, who was telling -her rosary and taking no notice of anything but the black beads passing -through her fingers. - -A boy walked up and down in front of the carriage, selling oranges at -fourpence a dozen. Micky’s Jim bought sixpence worth and handed them -through the window, telling all inside to eat as many as they liked; he -would pay. Maire a Glan left her beads aside until the feast was -finished. The engine whistled; Micky’s Jim boarded the moving train and -again the fields were running past and the telegraph wires rising and -falling. - -“‘Twon’t be long till we are on the streets of Derry now,” said Micky’s -Jim, drawing another half-bottle of whisky from his pocket and digging -out the cork with a clasp-knife. - -“‘Twon’t be very long, no, sure,” said Willie the Duck, edging away from -Micky’s Jim. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - -DERRY - - -I - -They stepped on the dry and dusty Derry streets, the whole fifteen of -them, with their bundles over their shoulders or dangling from their -arms. Norah Ryan, homesickness heavy on her heart, had eyes for -everything; and everything on which she looked was so strange and -foreign: the car that came along the streets, moving so quickly and -never a horse drawing it; the shops where hair was taken off for a few -pence and put on again for a few shillings; shops with watches and gold -rings in the windows; shops where they sold nothing but books and -papers; and the high clocks, facing four ways at once and looking all -over the town and the country beyond. - -The long streets, without end almost, the houses without number, the -large mills at the water-side, where row after row of windows rose one -above another, until it made the eye dim and the head dizzy to look up -at them, the noise, the babble of voices, the hurrying of men, the -women, their dresses, filled Norah with a weary longing for her own -fireside so far away by the shores of the sea that washed round Donegal. - -A bell tolled; Micky’s Jim turned round and looked at Norah, who -immediately blessed herself and commenced to say the Angelus. “That’s -not the bell above the chapel of Greenanore, that’s the town clock,” -laughed one of the women. - -“There’s no God in this town,” said Micky’s Jim. - -“No God!” Norah exclaimed, stopping in the midst of her prayer and half -inclined to believe what Micky’s Jim was saying. - -“None at all,” said Micky’s Jim. “God’s choice about the company He -keeps and never comes near Derry.” - -The party went to the Donegal House, a cheap little restaurant near the -quay. The place was crowded. In addition to the potato squad there were -several harvestmen from various districts in Donegal, and these were -going over to Scotland now, intending to earn a few pounds at the -turnip-thinning and haymaking before the real harvest came on. Most of -the harvesters were intoxicated and raised a terrible hubbub in the -restaurant while taking their food. - -Micky’s Jim, who was very drunk, sat on one chair in the dingy -dining-room, placed his feet on another chair, and with his back pressed -against the limewashed wall sank into a deep slumber. The rest of the -party sat round a rude table, much hacked with knives, and had tea, -bread, and rancid butter for their meal. A slatternly servant, a native -of Donegal, served all customers; the mistress of the house, a tall, -thin woman, with a long nose sharp as a knife and eyes cruel enough to -match the nose, cooked the food. The tea was made in a large pot, -continually on the boil. When a bowl of tea (there were no cups) was -lifted out a similar amount of water was put in to replace it and a -three fingerful of tea was added. The man of the house, a stout little -fellow with a red nose, took up his position behind the bar and sold -whisky with lightning rapidity. Now and again he gave a glass of whisky -free of cost to some of the harvesters who weren’t drinking very -heavily. Those who got free drinks usually bought several glasses of -liquor afterwards and became the most drunken men in the house. - -After a long sleep Micky’s Jim awoke and called for a bowl of tea. -Followed all the way by the shrill voice of her mistress, who was always -scolding somebody, the servant girl carried the tea to Jim, and the -youth drank a mouthful of it while rubbing one hand vigorously across -his eyes in order to drive the sleep away from them. - -“This tay is as long drawn as the face of yer mistress,” grumbled Jim, -and the servant giggled. “I’m forgettin’ all about Dermod Flynn too,” -Jim continued, turning to Norah Ryan, who sat on the chair next him. “I -must go out and look for him. He was to meet me at the quay, and I’m -sure that he’ll be on the wait for me there now.” - -“Poor Dermod!” said Norah in answer to Jim. “Maybe he’ll get lost out on -the lone streets, seein’ that he is all be himself.” - -“Him to get lost!” exclaimed Jim. “Catch Dermod Flynn doin’ anything as -foolish as that! He’s the cute rogue is Dermod!” - -The tables and chairs in the eating-room were now cleared away and -someone suggested getting up a dance. The harvestmen ceased swearing and -began thumping their hobnailed boots on the floor; Willie the Duck -played on a fiddle, which he had procured years before for a few -shillings in a Glasgow rag-market, and in the space of a minute all the -women, including old Maire a Glan, who looked sixty if a day, ranged on -the floor preparatory to dancing a six-hand reel. On seeing this, the -red-nosed landlord jumped over the counter and commenced to swear at the -musician. - -“The curse of Moses be on ye!” he roared. “There’ll be no dancin’ here. -Thumpin’ on the floor, ye gallivantin’ fools! If ye want dancin’ go out -to the quay and dance. Dance into the Foyle or into hell if ye like, -but don’t dance here! Come now, stop it at once!” - -“It’s such a roarin’ tune,” said Maire a Glan, interrupting him. - -“It is that,” answered the man, “but it needs a lighter foot than yours -to do it justice, decent woman. There was a time when me meself could -caper to that; aye, indeed.... But what am I talkin’ about? There’ll be -no dancin’ here.” - -“Just one wee short one?” said a girl. Willie the Duck played with -redoubled enthusiasm. - -“No, nor half a one,” said the proprietor, tapping absently on the floor -with his foot. “God’s curse on ye all! D’ye want to bring down the house -over me head?... ‘The Movin’ Bogs of Allen’ that’s playin’, isn’t it? A -good tune it, surely. But stop it! stop it!” roared the red-nosed man, -cutting a caper, half a step and half a kick in front of the fiddler. “I -don’t want your damned dancin’, I can’t stand it. God have mercy on me! -Sure I’m wantin’ to foot it meself!” - - -II - -But the dancing was in full swing now, despite the vehemence of the -proprietor. He looked round helplessly, and finding that his wife was -already dancing with old Eamon Doherty he seized hold of the servant -girl and whirled her into the midst of the party with a loud whoop that -surprised himself even as much as it surprised the Donegal dancers. - -Micky’s Jim was dancing with Norah Ryan and pressing her tightly to his -body. The youth’s breath smelt of whisky and his movements were violent -and irregular. - -“Ye’re hurtin’ me, Jim,” said the girl, and he lifted her in his arms -and carried her to a seat. - -“Now are ye better?” he asked, not at all unkindly. “Will I get ye a -glass of cordial?” - -“Don’t bother about cordial,” said the girl; “but go out and look for -Dermod Flynn. Ye said that ye’d go out a good while ago.” - -“Why are ye so anxious about him, girsha?” asked Jim. “One would think -that he was a brother of yours. Maybe indeed----” - -He paused, looked round, then without another word he rose, went out -into the street’ and took his way to the wharf, and there, when he could -not find Dermod Flynn after a few minutes’ search, he sat down on a -capstan, lit his pipe and puffed huge clouds of smoke up into the air. - -“Now I wonder why that Norah Ryan is so anxious about Dermod Flynn?” he -muttered. “Man! it’s hard to know, for these women are all alike.... By -Cripes, she’s a fine built bit of a lassie. So is old Oiney Dinchy’s -daughter ... Frosses and Glenmornan for women and fighters!... And the -best fighters don’t always get the best women. Now, that Norah Ryan will -have nothin’ at all to do with me as far as I can see; it’s Dermod Flynn -that she wants.... I’ll have to look round for another wench, and girsha -Oiney Dinchy (Oiney Dinchy’s daughter) is a soncy slip of a cutty.” - -When Dermod Flynn came along Jim had to look at him very closely before -realising that this was the youth whom he had known in Glenmornan two -summers before. Dermod stood sturdily on his legs; his shoulders were -broad, his back straight, and his well-formed chest betokened great -strength even now at the age of fourteen. A bundle dangled on his arm; -one knee was out through his trousers, and he carried a hazel stick in -his hand. - -“Patrick’s Dermod!” exclaimed Jim, a glance of glad recognition coming -into his eyes when he had stared for a moment at Flynn. “By Cripes! -ye’ve grown to be a big healthy bucko since last I saw ye.” - -Dermod flushed with pleasure. Jim began to ply him with questions about -his work in Tyrone, his masters, whether they were good or bad, -and--above all--if he had ever had a fight since he left home. - -Dermod assured him that he had had many a hard, gruelling fight; knocked -down a man twice his size with one blow of his fist and blackened the -eyes of a youth who was head and shoulders taller than himself. - -“And who have ye with ye, Jim?” he asked. “Any of the Glenmornan -people?” - -“Lots,” answered Jim. “Willie the Duck, Eamon Doherty, Judy Farrel, -Maire a Glan, Norah Ryan--but she’s not from Glenmornan, she’s a Frosses -girsha.” - -He looked sharply at Dermod as he spoke. - -“She was at Glenmornan school with me,” said Flynn. “Where is she now?” - -“There’s a dance goin’ on in the Donegal House; that’s where we had our -bit and sup, and she’s shaking her feet on the floor there.” - -“Can we go there and see the dancers?” - -“There’s not much time now,” said Jim. “And there’s the boat, that big -one nearest us, that we’re goin’ on this very night. She’s a rotten tub -and we’ll be very sick goin’ round the Mulls of Cantyre.” - -“Will we?” - -“What I mean is that ye and all the rest of the men and women will be -sick. I was never sea-sick in my life.” - -“When is it going away?” - -“In about half an hour from now.” - -“How long will it take us to get across?” asked Dermod. “Ten hours?” - -“God look on yer wit!” exclaimed Jim. “If there’s a fog on the Clyde it -will maybe take three days--maybe more. Ye can never know what a boat’s -goin’ to do. Ye can no more trust it than ye can trust a woman.” - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - -A WILD NIGHT - - -I - -The dance came to an end, and, worn out with their exertions, the women -picked up their shawls and wrapped them round their shoulders. Then -getting their bundles they went towards the wharf, Willie the Duck -leading, his fiddle under his arm and his bundle tied over his shoulders -with a string. Coming to the quay they passed through a gloomy -grain-shed, where heating bags of wheat sent a steam out into the air. -Suddenly, gazing through the rising vapour, Norah saw horses up in the -sky and she could hear them neighing loudly. For a moment she paused in -terror and wondered how such a thing could be, then recollected that in -a town, where there was no God, anything might be possible. Once out in -the open Maire a Glan pointed to the fall-and-tackle, hardly -distinguishable at a distance, which was lifting the animals off the -pier and lowering them down to the main deck of the boat. The horses -were turning round awkwardly and snorting wildly, terrified by the sound -of the sea. - -Bags of grain were being lifted on long chains; dark derricks shoved out -lean arms that waved to and fro as if inviting somebody to come near; -cattle lowing and slipping were being hammered by the drovers’ -blackthorns into the hold; a tall man with face fierce and swarthy, -eyes bright as fire, and mouth like a raw, red scar, was roaring out -orders in a shrill voice, and suddenly in the midst of all this Norah -saw Micky’s Jim leaning against the funnel of the boat, his hands deep -in his trousers’ pockets and the eternal pipe in his mouth, apparently -heedless of all that was going on around him. - -Beside Jim stood one whom Norah knew, but one who had changed a great -deal since she had seen him last. As she went up the gang-plank, -stepping timidly, cowering under the great derrick that wheeled above, -she felt that a pair of eyes were fixed upon her, piercing into her very -soul. She turned her gaze towards the deck and found Dermod Flynn -looking straight at her as she made her way aboard. In an instant her -eye had taken the whole picture of the youth, his clothes, the coat, -much the worse for wear, his trousers, thin at knee and frilly at the -shoe-mouth, his cap torn at rim and crown, the stray locks of hair -straggling down his forehead, the bundle lying at his feet, and the -hazel stick which he held in his hand, probably even yet in imitation of -the cattle drovers who went along Glenmornan road on the way to the fair -of Greenanore. These things Norah noticed with a girl’s quick intuitive -perception, but what struck her most forcibly was Dermod’s look of -expectation as he watched her come up the gang-plank towards him. - -“Dermod Flynn, I hardly knew ye at all,” she said, putting out her hand -and smiling slightly. “Ye’ve got very big these last two years.” - -“So did you, Norah,” Dermod answered, looking curiously at the small -white hand which he gripped in his own. “You are almost as tall as I am -myself.” - -“Why wouldn’t I be as tall as you are?” Norah replied, although Dermod -had unknowingly squeezed her hand in a hard, tense grip. “Am I not a -year and a half older?” - -When her hand was released her skin showed white where Dermod’s fingers -had gripped her, but she did not feel angry. On the contrary the girl -was glad because he was so strong. - -“Come over here!” cried Maire a Glan, who was sitting on her bundle -beside the rail, smoking a black clay pipe and spitting on the deck. - -The noise was deafening; the rowting of the cattle in the pens became -louder; a man on the deck gave a sharp order; the gangway was pulled off -with a resounding clash, the funnel began to rise and fall; Norah saw -the pier move; a few women were weeping; some of the passengers waved -handkerchiefs (none of them too clean) to the people on the quay; rails -were bound together, hatches battened down; sailors hurried to and fro; -a loud hoot could be heard overhead near the top of the funnel and the -big vessel shuffled out to the open sea. - - -II - -The boat was crowded with harvestmen from Frosses, potato-diggers from -Glenmornan and Tweedore; cattle drovers from Coleraine and Londonderry, -second-hand clothes-dealers, bricklayers’ labourers, farm hands, young -men and old, women and children; all sorts and conditions of people. - -“There are lots of folk gathered together on this piece of floatin’ -wood,” said Maire a Glan, crossing herself, a habit of hers, when -speaking of anything out of the ordinary. “The big boat is a wonderful -thing; beds with warm blankets and white sheets to sleep in, tables to -sit down at and have tea in real cups and saucers, just the same as -Father Devaney has at Greenanore, and him not out at all in the middle -of the ocean on a piece of floatin’ wood!” - -“And will _we_ get a bed to sleep in?” asked Norah Ryan. - -“Why should _we_ be gettin’ a grand bed? We’re only the poor people, and -the poor people have no right to these things on a big boat like this -one,” said the old woman, putting her black clay pipe into the pocket of -her apron. “There are no grand beds for people like us; they’re only for -the gentry.” - -“Wouldn’t a bed look nice on a Frosses curragh?” said Micky’s Jim, -sitting down on the bundle belonging to Willie the Duck and pulling the -cork from a bottle of whisky which he had procured in Derry. “Will ye -have a drop, Maire a Glan?” he asked. - -“I’ll not be havin’ any,” said the old woman, who nevertheless put out -her hand, caught the bottle and raised it to her lips. “It’s a nice drop -this,” she said, when she had swallowed several mouthfuls, “but I’m not -goin’ to drink any of it. I’m only just tastin’ it.” - -“If it was my bottle I’d be content if ye only just smelt it,” said -Eamon Doherty, with a dry laugh. - -“Dermod Flynn had one great fight in Tyrone,” said Micky’s Jim after -draining some of the liquor. “Gave his master one in the guts and -knocked him as sick as a dog.” - -“Get away!” - -“So he was sayin’. Dermod Flynn, come here and give an account of -yerself.” - -The young fellow, who was watching the waves slide past the side of the -vessel, came forward when Micky’s Jim called him. - -“Give an account of yerself, Dermod Flynn,” Jim cried. “Did ye not knock -down yer boss with one in the guts? That was the thing to do; that’s -what a Glenmornan man should do. I mind once when I was coal humpin’ on -the Greenock Docks----” - -And without waiting for an answer to his question, Jim narrated the -story of a fight which had once taken place between himself and a -Glasgow sailor. - -The sun, red as a live coal, was sinking towards the west, the murmur, -powerful and gentle, of a trembling wind could be heard overhead; a -white, ghostly mist stole down from the shore on either side and spread -far out over the waters. The waves lapped against the side of the vessel -with short, sudden splashes, and the sound of the labouring screw could -be heard pulsing loudly through the air. A black trail of smoke spread -out behind; a flight of following gulls, making little apparent effort, -easily kept pace with the vessel. - -“They will follow us to Scotland,” said Maire a Glan, pointing at the -birds with a long claw-like finger. - -Most of the men were drunk; a few lying stretched on the deck were -already asleep, and the rest were singing and quarrelling. Micky’s Jim -stopped in the middle of an interesting story, a new one, but also about -a fight, and joined in a song; old Maire a Glan helped him with the -chorus. - - -III - -A man, full of drink and fight, paraded along the deck, his stride -uncertain and unsteady, a look born of the dark blood of mischief -showing in his eyes. He had already been fighting; in his hand he -carried an open clasp-knife; one eyebrow had been gashed and the strip -of torn flesh hung down even as far as his high cheekbones. He was -dressed in a dirty pea-jacket and moleskin trousers; a brown leather -belt with a huge, shiny buckle was tied round his waist, and the neck of -a half-empty whisky bottle could be seen peeping over the rim of his -coat pocket. His shoulders were broad and massive, his neck short and -wrinkled and the torn shirt showed his deep chest, alive with muscles -and terribly hairy, more like an animal’s than a man’s. His hands, which -seemed to have never been washed, were knotted and gnarled like the -branches of an old and stunted bush. - -“This is young O’Donnel from the County Donegal, and young O’Donnel -doesn’t give a damn for any man on this boat!” he roared, speaking of -himself in the third person, and brandishing the knife carelessly around -him. “I can fight like a two year old bullock, and a blow from young -O’Donnel is like a kick from a young colt that’s new to the grass. I’m a -Rosses man and I don’t care a damn for any soul on this bloody boat--not -one damn! So there ye are!” - -Suddenly observing Dermod Flynn staring at him, he slouched forward and -struck the boy heavily across the face with a full swing of his left -fist. Dermod dropped quietly to the deck; Micky’s Jim, who was -suggesting to Willie the Duck that the fiddle should be flung into the -sea, threw down the instrument which he held and, jumping on the top of -O’Donnel, with a sudden movement of his hand sent the knife flying into -the sea. - -“Ye long drink of water, I’ll do for ye!” shouted Jim, and with feet and -fists he hammered O’Donnel into insensibility. - -Dermod Flynn regained his feet with a swollen cheek and a long red gash -stretching along his face from ear to chin. He was helped to a seat by -one of the party; Norah Ryan procured some water and bathed his face, -rubbing her fingers tenderly over the sore. - -“It was a shame to hit ye, Dermod,” she said. “One would think that a -big man like that wouldn’t hit a small boy like yourself!” - -Dermod flushed and his eyes lit up as if he was going to say something -cutting, but Norah checked the words by pressing her hand across his -brow and looking at him with eyes of womanly understanding. - -“I know what ye are goin’ to say, Dermod,” she said. “Ye’re goin’ to -tell me that ye are a man: and no one can deny that. Ye were a man when -ye were at school and hit the master. Sure I know meself what ye had in -yer head to say.” - -Dermod resented the words of consolation and felt like rising and -walking away from the girl, if her fair fingers had not been pressing so -softly and tenderly against his cheek. He shrugged his shoulders and -resigned himself to the ministrations of Norah. - -“By God, I wasn’t long with him!” cried Micky’s Jim, kicking idly at -Willie the Duck’s fiddle which still lay on the deck. “I just gave him -one in the jaw and three on the guts. Ah! that was the way to do it! It -takes a Glenmornan kiddie to use his mits in this bloomin’ hole. -Glenmornan, and every inch of it, forever! Whoo! There’s no man on this -boat could take a rise out of me; not one mother’s son! Fight! I could -fight any damned mug aboard this bleedin’ vessel. Look at my fist; smell -it! There’s the smell of dead men off it!” - -Micky’s Jim, now doubly drunk with liquor and excitement, paced up and -down the deck, challenging all aboard to fight, to put up their “fives” -to him. Presently the quarrel became general. - -All along the deck and down in the steerage cabin a terrible uproar -broke forth; men fastened on to one another’s throats, kicking, tearing, -and cursing loudly. The darkness had fallen; the buoys, floating past, -bobbed up and down in the water, their little bright lights twinkling -merrily. The pale ghost of a moon stole into the heavens and a million -stars kept it company. But those aboard the Derry boat took little heed -of the moon or stars. Over coils of ropes, loose chains, boxes and -bundles, sleeping women and crying babies, they staggered, fought and -fell, trampling everything with which they came in contact. - -A man went headlong down the steerage stair and a second followed, -thrown from above. Beside the door a bleeding face, out of which gleamed -a pair of lustrous eyes, glowered sinister for a moment, a fist hit -sharply against the eyebrows, the eyes closed; a knife shone, glancing -brightly against the woodwork, the man with the bloodstained face -groaned and fell; a woman crouching at the bottom of the stairs was -trampled upon, she shrieked and the shriek changed into a volley of -curses, which in turn died away into a low, murmurous plaint of tearful -pity. Men sought one another’s faces grunting and gasping, long lean -arms stretched out everywhere and fists shot through the smoke-laden -atmosphere of the steerage ... splotches of blood showed darkly on the -deck ... somewhere from below came the tinkle of glasses and the loud -chorus of an Irish folk-song. - -The fighters, overcome by their mad exertion, collapsed three or four in -a heap and slept where they had fallen. Outside on the open deck Micky’s -Jim lay prostrate, his head on the lap of Maire a Glan, who was also -asleep, her two remaining upper teeth, tobacco-stained and yellow, -showing in the moonlight. All over the deck men and women lay curled up -like dogs. Near the rail a woman’s bare arm showed for a moment over a -bundle of rags, then twined snakelike round the neck of a sleeping -child. On a bench astern Norah Ryan sat, her shawl drawn tightly over -her head and her eyes fixed on the moon-silvered sea that stretched out -behind. A great loneliness had overcome her; a loneliness which she did -not understand. It seemed as if something had snapped within her, as if -every fabric of her life had been torn to shreds. The stars overhead -looked so cold, everything seemed so desolate. A chill wind swept -against her face, and she could hear the water soughing along the -vessel’s side and crying wearily. Snores, groans, and sleepy voices came -through the open doors and resounded in the passage at the head of the -steerage stairs. Human bodies were heaped together in compact masses -everywhere. The fighting had come to an end--though now and then, as a -flame flickers up for a second over a dying fire, a man would totter -from a drunken sleep and challenge everybody on board to fight him. But -even when speaking loudest he would drop to the deck with a thud and -fall asleep again. - - -IV - -Listening to the engine pulsing heavily and the propeller hitting the -water with an intermittent buzz Norah Ryan fell asleep. On opening her -eyes again she could see the moon further up the sky and the stars -twinkling colder than ever. Dermod Flynn, his face swollen horribly, was -beside her, looking at her, and she was pleased to see him. - -“Sit down beside me, Dermod,” she said. “It will be warmer for two.” - -He sat down, his eyes sparkling with pleasure; the girl nestled close to -his side in the darkness, and one timid little hand stole softly into -his. - -“Ye nearly squeezed the hand off me when I met ye this evenin’,” she -said, but there was no reproof in her voice, and he understood that she -was not angry with his strong handshake, even though it had given her -pain. - -“Did I?” - -“Ye did.... Isn’t it cold?” - -“Cold as the breath of a stepmother,” said Dermod. “There was great -fighting!” - -“Why do men always fight?” asked Norah. - -“Because it’s--it’s their way.” - -“Why is that?” - -“You’ll not understand; you’re only a girl.” - -“Will I never understand?” asked Norah. - -“Never,” Dermod answered. “And we’re goin’ to be sick too,” he went on -with boyish irrelevance. “That’s when we’re passin’ round the Mull of -Cantyre. So Micky’s Jim said. And we’re goin’ to see Paddy’s Milestone, -that’s if we aren’t asleep.” - -“Where’s Paddy’s Milestone?” - -“It’s a big rock out in the middle of the sea, half-way between Ireland -and Scotland,” said Dermod. - -“Oh, is that it?... What kind of time had ye in Tyrone?” - -“Not so bad, but Scotland will be a better place.... Is old Master Diver -livin’ away?” - -“Dead, God rest his soul. He was only ill for three days. And poor Maire -a Crick is gone as well.” - -“She was as old as the Glenmornan hills. And old Oiney Dinchy?” - -“He got one of his eyes knocked out with the horns of a cow. That was -because the priest put the seven curses on him; but that was before ye -went away.” - -“Is Fergus writin’ home now?” - -“We haven’t heard hilt nor hair of him for a long while,” said Norah -sadly. “Maybe it is that he is dead.” “Don’t say that!” Dermod -exclaimed, fixing a pair of sad eyes on the girl. - -“Well, it is a wonder that we’re not hearin’ from him,” Norah went on, -“a great wonder entirely.... Your face is very.... Is it sore now?” - -The conversation died away; the boy and girl pressed closer for warmth -and presently both were asleep. When they awoke the pale dawn was -breaking. A drunken man lay asleep at their feet, his face turned -upwards, one arm stretched out at full length and the other curled over -his breast. Beside him on the deck was an empty whisky bottle and the -bowl of a broken clay pipe. - -“Have ye seen Scotland yet?” asked the girl, rubbing her fingers over -her eyelids. - -“That’s it, I think,” Dermod answered, pointing at the coastline which -showed like a well-defined cloud against the sky-line miles away. - -“Have we passed Paddy’s Milestone?” - -“I don’t know. I was sleepin’.” - -“Isn’t it like Ireland?” remarked Norah after she had gazed for a while -in silence at the coastline. “I would like to be goin’ back again, -Dermod,” she said. - -“I’m goin’ to make a great fortune in Scotland, Norah,” said the youth, -releasing the girl’s hand which he had held all night. “And I’m goin’ to -make ye a lady.” - -“Why would ye be goin’ to do the likes of that?” - -“I don’t know,” Dermod confessed, and the boy and girl laughed -together. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - -“BEYOND THE WATER” - - -I - -A heavy fall of rain came with the dawn, and the Clyde was a dreary -smudge of grey when the boat made fast alongside Greenock Quay and -discharged its passengers. Again the derricks began to creak -complainingly on their pivots; a mob of excited cattle streamed up the -narrow gangways, followed by swearing drovers, who prodded the dewlaps -and hindquarters of the animals with their short, heavy blackthorn -sticks. - -A tall, thin man, somewhat over middle age, with bushy beard, small -penetrating eyes and wrinkles between the eyebrows, met the squad as -they disembarked. He bade good-morning to Micky’s Jim just as if he had -seen him the night before, and in a loud, hurried voice gave him several -orders as to what he had to do during the summer season at the digging. -The tall, thin man was the potato-merchant. - -“How many have ye with ye from Ireland?” he asked Micky’s Jim. - -Although knowing the number of men it contained, Jim, with an air of -importance, began to count the members of the squad, carefully -enumerating each person by name. - -“Get your squad to work as soon as you can,” said the merchant, his -Adam’s apple bobbing in and out with every movement of his throat. He -gave Jim no time to finish the count. “I see you’re three or four short -of last year--four, isn’t it? There’s some people waitin’ for a start -over there, so you’d better take a few of them with you.” - -Opposite the squad a dozen or more men and women stood, looking on -eagerly, all of them shivering with the cold and the water dripping from -their rags. These Jim approached with a very self-conscious swagger and -entered into conversation with the women, who began to speak volubly. - -“What’s wrong with them?” asked Dermod Flynn, and Maire a Glan, to whom -he addressed the question, drew a snuff-box from her pocket and took a -pinch. - -“They’re lookin’ for a job, as the man said,” she answered and her teeth -chattered as she spoke. - -“When do we start our work?” asked Norah Ryan. - -“Work!” laughed Judy Farrel, and her laugh ended in a fit of coughing. -“Work, indeed!” she stammered on regaining breath. “Ye’ll soon have -plenty of that and no fear!” - -“Come now,” Micky’s Jim shouted as he came back to his own squad -followed by two men and two women who detached themselves from the crowd -that was looking for work. “We must go down to the Isle of Bute to-day -and get some potatoes dug in a hurry. Take yer bundles in yer hands and -make a start for the station.” - -“It’s Gourock Ellen that’s in it,” said Maire a Glan, when the strange -women came forward. “Gourock Ellen and Annie, as the man said.” - -Gourock Ellen was a tall, angular woman, who might at one period of her -life have been very handsome, but who now, owing to the results of a -hard and loose life, bore all the indelible marks of dissolute and -careless living. Her face was hard, pock-marked, and stamped with a look -of impudent defiance; she smiled with ill-concealed contempt at Maire a -Glan and looked with mock curiosity at the warty hand which the old -woman held out to her. - -“There’s a lot of new faces in the squad,” she said, glancing in turn at -Norah Ryan and Dermod Flynn. “Not bad lookin’, the two of them, and -they’ll sleep in the yin bed yet, I’ll go bail! And you, have you the -fiddle with you?” - -“Aye, sure, and I have,” said Willie the Duck, to whom she addressed -this question. “I don’t go far without it.” - -“You don’t,” answered the woman, and her tones implied that she would -have added, “you fool!” if she thought it worth while. - -Her companion, who hardly spoke a word, was somewhat older, swarthy of -appearance and very ragged. Her toes peeped out through the torn uppers -of her hobnailed boots, and when she lifted her dress to wring the water -from the hem it could be seen that she wore no stockings and that her -dark, thin legs were threaded with varicose veins above the calves. - -“D’ye see them?” Micky’s Jim whispered in Dermod’s ear. “They cannot -make a livin’ on the streets and they have to come and work with us.” - -“I don’t like the look of them,” Dermod whispered, rubbing his hand over -the sore on his face. - -“By God! that was a great dunt that O’Donnel gave ye,” said Jim. -“They’re great women, them, without a doubt,” he added. “It’s a long -while since Gourock Ellen broke her pitcher.” - -“How? What do you mean?” - -“Ye’re green, Dermod, green as a cabbage,” said Jim, chuckling. “Them -women--but I’ll tell ye all about it some other time. Willie the Duck is -a great friend of them same women. He knows what they are, as well as -anyone, don’t ye, Willie?” - -“Aye, sure,” said Willie, who did not know what Jim was speaking about, -but wished to be agreeable to everybody. - - -II - -A short run on a fast train from Upper Greenock to Wemyss Bay was -followed by an hour’s journey on a boat crowded with passengers bound -for Rothesay. It was now the last day of June, and those who had rented -coast houses for the following month were flocking down from Glasgow and -other Clydeside industrial centres. In the midst of the crowd of gaily -dressed trippers all the members of the squad felt sensitive and shy and -stood huddled awkwardly together on deck; all but Micky’s Jim and the -strange men and women, who paraded up and down the deck, careless of the -eyes that were fixed upon them. Old Maire a Glan was praying, her rosary -hidden under her shawl; Dermod Flynn was looking over the rail into the -water, his main interest in turning away being to keep the naked knee -that peeped through his torn trousers hidden from the sight of the -elegantly dressed trippers. Norah envied the young girls who chattered -noisily to and fro, envied them their fine hats and brave dresses, their -elegant shoes and the wonderful sparkling things that decorated their -necks and wrists. What a splendid vision for the girl’s eyes! the hot -sun overhead in a sky of blue, the water glancing brightly as the boat -cut through it; the fair women, the well-dressed men, the band playing -on deck, the glitter, the charm and the happiness! The girl could hardly -realise that such beauty existed, though once she had seen a picture of -a scene something like this in one of the books which Fergus used to -read at home. Poor girl! the water was still running down her stockings, -her clothes were ragged and dirty, and the boy, her youthful lover, was -hiding his naked knee by turning to the rail! - -Opposite the crowd in which Norah stood, a group of five -persons--father, mother and their children, a son and two -daughters--were sitting on camp-stools. The man, bubble-bellied and -short, had taken off his hat, and in the sunlight beads of sweat -glittered on his bald head like crystals in a white limestone facing. -His wife, a plump, good-looking woman, who seemed full of a haughty -self-esteem, gazed critically through a lorgnette on the unkempt workers -and sniffed contemptuously as if something had displeased her when her -examinations came to an end. The three little things regarded them -wonderingly for a moment and afterwards began to ply first the father -and then the mother with questions about the strange folk who were -aboard the boat. But the parents, finding that the children were -speaking too loudly, bade them be silent, and the little ones, getting -no answer to their questions, began to puzzle over this and wonder who -and what were the queer, ragged people sitting opposite. - -The girls, taking into account the contemptuous stare which their mother -fixed on the members of the squad, came to the conclusion that the -beings who were dressed so differently from themselves were really other -species of men and women altogether and were far inferior to those who -wore starched collars and gold ornaments. - -The boy, an undersized little fellow with sharp, twinkling eyes, looked -at his father when putting his questions, but the old man pulled a -paper--_The Christian Guide_--from his pocket and, burying himself in -it, took no notice of the youngster’s queries. - -The boy solved the question for himself in the curious incomplete way -which is peculiar to a child. - -“I don’t know who they are,” he said, “but I’d like to play with -them--that old lady who’s moving something under her shawl and speakin’ -to herself, with the nice young lady, with the man with the hump and -the fiddle; with every one of them.” - -Gourock Ellen was speaking to Micky’s Jim. - -“Have ye ever slept under a bridge with the wind chillin’ ye to the -bone?” she asked. - -“No. Why?” - -“That’s where I slept last night,” said Ellen fiercely. “Isn’t that a -pretty dress that that woman has, Jim?” - -“And Annie?” Jim asked, putting a match to the eternal pipe. - -“She slept along wi’ me,” Ellen replied. “Blood is warm even when it -runs thin.” - -“If ye had the price of that lady’s dress, ye’d not have to sleep out -for a week of Sundays,” said Jim, pointing to the woman with the -lorgnette. “See her brats too! Look how they’re glowerin’ at Norah -Ryan!” - -“The children are very pretty,” said the woman, and a slight touch of -regret softened her harsh voice. Perhaps for the moment she longed for -the children which might have been hers if all had gone well. “Norah -Ryan is a very soncy wench, isn’t she, Jim?” she went on. “What is the -bald man readin’?” - -“_Christian Guide_,” said Jim, who spent a whole year at school and who -could read a little. - -“I ken him well,” said Ellen, assuming a knowing look and winking -slightly. “It was years ago, he was young--and ye ken yerself.” - -“Phew!” Jim whistled, taking the pipe from his mouth and lowering the -left eyelid. “He was one of them sort?... _Christian Guide_, indeed!... -A decent man, now, I suppose, and would hardly pass a word with ye!” - -“I’m not as good lookin’ as I was.” - -“If ye told old baldhead’s wife what ye told me what would she say?” - -“Oh! I wadna dae that, Jim. He always paid on the nail.” - -“_Christian Guide_,” sniggered Jim, hurrying to the rail and spitting -into the water. - -“There are some great dresses on those people,” said Maire a Glan, -nipping Dermod Flynn on the thigh with her finger and thumb. “See that -woman sittin’ there with the bald-headed man. Her dress is a good one. -All the money that ye earned for two whole years in Tyrone would hardly -put flounces on it; wouldn’t flounce it, as the man said.” - -“Maybe not,” said Dermod, turning round slightly, but still standing in -such a way that his bare knee was concealed from everybody on board. - -“It’s a great dress, a grand dress and a dress for a queen,” Maire a -Glan went on. “Look at the difference between it and the dress that -Gourock Ellen is wearin’!” - -“Just so,” said Dermod, peeping at the exposed kneecap. “Could ye give -me a needle and thread this night, Maire a Glan?” he asked. - -“I could, indeed, Dermod,” said the old woman. “That wife of the -bald-headed man is a fine soncy-lookin’ stump of a woman.” - -“Is she better-lookin’ than Gourock Ellen?” asked Dermod with a laugh. - -“Ye are droll, Dermod,” said Maire a Glan, nipping the boy’s thigh -again. “D’ye know where Gourock Ellen slept last night? Under a cold -bridge with the winds of heaven whistlin’ through the eye of it.” - -“Could she not have gone into some house?” - -“House, child? Ye are not in Ireland here!” - -“When a poor man comes to our house at night, he always gets a bed till -the mornin’,” said Norah Ryan, who was listening to the conversation. -“And a bit and sup as well!” - -“It’s only God and the poor who help the poor,” said the old woman. “And -here’s the rain comin’ again, as the man said. It will be a bad day this -to plough on our knees through the wet fields, bad luck be with them!” - - -III - -A farmer with a bulbous nose and red whiskers met the squad on Rothesay -pier. He wore a black jacket which, being too narrow round the -shoulders, had split open half way down the back, a corduroy waistcoat, -very tight trousers, patched at the knees and caked brown with clotted -earth. This man was seated on the sideboard of a large waggon, removing -the dirt from his clothes with a heavy, double-bladed clasp-knife. - -“Good-day,” said Micky’s Jim, coming off the boat and stepping up to the -man on the waggon. - -“Good-day,” answered the man without lifting his head or looking at the -speaker. - -“Will ye take the waggon nearer the boat, or will we carry up the -bundles to here?” asked Jim, blowing a puff of white smoke into the air. - -“Carry them up, of course,” said the farmer, still busy with his -clasp-knife. - -Jim set his squad to work, and soon the waggon was loaded with bundles -of clothes, frying-pans, tea-caddies, tins, bowls, and other articles -necessary for the workers during the coming months. In addition to the -stores taken from Ireland by the potato-diggers the merchant supplied -them with blankets, an open stove, and a pot for boiling potatoes. It -was now raining heavily; the drops splashed loudly on the streets, ran -down the faces and soaked through the clothes of the workers. The rain -struck heavily against the waggon; a hot steam rose from the withers of -the cart-horse; the pier was almost deserted and everything looked -lonesome and gloomy. - -So far the farmer had taken very little notice of anybody; but now, -having observed Norah Ryan, he shouted: “Ye have a fine leg, lassie!” -and afterwards, while the cart was being loaded, he kept repeating this -phrase and chuckling deep down in his throat. Whenever he made the -remark he looked at the girl, and Norah felt uncomfortable and blushed -every time he spoke. - -Dermod Flynn, who had taken a sudden dislike to the man with the bulbous -nose, now felt sorry for Norah and angry with the man. At last, unable -to restrain his passion any longer, he stepped up to the side of the -waggon and looked straight in the face of the farmer, who was packing -the blankets in one corner of the vehicle, and shouted: “Here, Red Nose, -don’t try and make fun of yer betters!” The farmer straightened himself -up, rested his thumb on his jaw and pulled a long black finger through -his beard. - -“All right,” he said at last, and did not speak another word to anybody -else that day. - -Dermod, who had looked for an outburst, felt frightened when the farmer -became silent. - -“Jim, what’s wrong with that man?” he asked his ganger when the cart -started on its journey home with the farmer sitting in front, waving his -whip vigorously, but refraining from hitting the horse. - -“He’s mad,” said Jim in a whisper. - -“Mad?” - -“As a March hare, as an Epiphany cock, as a ---- He’s very mad, and was in -the madhouse last year when we were digging on the farm. It takes very -little to set him off. Maybe he’s goin’ mad now; one never knows.” - -“It was very good of you to stand up for me,” said Norah to Dermod about -an hour later, when the party came in sight of the farmhouse. “Ye have -the kind heart, and that farmer isn’t a nice man. I don’t like the looks -of him!” - -“He’s mad----” - -“Mother of God!” - -“---- as an Epiphany cock! He was in the madhouse last year.” - -“Maybe he’ll do ye some harm one day!” - -“Will he?” asked Dermod, squaring his shoulders and instinctively -tightening his fists. Somehow he felt wonderfully elated since he had -spoken to the farmer on the waggon. - - - - -CHAPTER XV - -DRUDGERY - - -I - -New potatoes were urgently needed and the potato merchant told Jim to -get as many as possible dug on the first afternoon. No sooner had the -squad come to the farmhouse than they were shown out to the fields where -the green shaws, heavy with rain, lay in matted clusters across the -drills. Every step taken relieved the green vegetable matter of an -enormous amount of water, which splashed all over the workers as they -stumbled along to their toil. - -Work started. The men threw out the potatoes with short three-pronged -graips; the women girt bags round their waists, went down on their knees -and followed the diggers, picking up the potatoes which they threw out. -Two basin-shaped wicker baskets without handles were supplied to each -woman; one basket for the good potatoes and the other for “brock,” -pig-food. - -“It’s the devil’s job, as the man said,” old Maire a Glan remarked as -she furrowed her way through the slushy earth. “What d’ye think of it, -Judy Farrel?” But Judy, struggling with a potato stem, did not deign to -answer. - -Maire was a hard worker; and it was her boast that she never had had a -day’s illness in her life. The story had got abroad that she never -missed a stitch in a stocking while giving birth to twins, and the woman -never contradicted the story. She gathered after Eamon Doherty’s -“graip”; old Eamon with a head rising to a point almost and a very short -temper. - -Biddy Wor, the mother of seven children, “all gone now to all the seven -ends of the world,” as she often pathetically remarked, gathered the -potatoes that Murtagh Gallagher threw out. Biddy’s hair was as white as -snow, except on her chin, where a dozen or more black hairs stood out as -stiffly as if they were starched. - -Owen Kelly, another of the diggers, was very miserly and was eternally -complaining of a pain in the back. Micky’s Jim assured him that a wife -was the best cure in the world for a sore back. But Owen, skinflint that -he was, considered a wife very costly property and preferred to live -without one. He dug for Judy Farrel, the stunted little creature with -the cough. She was a very quiet little woman, Judy, had very little to -say and, when speaking, spoke as if her mouth was full of something. -When pulling the heavy baskets, weighted with the wet clay, she moaned -constantly like a child in pain. - -Two sisters worked in the squad, Dora and Bridget Doherty, cheery girls, -who spoke a lot, laughed easily, and who were similar in appearance and -very ugly. Dora worked with Connel Dinchy, son of Oiney Dinchy, an -eel-stomached youth over six foot in height and barely measuring -thirty-four inches round the chest. He was a quiet, inoffensive fellow, -who laughed down in his throat, and every fortnight he sent all his -wages home to his parents. Bridget Doherty gathered potatoes for one of -the strange men. Both girls were blood relations of Murtagh Gallagher. -The other strange man worked in conjunction with Gourock Ellen; Norah -Ryan gathered for Willie the Duck; and Ellen’s companion, who was known -as Annie--simply Annie--crawled in the clay after Thady Scanlon, a first -cousin of Micky’s Jim. When the baskets were full, Dermod Flynn emptied -the potatoes into large barrels supplied for the purpose. - -The women worked hard, trying to keep themselves warm. Norah Ryan became -weary very soon. The rain formed into a little pond in the hollow of her -dress where it covered the calves of her legs. Seeing that the rest of -the women were rising from time to time and shaking the water off their -clothes, she followed their example, and when standing, a slight -dizziness caused her to reel unsteadily and she almost overbalanced and -fell. She went down on her knees hurriedly, as she did not want Micky’s -Jim to see her tottering. If this was noticed he might think her unfit -for the job. For the rest of the afternoon she crawled steadily, fearing -to rise, and wondered how Gourock Ellen, who was giving voice to a loose -and humorous song, could sing on such a day. What troubled Norah most -were the sharp pebbles that came in contact with her knees as she -dragged herself along. They seemed to pierce through rags and flesh at -each movement, and at times she could hardly refrain from crying aloud -on account of the pain. Before night, and when she knew that her knees -were bleeding, she had become almost indifferent to bodily discomforts. - -All the time she was filled with an insatiable longing for home. The -farm looked out on the Clyde--the river was a grey blur seen through the -driving rain, and a boat passing by attracted her attention. - -“Is it an Irish boat?” she asked Willie the Duck, who was whistling -softly to himself. - -“Aye, sure,” answered Willie without raising his head. - -“I wish that I was goin’ home in it,” she said plaintively. - -“Ireland’s much better than this dirty country,” said Maire a Glan, -speaking loud enough for the Scotchwoman Annie to hear her. - - -II - -When six o’clock came round Jim pulled out his watch, looked at it -severely for a moment and shouted: “Down graips and run home to yer warm -supper!” - -“Home!” repeated Maire a Glan, rising awkwardly to her knees. “Mother of -Jesus; it is a home! An old byre and no less, as the man said. Shame be -on ye, Micky’s Jim!” - -“We have no grub and no siller,” said Gourock Ellen, rising briskly and -loosing the claycoated sack from around her waist. “I’m up to my thighs -in clabber,” she added. - -“We’ll not let ye starve as long as there’s a bit at all goin’,” said -Micky’s Jim. - -“We’d be pigs if we ate all ourselves when other people have nothin’,” -remarked Maire a Glan. - -When the squad went back to the farm a ploughman, a flat-footed, surly -fellow with a hare-lip, showed them their quarters in the steading. -“First I’ll show ye where ye’re to roost,” said the man, and led the way -into an evil-smelling byre, the roof of which was covered with cobwebs, -the floor with dung. A young fellow, with a cigarette in his mouth, was -throwing the manure through a trap-door into a vault underneath. On both -sides of the sink, which ran up the middle, was a row of stalls, each -stall containing two iron stanchions to which chains used for tying -cattle were fastened. - -“No need to tie any of ye to the chains, is there?” asked the man with -the hare-lip, laughing loudly. “When ye go to bed at night, close the -trap-door,” he continued. “It will keep the smell of the midden away -from you!” - -“Aye, sure,” said Willie the Duck. - -“Oh! ye’re here again, are ye?” asked the ploughman. “Have ye got the -music murderer with ye? This way to see where yer eatin’ room is,” said -the man, without waiting to hear Willie the Duck’s answer to his -question. - -The byre was built on the shoulder of a hillock; the midden was situated -in a grotto hollowed underneath. Behind the dung-hill, in the grotto, -the three-legged stove was standing, and already a fire which old Eamon -Doherty had kindled was sparkling merrily. - -“Watch yersel’!” shouted the ploughman to Dermod Flynn, who was crossing -the dung-hill on the way towards the fire. “That young rascal above will -throw down a graipful of dung on yer head if ye’re not careful.” - -Maire a Glan filled the pot with clean white potatoes and placed them -over the blaze. The ploughman sat down on an upended box and lit his -pipe; Micky’s Jim took the squad back to the byre, which was now fairly -clean, and proceeded to make bunks for the night. Four or five level -boxes were placed on the floor of each stall, a pile of hay was -scattered about on top, and over this was spread two or three bags sewn -together in the form of a sheet; sacks filled with straw served as -pillows, a single blanket was given to each person, and two of the party -had to sleep in each stall. - -“Who’s goin’ to sleep with me?” asked Micky’s Jim. - -“I will,” said Murtagh Gallagher. - -“Ye snore like a pig!” - -“What about me?” asked Owen Kelly. - -“Ye kick like a colt.” - -“Will I do?” asked Willie the Duck. - -“Ye do!” cried Micky’s Jim, “ye that was chased out of the graveyard -with a squad of worms. None of ye will sleep with me; Dermod Flynn is -the man I want. Help me to make the bed, Dermod Flynn,” he said to the -youth who was standing beside him. - -“It’s a fine place, this,” said Gourock Ellen as she spread a pile of -hay over the boxes in the stalls. “A gey guid place!” - -“D’ye know who slept in that stall last night?” asked Jim. - -“A heifer like mysel’ maybe,” said Ellen. “And indeed it had a muckle -better place than I had under the bridge.” - -“The potatoes are nearly ready,” shouted Maire a Glan, sticking her -wrinkled head round the corner of the door. - -There was a hurried rush down to the midden. Boxes were upended to serve -as seats, the maid-servant at the farm came out in brattie,[D] -shorgun,[E] and brogues, and sold milk at a penny a pint to the diggers. -All, with the exception of Annie, Ellen, and Owen Kelly, bought a -pennyworth; Micky’s Jim bought a pennyworth for Ellen, Maire a Glan -shared her milk with Annie, and Owen Kelly bought only a halfpennyworth, -half of which he kept for his breakfast on the following morning. - -The potatoes were not ready yet; the water bubbled and spluttered in the -pot and shot out in little short spurts on every side. Ellen complained -of her legs; they had been horribly gashed during the day and were now -terribly sore. She lifted up her clothes as far as her thighs and rubbed -a wet cloth over the wounds. Micky’s Jim tittered; Dermod Flynn blushed, -turned away his head and looked at Norah Ryan. Ellen noticed this and, -smiling sarcastically, began to hum: - - “When I was a wee thing and lived wi’ my granny, - Oh! it’s many a caution my granny gied me; - She said: ‘Now, be wise and beware of the boys, - And don’t let yer petticoats over yer knee!’” - -As she finished the song, Ellen winked at Micky’s Jim and Jim winked -back. Then she hit her thigh with her hand and shouted: “Not a bad leg -that for an old one, is it?” - -The potatoes were now emptied into a wicker basket, the water running -through the bottom into the midden. The men and women sat round the -basket, their little tins of milk in their hands, and proceeded to eat -their supper. The potato was held in the left hand, and stripped of its -jacket with the nail of the right thumb. Gourock Ellen used a knife when -peeling, Willie the Duck ate potato, pelt and all. - -While they were sitting an old, wrinkled, and crooked man came across -the top of the dung-hill, sinking into it almost up to his knees and -approached the fire. His clothes were held on by strings, he wore a pair -of boots differing one from the other in size, shape, and colour. Indeed -they were almost without shape, and the old man’s toes, pink, with black -nails, showed through the uppers. - -Gourock Ellen handed him three large potatoes from the basket. - -“God bless ye, for it’s yerself that has the kindly heart, decent -woman,” said the old fellow in a feeble voice, and he began to eat his -potatoes hurriedly like a dog. Dermod handed him part of a tin of milk -and blushed at the profuse thanks of the stranger. - -“It’s a fine warm place that ye are inside of this night,” said the old -fellow when he had finished his meal. - -“It’s a rotten place,” said Dermod Flynn. - -“It’s better nor lyin’ under a hedge,” answered the old man. - -“Or under a bridge,” Gourock Ellen remarked, lifting her dress again; -then, as if some modest thought had struck her, dropping it suddenly. - -“Why do ye lie under a hedge?” Dermod asked, and the old man thereupon -gave a rambling account of his misfortunes, which included a sore back -and inability to labour along with sound men. He had come from Mayo -years ago and had worked at many a hard job since then, both in England -and Scotland. Now that he was a homeless old man nobody at all wanted -him. - -When the party went up to the byre he stretched out his old thin limbs -by the fire and fell into the easy slumber of old age. Suddenly he awoke -with a start to find the fire still burning brightly and a beautiful -girl with long hair flung over her shoulders looking at him. It was -Norah Ryan; the old man thought for a moment that he was looking at an -angel. - -“God be good to me!” he cried, crossing himself; “but who is yerself?” -Then as recollection brought him a face seen at the fire, he exclaimed: -“Arrah, sure it’s yerself that is the colleen I was after seein’ sittin’ -here a minute ago. Now, isn’t it a good cheery fire?” - -“Have ye any home to go to?” asked Norah. - -“Never a home,” said the old man, resting one elbow in the ashes. “There -is nothin’ but the rainy roads and the hardships for a man like me.” - -“But could ye not get inside of some house for the night?” - -“God look on yer wit!” said the old fellow, laughing feebly. “Ye’re just -new over, I’ll warrant, and ye haven’t come to learn that they have -forgotten all about kindness in this country. They do not want the man -with no roof-tree over his head here. They’re all black and bitter -Protestants.” - -“So I heard say.” - -“Ye’ll be one of the right sort, I’ll go bail.” - -“I’m a Catholic.” - -“Ah! that’s it! The Catholics are the best, and I’m one meself just as -ye are, girsha. Have ye a penny to spare for one of yer own kind?” - -“Are ye goin’ back to Ireland again?” asked Norah, drawing the -weasel-skin purse from the pocket of her steaming dress. - -“If only I had the price of the boat, I’d go in a minute,” said the man, -fixing greedy eyes on the purse which Norah held in her hand. “But I’m -very poor, and mind ye I’m one of yer own sort. Maybe ye have a sixpence -to spare,” he said. - -Norah possessed a two-shilling piece, all the money she had in the -world, and she needed it badly herself. But the desire to help the old -man overmastered her, and she handed him the florin. Followed by the -garrulous thanks of her penniless countryman she hurried back to the -byre, feeling in some curious way ashamed of her kindness. - - -III - -A candle fixed on the top of a stanchion threw a dim light over the -byre, and long black shadows danced on roof and wall. A strong, -unhealthy odour pervaded the whole building; the tap at one end was -running, and as the screw had been broken the water could not be turned -off. Micky’s Jim sat in a cattle-trough sewing bags together with a -packing needle; these were to be used as a quilt. Dermod Flynn, who was -undressing, slipped beneath the blankets with his trousers still on as -Norah Ryan came in, but Willie the Duck, stripped to the pelt, stood for -a moment laughing stupidly, the guttering candle lighting up his narrow, -hairy face and sunken chest. - -Old Owen Kelly was already in bed. - -“This place is a lot better than where we slept last year,” he called to -Micky’s Jim. - -“Where did ye sleep last year?” asked Dermod Flynn. - -“In the pig-sty,” said Jim. “We were almost eaten alive by the blue -lice.” - -The women undressed in the shadow at the far end of the stalls, and from -time to time Micky’s Jim peeped round the corner. When the women looked -up he would shout out: “I see something,” and whistle lightly between -the thumb and middle finger of his right hand. The Irishwomen undressed -under the blankets, the two strange women, careless and indifferent to -the jibes of Micky’s Jim, stripped off to their chemises in full view of -the occupants of the byre. Annie and Gourock Ellen had quarrelled about -something; they were not going to sleep together that night. - -“Ye have to sleep with me, lass,” said Gourock Ellen to Norah. - -“All right,” said the young girl quietly, seeing no reason why she -should not sleep with a strange woman. As she spoke she went down on her -knees to say her prayers. - -“Say one prayer for me, just a short one,” said Ellen in a low tone. - -“All right, decent woman,” answered the girl. - -“I’ll put the light out now,” shouted Micky’s Jim after a short -interval. “The women will not be ashamed to go on takin’ off their -clothes now.” - -The light went out, but Jim suddenly relit the candle, and the guttering -blaze again flared weakly through the gloom. There was a hurried -movement of naked flesh in the women’s quarters and a precipitate -scampering under the blankets. - -“That was a mortal sin, Micky’s Jim,” Norah Ryan said in a low voice, -and in her tones there was a suspicion of tears. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - -LITTLE LOVES - - -I - -To Norah Ryan the days passed by, at first remorselessly slow, burdened -with longings and regrets, clogged with cares and sorrows which pressed -heavily on her young heart. Each passing day was very much like that -which had gone before, all had their homesickness and longings. She -wanted so much to be back in her own home, picking cockles from the -Frosses strand or driving the cattle into the shallow water when the -heat of summer put the wild madness into their dry hooves. - -All day long she trailed in the fields, her knees sore, and the sharp, -flinty pebbles cutting them to the bone; and at night when she undressed -she found her petticoats and stockings covered with blood. Gourock Ellen -showed a great interest in the girl, bathed Norah’s knees often, and -when near a druggist’s bought liniments and ointments which she applied -to the wounds. Usually the sores, though they healed a little during the -night, broke afresh when work started again in the morning, and six -weeks went by before the girl hardened sufficiently to resist the rough -pressure of the stones which she had to crawl over when at her work in -the fields. Her hands also troubled her for a while; they became hacked -and swollen and pained her intensely when she washed them at close of -evening. Gradually these physical discomforts passed away, and with them -went many of the girl’s regrets and much of her homesickness. True, she -wished to be back with her mother again, and that wish, unable to be -gratified, caused her many poignant heartaches which she bravely -concealed from her companions. Every Sunday afternoon she sat down and -wrote a long letter home, telling her mother of the wonderful land -across the water and the curious things which were to be seen there. Her -mother, not being able to read or write, answered very seldom, and her -letters were all penned by the new master of Glenmornan schoolhouse. - -The members of the squad lived a very stirring life, changing almost -weekly from one farm to another, travelling on fast trains and wonderful -steamers. But in the midst of all this excitement Maire a Glan never -forgot to tell her beads, Owen Kelly to save up his money, Micky’s Jim -to swear about nothing in particular, and Norah never forgot to speak -about home when any of the Frosses people were in the mood to listen. -Dermod Flynn, ever eager to hear about all that had passed in his two -years’ absence, was a ready talker on matters that concerned the people -of Glenmornan and Frosses. But in other respects he was still the same -dreamy youth who had spent the greater part of his time at school in -gazing out of the window. Even now he would sometimes forget his work -for a long while to gaze at a worm which he picked up from the ground -and held between his finger and thumb. Whenever Micky’s Jim saw this he -would assert that Flynn was rapidly going mad. Norah herself often -wished that Dermod would not take such an interest in things which, when -all was said and done, were useless and made the boy the laughing-stock -of the whole squad. But she always felt sorry for him when the rest of -the party laughed at his oddities. Why should she care if everybody in -the country laughed at a fool who took a great interest in common -worms? she often asked herself. But never was the girl able to find a -satisfactory answer to this question. - -Dermod had a curious habit of going out into the fields and lying down -on the green sod when the evening was a good one and when the day’s work -was done. Norah noticed this and often wondered what he did and thought -of when by himself. The youth fascinated the girl in some strange way; -this fascination she could not explain and dared not combat. She even -felt afraid of him; he thronged into her mind, banished all other -thoughts and reigned supreme in her imagination. Sometimes, indeed, she -wished that he were gone from the squad altogether; he made her so -uncomfortable. He said such strange things, too. Once he remarked that -there was no God, and Norah knew instinctively that he meant what he -said; not like Micky’s Jim, who often said that there was no Creator, -merely with the object of startling those to whom he was speaking. If -Dermod did things like other people, if he played cards, passed jests, -she would not fear him so much. Even now, when he spoke to her of home, -there was a strange intensity in his voice that often unnerved her. - - -II - -One evening in September Dermod Flynn stole away from the fire as was -his custom and sat down in a field near the sea, where he was speedily -buried in the quiet isolation of his own thoughts. Norah Ryan followed -him; why, she did not know. Something seemed to compel her to go after -the youth: a certain wild pleasure surged through her, she felt as if -she could run and sing out to the light airs that fanned her cheeks as -she moved along. Presently, looking through a row of hazel bushes that -hemmed the farmhouse, she espied him, lying on the green grass, -seemingly lost to everything and gazing upwards into the blue heavens -where the first early star was flickering faintly through the soft loom -of the evening. Below him the Clyde widened out to the sea and a few -black boats were heaving slowly on the tide. As if under the spell of a -power which she could not resist, Norah Ryan parted the boughs of the -hazel copse and stood before Dermod Flynn. - -“Is it here, Dermod, that ye are, lookin’ at the sea?” she asked -involuntarily. - -“I was lookin’ at the star above me,” he replied. - -Norah wore a soft grey tweed dress that became her well. She had bought -it in Greenock a week before, and when Dermod looked at the dress with a -critical eye she wondered why she had put it on. But his look turned to -one of admiration when his eye fell on the sweet face of the young girl, -the eyes gentle and wistful, the white neck and the pure brow half -hidden by the brown ruffled tresses. Something leapt into the heart of -the young man, a thought which he could not put into words flashed -through his mind, held him tense for a moment and then flitted away. - -“Why do you keep watchin’ me?” Norah enquired. - -“I don’t know,” Dermod answered, lowering his eyes. “D’ye mind the night -on the Derry boat?” he asked. “All that night when you were asleep I had -your hand in mine.” - -“I mind it very well,” she said, and a slight blush stole into her -cheeks. They clasped hands, the girl’s fingers stole over Dermod’s and -their eyes met. For a moment it seemed as if one or the other was going -to speak, but no voice broke the stillness. The fear had now gone from -Norah’s heart; it seemed quite natural to her that she should be there -clasping the hand of that ragged youth who always attracted and -fascinated her. That she should desire to sit beside him, to press his -hands so very tightly, did not appear strange to her and above all did -not appear wrong. Dermod saw in her eyes a childlike admiration, a look -half a child’s and half a woman’s. A vague longing, something which he -could not comprehend and which caused him a momentary pang of fear, rose -in his heart. What he had to be afraid of he did not know, as he knelt -there in spirit before the most holy sanctuary in the world, the -sanctuary of chaste and beautiful womanhood. - -Many evenings they met together in the same way; they became more -intimate, more friendly, and Norah found that her fear of Dermod was -gradually passing away. When evenings were wet they sat in the byre or -cart-shed, where the fire burned brightly, and talked about Glenmornan -and the people at home. One day Micky’s Jim said that he himself had -once a notion of Norah Ryan. When Dermod heard this he flushed hotly. -Norah’s cheeks got very red and Jim laughed loudly. - -“I have no time for them sort of capers now,” said Jim. “Ye can have her -all to yerself, Dermod, and people like yerselves will be always doin’ -the silly thing, indeed ye will!” - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - -A GAME OF CARDS - - -I - -Micky’s Jim was telling the story of a fight in which he had taken part -and how he knocked down a man twice as heavy as himself with one on the -jaw. Owen Kelly, Gourock Ellen, Dermod, and Norah were the listeners. -The squad had just changed quarters from a farm on which they had been -engaged to the one on which they were now, and it was here that they -were going to end the season. The farm belonged to a surly old man named -Morrison, a short-tempered fellow, always at variance with the squad, -whom he did not like. - -Jim was telling the story in the cart-shed. A blazing fire lit up the -place, shadows danced along the roof, outside a slight rain was falling -and the wind blew mournfully in from the hayricks that stood up like -shrouded ghosts in the gloomy stack yard. Presently a man entered, a -red-haired fellow with a limp in one leg and a heavy stick in his hand. -He was a stranger to Norah and Dermod, but the rest of the squad knew -him well and were pleased to see the man with the limp. Owen Kelly, -however, grunted something on seeing the stranger, and a look, certainly -not of pleasure, passed across his face. - -“How are ye, Ginger Dubbin?” Micky’s Jim shouted to the visitor. “By -this and by that ye look well on it.” - -“The bad are always well fed,” said Owen Kelly in a low voice. - -“Have ye the devil’s prayer-book with ye, Ginger?” asked Micky’s Jim. - -“Here it is,” said the man, drawing a pack of cards from his pocket and -running his hands along the edge of it. - -“We’ll have a bit of the Gospel of Chance,” said Murtagh Gallagher. - -“It’s no game for Christians,” remarked Owen Kelly, picking his teeth -with a splinter of wood. - -“D’ye know why Owen Kelly doesn’t like Ginger Dubbin?” Gourock Ellen -asked Dermod Flynn in a whisper. “No? Then I’ll tell ye, but never let -dab about it. Four years ago Ginger, drunken old scamp that he is, came -here and played cards with Owen, and Owen won at first, three shillin’s -in all. Then he began to lose and lost half a crown of the money that he -had won. ‘My God!’ said old Owen, and he was nearly greetin’; ‘My God! -that I have ever lived to see this day!’ He has never played since that. -D’ye play, Dermod?” - -“I used to play for buttons in Ireland.” - -“It’s a bad thing they are, the cards,” said Norah Ryan. - -“Turn it up or I’ll gie ye a dunt in the lug!” Micky’s Jim was shouting -to Willie the Duck, who was helping to turn the body of a disused cart -upside down. - -“Aye, sure,” said Willie the Duck, but as he spoke he fell prostrate on -his face, causing all who were watching him to burst into loud peals of -laughter. - -When the cart was laid down a game of banker commenced and most of the -squad joined in the game. Dermod Flynn watched the players for a little -space; then he rose to his feet. - -“Where are ye goin’?” Norah asked. - -“To look at the card-players.” - -“Don’t, Dermod!” - -“Why?” - -“Maybe ye’ll learn to play.” - -“And if I do?” There was a note of defiance in the boy’s voice, and it -was evident that Norah’s remarks had displeased him. - -“Well, do as you like,” said the girl in an injured tone. “But mind that -it’s a sin to play cards.” - -Dermod stretched himself, laughed and approached the table. Norah felt a -sudden fear overcome her: she wanted him back, and she was angry with -the cards--little squares of cardboard--that could lure Dermod away from -her side. - -He bent over the shoulder of Micky’s Jim, who was smoking and shouting -loudly. All the players, with the exception of Ginger Dubbin, were very -excited: Ginger hummed tunes with equal gusto whether winning or losing. -Most of the players used pence, but a few pieces of silver glittered on -the table, and Micky’s Jim had changed a sovereign. Dermod had never -gambled, although he had often played cards before; then the stakes were -merely buttons, that was not gambling; no one feels very vexed at having -lost a button. Something thrilled Dermod through as he looked at the -coins on the board; the two pieces of silver attracted him strongly. He -had one hand deep in his trousers’ pocket closing tightly over the money -in his possession. How exciting it would be to put something on that -card; he was certain that it would win! Dubbin turned up the card which -Dermod’s imagination pictured to be a good one, and showed an ace, the -winning card. If only he had staked a penny on it, Dermod thought! He -sat down beside Micky’s Jim and gazed across the board. - -“Another cut--for me,” he said, and his voice was a trifle husky. “I’m -going to play.” - -He put down a penny and won. - - -II - -The farmer’s son came into the shed. He was a strongly built, handsome -lad of twenty-one, and was employed as a bank clerk in Paisley. It was -now Saturday. He always returned home on week-ends and spent Sunday on -his father’s farm. Eamon Doherty was very pleased to see young Morrison, -who was a great friend of his, and sometimes, when the squad went home -at the end of the year, Eamon stopped with Morrison senior and worked -over the winter on the farm. - -The squad interested young Morrison. “These strange, half-savage people -have a certain fascination for me,” he told his friends in town--young -men and women with great ideals and full of schemes and high purposes -for the reformation of the human race. Morrison belonged to a club, -famous for its erudite members, one of whom discovered a grammatical -error in a translation of Karl Marx’s _Kapital_ and another who had -written a volume of verses, _Songs of the Day_. Young Morrison himself -was a thinker, a moralist, earnest and profound in his own estimation. -Coming into contact with the potato diggers on week-ends, he often -wondered why these people were treated like cattle wherever they took up -their temporary abode. Here, on his father’s farm, kindly old men, -lithe, active youths and pure and comely girls were housed like beasts -of burden. The young man often felt so sorry for them that he almost -wept for his own tenderness. - -Before entering the shed on this evening he had looked in at them from -the cover of the darkness outside. He noticed the fire shining on their -faces, saw old Maire a Glan telling her beads, the card-players bent -over the cart, the young women knitting, and the two harridans, Gourock -Ellen and Annie, holding out their hacked hands to the blaze. - -The gamblers were so interested in their game that they took very little -notice of the young man when he entered the shed; even Eamon Doherty who -was playing had scant leisure to greet the new-comer. Morrison sat down -on an up-ended box beside Gourock Ellen, who was stretching out her -lean, claw-like fingers to the fire. - -“Good-evening, Ellen!” he cried jovially, for he knew the woman, and -sitting down, stretched out one delicate hand, on the middle finger of -which a ring glittered, to the stove. - -“It may be a guid e’en, but it’s gey cold,” said Ellen. - -“There are many new faces here,” said Morrison, looking into the corner -where Norah Ryan was sitting, sewing patches on her working dress. The -girl was deep in thought. - -“Why has Dermod gone away and left me for them cards?” she asked herself -and for a while sought in vain for an answer. Then when it came she -thrust it away angrily and refused to give it credence, although the -answer came from the depths of her own soul. “He cares more for the -cards than he cares for me.” - -She looked up and saw the glint of the fire on the ring which the -visitor wore, and noticed that he was looking at her. She had not -noticed the man before. Never had such a well-dressed person visited the -squad. - -“It’s Alec Morrison, the farmer’s son,” old Maire a Glan, who was -sitting beside the girl, whispered. “He just comes in here like one of -ourselves, as the man said. Just think of that and him a gentleman!” - -Norah bowed her head, for Morrison’s eyes were fixed on her still. Why -did he keep staring at her? she asked herself and felt very -uncomfortable, but not displeased. And how that ring sparkled, too! It -must have cost a great amount of money. - -A wave of tenderness swept across Morrison as he looked at Norah. “She’s -too good for this sort of life,” he said inwardly as he noticed her -white brow, and the small delicate fingers in which she held the needle. -“It’s criminal to condemn a girl like her to such a life. The sanitary -authorities will not give my father permission to house his cattle in -the stall where that girl has now to sleep. That maiden to sleep there! -I, a man, who should be able to bear suffering and privation, sleep in -soft clothes that are clean and comfortable, and she has to lie in rags, -in straw, in a place that is not good enough for cattle. And all these -people are like myself, people with souls, feelings and passions....” - -“Have you just come to this country for the first time?” he asked Norah, -and when he put the question a sense of shame surged through him. - -“The first time,” answered the girl. - -“And you’ll not think much of Scotland?” he said. - -“People like yerself may like it,” said Maire a Glan; “but as for us, -it’s beyont talkin’ about.... In the last farm we had to sleep in a shed -that was full of rats. They ate our bits of food, aye, and our very -clothes. The floor was alive with wood-lice and worms.... The night -before we left the shed was flooded, and there was eighteen inches of -water on the floor. We had to rise from our beds in the bare pelt and -stand all night up to our knees in the cold water.... There’s Norah Ryan -getting red in the face as if it was her very own fault.” - -“Norah! What a pretty name,” said the young man. “And did she sleep in -that shed?” - -“The farmers think that we’re pigs,” said Maire a Glan harshly. “That’s -why they treat us like pigs.” - -“It’s wrong, very wrong,” said the young man, and his eyes were still -fixed on Norah. The girl wondered why he stared at her in such a manner. -He was handsome to look upon, clean-skinned, dark-eyed, and -well-dressed. She had never spoken to such a well-dressed man in all her -life before; but she felt frightened at something which she could not -understand and wished that the man was gone. An idea came to her that -she was doing something very wrong, and with this idea came fear, fear -of the unknown. - -Gourock Ellen, elbows on knees, her hands crossed over her breast and -her thumbs propping her chin, began to tell a story of one of her early -love affairs; how a man would not pay and how she took away his clothes -and vowed to send him out naked into the streets. Morrison listened -attentively and Norah, who did not understand the story fully, and who -was shocked at all she understood, wondered why the farmer’s son was not -horrified at this episode in the life of Ellen. - -About ten o’clock he rose to go and stood for a moment talking to -Micky’s Jim at the card-table. Norah examined him attentively. He was -well favoured and vigorous, and he spoke so nicely and quietly too! - -“Dermod Flynn is makin’ a fortune,” Jim was saying. Alec Morrison went -to the door; there he stood for a moment and looked back into the shed. -Norah glanced at the youth; their eyes met and both felt that this was -something which they desired. - -Morrison’s simplicity, his interest in the squad and his kindly remarks, -established a bond of sympathy between himself and Norah; but even yet -she could not understand why such a well-dressed youth had visited the -squalid shed in which the squad was staying. He seemed out of place; he -could not feel at home in such dirty surroundings. And he had gazed so -earnestly at her: in his eyes was a look of appeal, of entreaty. It -seemed to Norah that it was in her power to bestow some favour on the -youth, give him some precious gift that he desired very earnestly. -Filled with a mixed emotion of pleasure and natural modesty, the girl -wondered if all that had happened was real and if it had any -significance for her. - -“The way he looked at me!” she murmured in a puzzled voice. “And him a -gentleman talking to us as if we were of his own kind! He must be very -learned. And why didn’t Dermod Flynn stay with me here, not runnin’ away -to them old cards!” - -She glanced at Dermod, whose face was flushed and whose fingers trembled -nervously as he placed a silver coin down on the gaming-table, and -instinctively it was borne to her that something black and ugly had -crept into the purity of the passion which attracted her towards the -Glenmornan youth. - -“The blame’s all on me,” she whispered, hardly realising what she was -saying, and began to turn over in her mind every incident of the evening -from the time when she first noticed Alec Morrison sitting by the fire -up till the present moment. - -“Did you see the way that the farmer’s son was watchin’ ye, Norah Ryan?” -Maire a Glan asked. “His two eyes were on ye all the time. He’ll be -havin’ a notion of ye.” - -“That he will,” said Gourock Ellen, and both women laughed loudly. - -“And Maire a Glan, the decent woman, says that,” Norah whispered to -herself and blushed. “And them laughin’ as if there was nothing wrong in -it. Then there’s no harm in me speakin’ to the farmer’s son.” - -At the table the game was now fast and furious. None of the players -heard the women’s remarks. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - -IN THE LANE - - -I - -Sunday afternoon of a week later. - -Alec Morrison was walking along a sheltered lane towards the house, his -hands deep in his trousers’ pockets, a cigarette between his lips, and -his mind dwelling on several things which had taken place the week -before. On Sundays he liked to walk alone when there was nothing -extraneous to distract his mind, and then to ponder over thoughts that -thronged his brain from time to time. He was a Progressive, and the -term, which might mean anything to the general public, to Morrison meant -all that was best in an age that, to him, was extremely reactionary and -lacking in earnestness of purpose and clarity of vision. The young man -believed that he, himself, realised all the beauty and all the -significance of life and the importance of the task allocated in it to -man. He also imagined that he possessed unlimited powers and that in the -advance of humanity towards perfection he was destined to play an -important part. Most young men of sanguine temperament, who read a -little, paint a little, and write a little, have at times hallucinations -of this kind. The young man’s pet idea was that he, by some inscrutable -decree of Fate, had been appointed to show the working classes the road -towards a better life, towards enlightenment and prosperity. - -Up till very recently (he was now twenty-one) he had taken no notice of -the great class to which he did not belong. He lived in middle-class -society, was cradled in its smug self-conceit and nourished at the -breasts of affectation. He spent many years at school and now realised -that he had wasted his time there. After leaving school he entered a -bank in Paisley and spent a number of hours daily bending over a desk, -copying interminable figures with a weary pen. - -Seeing the conditions under which labourers wrought on his father’s farm -caused him to think seriously. Once when he was at home two persons, a -man and a woman, Donal and Jean, supposed to be husband and wife, got -employment in the steading. These two people were very ragged, very -dirty, and very dissolute. The woman’s face was hacked in a terrible -manner; her nose had been broken, and her figure looked more like a -maltreated animal’s than a human being’s. The man was low-set, stunted, -and weedy. Both drew their wages daily and got drunk every night. One -night when they had returned from a neighbouring village Morrison saw -them in their sleeping quarters. A disused pig-sty, no longer tenable -for animals, was handed over to these creatures. A pile of dirty straw -lay on the floor and on this the man and woman were sleeping, the man -snoring loudly, the woman lying face upwards; the blunt nails of her -bleeding fingers showed over the filthy bags which covered her body. A -guttering candle was dying in the neck of a beer-bottle beside them and -the smell of beer pervaded the place. - -“It must be an awful life, this,” he said to his father, who accompanied -him. - -“These kind of people think nothin’ of it,” his father said. “They get -drunk every night and are very happy. Whisky is the only thing they -want.” - -“Yes, they want something like that to live in a place like this.” - -What struck the young man forcibly at that moment was that the people -were like himself; that under certain conditions he might be just as -they were, even like the man lying under the dirty bag by the side of -the pockmarked harridan; and that man under favourable conditions might -be himself, Morrison, and full of glorious dreams for the betterment of -the race to which he belonged. - -That night Morrison slept little, and when sleep came he dreamt that he -lay with the old harridan under the dirty coverlet, his arms round her -and his lips pressed against the dry and almost bloodless lips of the -woman. In the morning the remembrance of the dream filled him with -horror. That such people should exist; that, under certain conditions, -he might be the man lying there in the pig-sty! He began to think -seriously of things. Then he came across a woman in Paisley--a woman who -belonged to the club of which he was a member--a woman whom he thought -was different to all others. She was progressive and pronounced in her -views and explained to Morrison how society from top to bottom, from -hall to hovel, from robes to rags, was an expression of injustice, of -wrong, of vice, of filth and moral decrepitude, and that in the interest -of the future race the social system had to be changed and society to be -renovated. Because she was very clever and good looking Morrison fell in -love with this woman. She was a typist in a merchant’s office. - - -II - -Thinking of many things, he sauntered towards the farm. The cigarette -went out; he threw it away and lit another. The evening was calm and -quiet; a few late birds were chirruping in the hazel bushes and -somewhere in the distance a dog barked loudly. The grey twilight that -links day and night was over everything. - -Suddenly Morrison perceived Norah Ryan coming towards him. She wore her -grey tweed, which showed to perfection the outlines of her slender -figure. In one hand she carried a book, the other hand hung idly by her -side. - -“Are you going for a walk, Norah Ryan?” Morrison asked when he met her. - -“I am,” she answered, hardly knowing whether she should stop and talk to -him or continue on her way. - -“You’re reading, I see.” He took the cigarette from his mouth as he -spoke, held it between finger and thumb and flicked the ash off with his -little finger. - -“Yes, I’m readin’,” she said, but did not tell him what book she held in -her hand; he could see, however, that it was a prayer-book. - -“When do the squad go to Ireland?” - -“Next Friday, if all goes well,” she answered. - -“So soon!” Morrison exclaimed, and in his voice there was a vague hint -of regret. “Are you glad to get home again?” he asked. - -“Yes.” - -“And the rest of the squad--what are they doing this evening? Are they -playing cards?” - -“The men are; the women are singin’, some of them; and Gourock Ellen and -Annie are mendin’ their clothes.” - -“It is getting dark quickly,” said Morrison. “Are you coming back now?” - -“Is it time?” she asked, then said, “I suppose it is.” - -He was going to the farm and it would be nice to have his company. She -had seen him going out and anticipated meeting him coming home. Perhaps -that was why she had come; if so she did not dare to confess it, even -to herself. She now thought that she should not have come; a tremor -shook her for a moment, then she turned and went back along the lane -with the young man. - -A car drawn by a white pony came up behind them, and they stepped nearer -to the line of hazel bushes to let it pass. They were now very close to -one another. - -“Some of the people on the next farm, coming home from church,” said -Morrison as the car was passing. “Watch that the wheels don’t catch you. -The lane is very narrow.... There!” - -He caught hold of her by the waist, drawing her close to him and -pressing her very tightly. - -“The car was almost running over you,” he said. - -“Don’t!” she cried, striving to get free. “Don’t now; it’s not right.” - -“The wheel ...” he said in a husky voice. “The lane is so narrow.” He -knew that he was telling a lie, but at the same time he felt very -pleased with himself. He had dropped the cigarette, which could be seen -glowing red on the dark ground. He released the girl, but would have -liked to catch her in his arms again. The vehicle went rumbling off into -the distance. “It is so very dark, too,” he muttered under his breath. - -They walked along together, both busy with their own thoughts, the girl -hot and ashamed, but curiously elated; the young man in some way angry -with himself for what he had done, but at the same time desirous of -clasping Norah again in his arms. - -“If I had someone to tell me what to do,” she said under her breath, but -knew instinctively that there was no one but herself to determine what -action should be pursued in an event like this. Even if advice were -proffered to her she knew that it would be useless. Something was -driving her to the brink of an unknown which she feared, and from which -there was no retreat and no escape. - -“You are stumbling,” said Morrison, and again caught hold of her. She -had not stumbled; it was a pretext on his part; he merely wanted an -excuse to hold her in his arms. She could see his hand on her sleeve and -noticed the gold ring sparkling in the darkness. - -In man there are two beings, the corporal and the spiritual; one -striving after that happiness which ministers to the passion of the -individual to the detriment of the race; the other which seeks for -happiness according to divine laws, a happiness that is good for all. -Yesterday, to-day, ten minutes before, this spiritual being presided -over Morrison’s destiny; now as he walked along the crooked lane, a lone -wind sighing in the hazel bushes and a few stars out above him, he felt -the animal man come and take possession of him. The rustling of Norah’s -petticoats as she walked beside him, the slight pressure of her little -rough fingers on his large smooth hand filled him with an insatiable -animal desire which held him captive. - -This was no new experience, and it possessed for him a certain charm -which in his saner moments he loathed, but now he could neither conquer -nor drive it away. - -“I like the bow in your hair,” he said in a hoarse voice that startled -the girl. “It suits you.” - -“I must be off and away now,” she said, freeing her hand from his, but -not drawing it away quickly enough to prevent him getting possession of -it again. “Let me go,” she said in a low voice. “Ye must let me go. What -would yerself be talkin’ to the likes of me for? There’s the farm!” - -“Don’t hurry away,” said Morrison, bending down and placing both arms -round her waist. For some reason which he could not fathom he felt -ashamed of himself, but he clasped her more tightly as he spoke. “Why -are you in so great a hurry? You’re better here. Is that young -fellow--Flynn they call him, I think--waiting for you? Micky’s Jim was -telling me all.” - -“He had no right to,” said the girl angrily, but refrained from drawing -herself away. “Dermod Flynn is nothin’ to me.” - -“I’m glad of that.” - -“Why?” - -Morrison did not answer. It would be unwise to commit himself in any -way, he thought, and for a moment he mastered the passion which filled -his body. The lights of the farm sparkled in front. The open shed was -facing them. The fire glowed red inside, and against it dark forms came -and went. He stooped down and kissed her three times and she could feel -his warm body press passionately against her own. - -Someone passed near them and Morrison let her go. She hurried off -towards the shed, and he could hear the patter of her boots as she ran. -She passed Dermod Flynn on her way; no doubt he had seen Morrison kiss -her, she thought. When she entered the shed Gourock Ellen, who was -bending over the card table, looked up and saw the flush of colour in -Norah’s face. Then Ellen noticed Dermod coming in and saw the troubled -look in the boy’s eyes. - -“Dermod’s been kissin’ ye, lass, I’ll warrant,” she whispered to Norah, -then turning round to Micky’s Jim, she opened his shirt front and ran -her fingers down his hairy chest. “Come on now, Jim, for that’ll gie ye -luck,” she cried. - -“Yes, decent woman, it’s sure to give me luck,” said Jim, throwing down -the cards and putting a match to his pipe. - - -III - -“What have I done, what’s Alec Morrison to me?” - -Norah asked herself as she looked in her little cracked hand mirror ten -minutes later. “He’s nothin’ to me, nothin’, nothin’; no more than -Dermod Flynn is. The two of them might so well be strangers to me. Now -why did he kiss me? Dermod never kissed me. I’m glad of that.” - -Norah looked round the byre, at the bunks in the stalls, the cattle -troughs and the candle burning on the iron stanchion. She was alone, the -other women were still out with the card-players in the shed. - -“I must be very good-lookin’,” she whispered to herself as her eyes -sought their reflection in the cracked mirror; then she blushed at her -girlish vanity and innocent pride. “And him so grand, too, a gentleman!” -But in some indistinct and indefinite way she felt that she would be -raised to his level. “And he kissed me--here.” She put her fingers over -her red lips. “But he’s nothin’ to me, nothin’. Dermod Flynn is nothin’ -either.” She knew that the first assertion was not true; the repetition -of the second gave her a certain pleasure. - -“Do I love two of them? Can one love two people?” she asked herself. -“But I’m not in love and never was. I like Dermod, but all the girls in -the squad like him.... Why did Alec Morrison kiss me, and him a -gentleman? It wasn’t my fault, was it?” She looked round and addressed -an imaginary person, a look of bewilderment settling on her face. - -“Did I go out to meet him this evenin’? Did I like his kisses? Is Dermod -Flynn angry? I couldn’t help liking Dermod; he is so good, so kindly. -But I’m a bad girl, very bad; all my life was full of sin. Pride and -vanity, what the Catechism condemned, are my two sins. I used to be -vain at school. I had two shoes and I was proud, because other people -wore only mairteens. I used to dress my hair and try and look nicer than -any other girsha; because I was vain. And now I’m vain because a -well-dressed gentleman talks kindly to me. God forgive me! Ah, this -looking-glass, I hate it! I’ll just have one look at myself and then -never get hold of a glass again.” - -She sat down on the bed and her fingers toyed with the potato sacks that -served as quilt. - -“Yes, he’s very nice and talks to us so kindly,” she whispered, and -again her eyes sought the mirror. “Oh, it was a fine evening, one of the -nicest ever I had.... They’re not too red, just pale, and when the blush -is in them I’m better lookin’ than at any time. Has any one in the squad -cheeks like mine?... Why did he want to kiss me? And my boots to one -side at the heels and the toe-cap risin’ off one of them. I wish I had -money, lots of it, gold, a crock of gold like the fairies leave under -the holly bush.... I could buy new dresses and maybe rings. Norah, don’t -let your hair hang down so far over your forehead, it doesn’t become ye. -A wee bit back there, no, here; that’s it. Now ye’re very good lookin’.” -“And to think of it as the first time and he has won fifteen shillin’s!” -said Maire a Glan, who had just entered the byre. “Fifteen shillin’s, -Norah!” - -“What?” - -“He won!” - -“Who?” - -“Who but Dermod Flynn?” said the old woman. “And him playin’ for the -first time!” - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - -THE END OF THE SEASON - - -I - -In a week’s time the squad was to break up: Gourock Ellen, Annie and the -two men who joined at Greenock, were leaving for Glasgow; Dermod Flynn -who, despite the initial success, had lost all his money at the -card-table, was going to remain in Scotland and earn his living at the -first job that came to hand. Such a little boy! Norah felt sorry for -him, but now he hardly deigned to look at her. When at work the far-away -look was always in his eyes and at night he played for hours on end at -the gaming-table. Most of the players said that he was awfully plucky -and that he would stake his last penny on a card and lose the coin -without turning a hair. - -For the whole week prior to departure Norah, who was now very restless, -laughed nervously when a joke was passed, but seemingly took no heed of -the joke. She was not unhappy, but in a dim, subconscious way felt that -she had done something very wrong. Before knowing Dermod intimately he -frightened her; it was only after knowing Morrison so well that she -became frightened of him. Dermod had never kissed her; she and the boy -were only friends, she said to herself time and again. Dermod was only a -friend of hers, nothing more. Sometimes when alone she said so aloud, as -if trying to drown the inner voice that told her it was not true. If -Dermod only ceased playing cards things might right themselves, she -thought, but deep down in her heart she wished everything to go on just -as at present. - -Morrison went to town on the day following the episode in the lane, but, -before leaving, told Norah that he would come back to see her prior to -her departure for Ireland. - -“Don’t tell anybody that I am coming back,” he said, and, while -wondering at his words, she promised not to tell. - -The squad was going on Friday; on Thursday night Morrison returned, a -rose in his buttonhole and a silver-handled stick in his hand. She saw -him enter the farmhouse as she returned from the field, her knees sore, -her clothes wet, and straggling locks of hair falling over her brow. At -supper she ate little but took great care over her toilet; scrubbed her -hands, which were very sore, until they bled, and spent nearly half an -hour before the little looking-glass which she had brought from Ireland. -She sorted her tresses, and put in its place an erring lock that -persisted in falling over her little pink ear. - -She put on her grey dress, tied a glossy leather belt around her waist, -laced her shoes, and when she had finished left the byre, which was lit -up by a long white candle stuck in the neck of a whisky-bottle, and went -out to the cart-shed where the squad assembled. - -Morrison was there before her, sitting beside Micky’s Jim on the end of -an upturned cart, and speaking to Maire a Glan about the hardships of -the field. Willie the Duck played his fiddle, now sadly out of tune; a -game of cards was in progress, and Dermod Flynn, who held the bank, was -losing rapidly. It was said that he had no money in hand except the -wages which he had lifted that day, and now it was nearly gone. What -would he do when all was spent? Nobody enquired, but it was evident -that he would not return to Ireland that winter. - -Norah entered, her head bent down a little, her hands clasped together -and a look of hesitation on her face. - -“Ha! there’s another one that’s for Ireland in the morning,” said -Micky’s Jim, taking the pipe from his mouth and spitting down between -his legs to the floor. It was to Norah that he spoke, and Dermod Flynn -ceased playing for a moment to glance over the rim of his cards at the -girl. But his mind was busy with something else and his eyes turned back -almost instantly to the gaming-table. He cared nothing for her, Norah -thought, and the idea gave her a strange comfort. - -“You’re going to-morrow as well as the rest?” said Morrison when the -girl drew up to the fire. He knew that she was going and felt that he -should have said something else. Presently, however, he asked: “Are you -glad?” - -“Yes,” she answered, but the look in her eyes might have meant “No.” -Morrison understood it thus, and the sensation which surged through him -on Sunday evening surged through him again. - -“Not goin’ to play any more; skinned out,” someone said at the table. -Norah glanced at the players and saw that Dermod Flynn had risen. He -approached the fire, one hand deep in his pocket, the other holding a -splinter of wood which he threw into the flames. He had lost all his -money; he hadn’t a penny in the world now. Gourock Ellen offered him a -piece of silver to retrieve his fallen fortunes. - -“If I don’t win I cannot pay you back,” he said, and sat down beside -Morrison and facing Norah. Fixing his eyes on the fire he was presently -buried in a reverie and the dreamy look of the schoolboy was again on -his face. One of his hands was bleeding; it had been torn on a jagged -stave which got loose on the rim of Norah’s basket earlier in the day; -his knees peeped out through his trousers and the uppers of both his -boots had risen from the soles. - -Norah gazed at him covertly, saw the wound on his hand, the bare knees -showing through the trousers, and the toes peeping through the torn -uppers. Then something glistened brightly and caught her eyes. It was -the ring on Morrison’s finger. The young man was speaking. - -“ ...and it will be ten months before you are back in the squad again. -Such a long time!” - -“It’s not much comfort we have in this country anyway,” said Maire a -Glan, who was turning the heel of a stocking, stopping for a moment to -run one of the needles through her hair. - -“I have got to go into the house now,” said Morrison, rising to his feet -and holding out a hand to the fire. “I hope you’ll all have a good -voyage across to-morrow night.” - -“The Lord will be with us,” said Biddy Wor, who had just come in from -the byre carrying a small frying-pan in one hand and a pot of porridge -in the other. - -“How long does it take to cross from Greenock to Londonderry?” Morrison -asked Biddy Wor, meanwhile fixing his eyes on Norah Ryan. - -“Derry, ye mean,” said the old woman. “We always say ‘Derry,’ but it’s -the foreigner, bad luck be with him! that put London on to it. From -Greenock it takes ten hours, more or less.” - -Morrison drew a cigarette from a leather case which he took from his -pocket. As he was lighting the cigarette he dropped the case and it fell -beside Norah’s feet. He bent down hurriedly. - -“Come out into the open, for I have something to say to you,” he -whispered in a low voice to Norah as he stooped; then he went out, -taking leave of the party in one “Good-night,” and five minutes later -Norah rose from her seat and followed him. - -“Where are ye goin’, girsha?” asked Maire a Glan. - -“Down to the byre,” said the girl without turning round. - -Morrison was standing in the shadow which fringed the fan-like stretch -of light thrown from the shade. - -“Is that you, Norah?” he asked, knowing well that it was she, and as he -spoke he took her into his arms and kissed her. To Norah there was -something dreadful in this kiss, and while not knowing that it gave -expression to the pent-up passion of the man, she felt nervous and -afraid. She looked back to the shed, saw the faces round the -gaming-table, old Maire knitting in the corner, her needles showing -brightly as the firelight played on them. A disused cart-wheel hung from -the wall; she had never noticed it before.... Here in the dark beyond -the circle of light something terrible threatened her, something that -she could not comprehend but which her beating heart told her was wrong, -and should be avoided. Why should she be afraid? Norah had all the -boldness of innocence: her virtue was not armed with that knowledge -which makes it weigh its every action carefully. Morrison was speaking, -asking her to come further out into the darkness, but she still kept her -eyes fixed on the shed. Safety lay there; freedom from what she could -not comprehend. The man had hold of her hands, pressing them tightly, -entreating her to do something. She freed herself from his grasp and ran -back to the shed, half glad that the whole incident had taken place, and -more than a little desirous to go out again. Her love for the -well-dressed youth imparted a recklessness to her timid nature. When she -went to her sleeping quarters two hours later old Maire a Glan -accompanied her. The gamblers were still playing, the fire blazed -merrily, and Ginger Dubbin held the bank and was winning heavily. - -“What’s that, that’s shinin’ in front of us?” asked Maire a Glan as she -came out. “Maybe it’s only seein’ things that I am, for me old eyes play -tricks in the darkness.” - -“It looks like a live spark lyin’ on the ground,” said Norah. - -“That’s not on the cold ground,” answered the woman. “See, it’s movin’! -It’ll be the farmer’s son with the gold ring on his finger. Now what -will he be after waitin’ for there?” - -“How am I to know?” said Norah, but in such a low voice that the old -woman had to draw near to catch the words. “I’m sleepy,” she said after -a pause; “it’s time we were in bed.” - - -II - -On the morning of the day following, the squad prepared for their -departure, and gathered up all their spare clothes, their pans and -porringers, and packed them in woollen handkerchiefs and tin boxes. The -blankets, eighteen in all, were tied up in a parcel, ready to be sent -off to the merchant in town. - -“God knows who’ll sleep in them next year!” said Willie the Duck in a -pathetic voice, and everybody laughed, some because they enjoyed the -remark and others because it was the correct thing to laugh at every -word uttered by Willie the Duck. - -Dermod Flynn watched the preparations with impassive face. He was not -going home; in fact, he had not as much money in his possession as would -pay the railway fare to the nearest town. All his wages had been lost on -the gaming-table; he had nothing now to rely on but the labour of his -own hands and the chance of getting a job. - -“What will ye do, Dermod?” Maire a Glan asked. - -“I’ll try and.... But what does it matter to you what I do? One would -think to hear you talk that I was a child.” - -“I suppose there’ll be a lot of drunk people on the boat this night,” -said Micky’s Jim as he tied a tin porringer in a rag and placed it in -his box. “There’ll be some fightin’ too, I’ll go bail.” - -“The Derry boat is the place for fightin’, as the man said.” - -“Aye, sure, and the Irish are very fond of fightin’ when they’re drunk.” - -“It’s more in the blood than in the bottle, all the same,” said Eamon -Doherty. - -“I mind one fight on the Derrier,” said Micky’s Jim, biting a mouthful -from the end of his plug. “I was in the fight meself. (If the cork comes -out of that bottle of milk, Owen Kelly, it’ll make a hell of a mess on -yer clothes.) It started below. ‘There’s no man here,’ said I, ‘that -could----’ (Them trousers are not worth taking with ye, Eamon Doherty. -No man would wear clothes like that; a person would better be painted -and go out bare naked)--‘that could put up his fives to me.’ (If ye -dress yer hair like that, Brigit Doherty, I’ll not be seen goin’ into -Greenanore with ye.) Then a man drove full but for my face and I took -the dunt like an ox. (Willie the Duck, are ye goin’ to take that famine -fiddle home again? Change it for a Jew’s harp or a pair of laces!) -‘That’s how a Glenmornan man takes it,’ says I, and came in with a clowt -to the jowl----” - -“Stop yer palaver about fightin’, Micky’s Jim, and let us get away to -the station,” said Maire a Glan. “We’ll not auction time while we’re -waitin’, as the man said.” - -“If we go off now we’ll only have three hours to wait for the train,” -remarked Jim sarcastically. - -“And poor Dermod Flynn,” said Maire a Glan, tying her bundle over her -shoulders with a string. “Not a penny at all left him. Where’s Norah -Ryan? She’s the girl to save her money.” - -At that moment Norah was outside with Morrison and the young man was -asking a question. The wish to find an answer to it had kept him awake -for nearly half the previous night. - -“Why did you run away from me yesterday evening, Norah?” - -“I was frightened.” - -“Of what?” - -“I don’t know.” - -“Well, I certainly don’t know what caused you to run away.” - -Morrison knew that, innocent though Norah was, some subtle instinct -warned her the night before to hurry off to the safety of the shed. - -“I would like to know why you did it, why you ran away, I mean?” he -asked, knowing in his own heart that, if she understood, she had good -reason to be afraid. “Does the girl understand?” he pondered. He had -heard them talk of most things in Micky’s Jim’s squad, but perhaps the -girl paid no heed to the talk. - -“Are you coming back next year?” he enquired. - -“It’s more nor likely.” - -“Do you care for the life in the squad?” - -“It could be worse.” - -“That’s no recommendation,” said Morrison with a laugh, but seeing that -Norah failed to understand him, he went on: “I don’t think you could -have a life much harder than this.” - -“I did not even kiss you last night,” he said after a short silence, -“and now you are going away and maybe never coming back again. I would -kiss you now, only some of the squad might see us, and you wouldn’t like -that.” - -But for the squad Morrison cared nothing. He was just on the point of -kissing Norah when he noticed his father looking at him through a window -of the farmhouse. Although not respecting his father overmuch, for old -Morrison was a hard-drinking and short-tempered man, the son did not -want the little love affair to be spoken of in the house. - -“If you stay to-night in Greenock, Norah, I’ll go down with you,” said -the young fellow. “Will you stay?” - -“Why should I stay?” asked Norah, who did not understand what Morrison’s -words meant. - -“Because--well, you see--” stammered the youth. “Oh! I think you’d -better go with the rest. I’ll see you next year.” - -He held out his hand, clasped hers almost fiercely and without another -word turned and went towards the house. On the way he lit a cigarette, -rubbed a speck of dirt from the knee of his well-creased trousers, and -wondered why he wanted to take possession of the innocent girl. Despite -his high-flown views on the equality of man, Morrison never thought of -marrying Norah. Besides, there was Ellen Keenans, the advanced woman and -author of _Songs of the Day_, and it was Ellen who taught him what man’s -conception of duty towards the race should be. At the present moment -Morrison did not see how he could fit in with Ellen’s teachings. - -That night most of the squad sailed for Ireland; Gourock Ellen and Annie -took their way to Glasgow, and Dermod Flynn set out on the open road, -ragged, penniless, and alone. - - - - -CHAPTER XX - -ORIGINAL SIN - - -I - -A year had passed; the potato season was over, but old Morrison, who was -making considerable improvements in his steading, had kept the squad to -work for him two months longer than usual, and all the party of the -previous year, with the exception of Dermod Flynn, Ellen, and Annie, was -there. Nobody in the squad knew where Dermod had gone, but rumour had it -that he worked during the previous winter as a farm hand on a farm near -Paisley. It was also said that he had done very well and had sent ten -pounds home to his people in Glenmornan. - -Norah Ryan had spent the winter and spring at home; her mother was still -alive, but seldom ventured outside the door of the cabin. “The coldness -of the dead is creeping over me,” she told Norah when the girl was -leaving for Scotland. “My feet are like lumps of ice, and when the cold -reaches my heart it will be the end, thanks be to God!” - -Norah felt deeply for her mother; the old woman had none now but her -daughter in all the world. Fergus had not been heard of for the last -three years; some said that the boy was dead, others that he was alive -and making a big fortune. Norah always prayed for him nightly when she -went down on her knees, asking the Virgin to send him safe home, and -“if he is dead to intercede with her Son for the repose of his soul.” - -At the end of each fortnight the girl, who earned twelve shillings -weekly, sent sixteen home to her mother. In four months Norah sent six -pounds eight shillings to Frosses, and a pound of this went towards the -expense of the priest’s mansion. The same amount had been paid the year -before and Norah was well-pleased, because now her father would rest -easily in his grave. “He’ll rest in peace now that all his lawful debts -are paid,” the old parish priest said. - -Micky’s Jim had fallen in love with Oiney Dinchy’s daughter and it was -said that he was going to get married to her when he went back to -Ireland. Owen Kelly was as niggardly as ever. Once during the year he -had bought a pennyworth of milk and at night he left it in a beer-bottle -beside his bed. In the morning the milk was gone and Owen wept! So -Micky’s Jim said; and Jim also circulated a story about a rat that drank -the milk from the bottle. - -“But that couldn’t be, as the man said.” - -“But it could be. I saw it while all the rest of ye were snorin’.” - -“There’s no standin’ your lies, Micky’s Jim.” - -“True as death ’twas a rat that drunk the milk,” Jim explained. “I saw -it meself. Stuck its tail down the neck of the bottle and licked its -tail when it took it out. Took two hours to drink the whole lot. I once -had a great fight and all about a bottle of milk----” - -It was Christmas Eve. Norah sat beside the coal fire which burned in the -large stove in Morrison’s cart shed, seeing pictures in the flames. -Outside there was no moon, but a million stars shone in a heaven that -was coldly clear. To-morrow the squad was going home. - -“I haven’t seen that fellow, young Morrison, for a whole year,” said -Maire a Glan, who was sewing patches on her dress. “I don’t like the -look of yon fellow; it makes me sick to see him sittin’ here, askin’ us -about how we do this and how we do that, what we do at home and how many -acres of land have we got in Ireland, and hundreds of other things that -the very priest himself wouldn’t ask ye.” - -“He’s a good youngster, for all ye say,” remarked Owen Kelly, who once -got a shilling as a tip from the young fellow. “That’s no reason for ye -takin’ such an ill will against him, Maire a Glan.” - -“I don’t like him atall, atall,” said the old woman doggedly. “There’s -something about him that I care little for.” - -“We all have our faults, Maire,” said old Biddy Wor. “And it goes -against the grain with me to speak ill of anybody, no matter who they -are. Ye’ve noticed that yerself.” - -“I couldn’t fail to, seein’ you’ve told me so often,” said Maire a Glan. - -“There are faults and faults,” remarked Eamon Doherty. “And some faults -are worse at one time than another. D’ye mind the beansho?” he asked, -turning to Biddy Wor. “Of course ye mind her. Well, the man that was the -cause of--ye know yerself--he got drounded at the fishin’ before he -could get married to Sheila. Her fault was not a great one atall, -atall.” - -“She was a brazen heifer, anyway,” said Biddy Wor. - -“Where is she now?” Eamon Doherty enquired. - -“No one knows atall, atall,” said Judy Carrol. “Maybe she’s a--a one -like Gourock Ellen, God be good to us all!” - -“I hear that she’s in Glasgow,” said Murtagh Gallagher. - -“Glasgow is the town to be in,” remarked Micky’s Jim, scraping the wet -tobacco from the bottom of his pipe. “By the hokey! It was a great place -for fightin’. One night I had seven fights hand running. A fellow named -Droughty Tom was shootin’ out his neck on the Docks. ‘What are ye -chewin’ the rag for, old slobber chops?’ I ups to him and says, shovin’ -my fist under his nose: ‘There’s a smell of dead men off that fist,’ I -said----” - -“We’re sick to the bottom of the grave of hearin’ about yer fightin’, -Micky’s Jim,” said Dora Doherty, who entered the shed at that moment. -“D’ye know who’s out there?” she asked. - -“No.” - -“It’s that youngster, Morrison,” said the woman. “I saw somethin’ black -in the darkness, and I thought it would be the farmer’s son.” - -Norah Ryan started forward in her seat, turned round, looked at Maire a -Glan, rose, and went outside. - - -II - -She had not seen Morrison for close on fourteen months, and he had never -written to her; but time and again she intended to post one of the -letters which she spent part of her time in writing to him. But they -were never posted, and often she wondered why she had written them. Why, -he wouldn’t care for her, she told herself many times. He was far above -her, a gentleman; she was only a poor worker, a little potato gatherer. -He had never written and perhaps he did not love her one little bit. She -felt angry and resentful with him, as she went out from the stuffy shed -and looked up at the starlit sky. - -Alec Morrison was waiting. Norah could see his dark form showing -against the white gable of the byre, and could hear the crunch of his -boots on the gravel as he changed his position. He had just come from -Glasgow; he was working there now and he had come down to see Norah -before she went back to Ireland. He had often intended to write to her -but never did. Other more pressing problems, relating to a new -sweetheart, a pretty little damsel in wonderful dresses and with no more -morals than a bird, took up his attention. He held out his hand to Norah -when she approached. - -“I’m glad you’ve come out,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve been waiting -here for quite a long while.” - -He had been waiting for her! Norah’s heart gave a bound of gladness. - -“But you never wrote to me,” she said reproachfully. - -“You didn’t write to me and I didn’t know your address.” - -That was really why he hadn’t written! How strange she had never thought -of that. - -“And ye would write?” - -“Certainly, Norah,” he said. He had not let her hand go, now he -imprisoned the other. How coarse they were and hard from her season’s -work! The hands of the Glasgow girl.... But he felt that he was doing -something wrong in comparing the two women at that moment. - -“Do you mind the last night you were here?” - -“I have often been thinkin’ of that night,” said Norah. - -“Are you going to run away from me to-night?” - -“No.” - -“Why did you run away the last time?” - -“I don’t know. Maybe it was that I was afraid.” - -She looked back at the shed as she spoke, saw old Maire a Glan bending -over the fire, Willie the Duck playing his fiddle; could hear the loud -laughter of Micky’s Jim. Norah looked up at the face of the man beside -her and was not in the least afraid. - -“We’ll go along the lane a bit,” he said. - -They went together hand in hand along the hazel-lined gravel pathway. -Overhead the stars sparkled, the trees, showing thin against the sky, -waved their bare arms in the slight breeze and moaned plaintively. -Willie the Duck was playing “Way down upon the Swanee River,” and it -seemed as if the melody drifted in from a great distance. - -“That’s a wonderful melody,” said the young man. “In it is the heart and -soul of a persecuted people.” - -He had heard somebody make that remark in the club and it appealed to -him. The girl made no answer to his words. They stopped as if by mutual -consent opposite the large shed in the stack yard. - -“It’s very cold,” said Morrison. - -“Is it? No.” - -“We’ll go in here,” said the young man. He pulled the gate of the stack -yard apart and went in, Norah following. A vague sense of danger, of -some impending menace, suddenly took possession of the girl. The sight -of the fire shining would be comforting, but she could not see the shed -now. Between her and it the farmhouse stood up white and lonesome. A -light glimmered for a moment in one of the rooms, then went out. -Somewhere near a dog barked loudly, another joined in the outcry; an -uneasy bird rose from the copse and fluttered off into the night. - -They entered the shed. Inside it was warm and quiet and the scent of old -hay pervaded the place. A strange fear, blending in some measure with -joy, came over Norah. Morrison’s arms were round her and she felt as if -she wanted to tell him some great secret. No thought of danger was now -in her mind. The problems of existence had never given her a moment’s -thought. All things were to her a matter of course, the world, the -trees, the flowers and stars, and men and women. Love in some vague way -she knew was related to marriage just as faith had some relation to -heaven. But the faith in God which was hers was something which she -never strove to analyse, and the love for the young man filled her being -so much at present that she could not draw herself apart from it and -consider the rights and wrongs of her position. - -Everything was so peaceful and quiet that it seemed as if all the world -were asleep and dreaming. Some words, hazy as the remembrance of almost -forgotten dreams, drifted into her mind. They were words once spoken by -Sheila Carrol at the hour of midnight on Dooey Strand. - -“When the earth is asleep, child, that will be a dangerous hour, for you -may then commit the mortal sin of love.” - -What did Sheila mean when she spoke like that? Why was she thinking of -those words now? Norah did not know. Before her was a great mystery, -something unexplainable, terrible. The great fundamental truths of life -were unknown to Norah; no one had ever explained to her why she was and -how she had come into being. She walked blindly in a world of pitfalls -and perils; unhelped by anyone she groped futilely in the dark for one -sure resting place, looked for one illuminating ray of certainty to -light up her path. At that moment the soul within the fair body of hers -warned her in some vague way of the danger which lay before her. “You -may commit the mortal sin of love.” - -What did those words mean? She wanted to run away, but instead she clung -closer to the man; she could feel his lips hot on hers and his breath -warm on her cheek. - - -III - -Something terrible had happened. The maiden’s purity, never sullied by a -careless thought, was sullied for ever. To the girl it appeared as if -something priceless which she loved and treasured had suddenly been -broken to pieces. Morrison stood beside her, his hands resting on her -shoulders, his breath short and husky; and his whole appearance became -suddenly repulsive to the girl. And the man wanted to be gone from her -side. He had desired much, obtained what he desired, but was now far -from satisfied. He felt in some vague, inexplicable way that she had -suddenly become distasteful to him. With other women he had often before -experienced the same feeling. He bent over the girl, who quivered like a -reed under his hands. - -“Are you going into the house?” he asked. He almost said “byre.” - -“I’ll go in myself,” she answered in a low voice. “Go away and leave -me.... Go away!” - -“Are you angry with me?” he asked. He was now ashamed of all that had -taken place, ashamed of himself and ashamed of the girl. In some -subconscious way it was borne to him that the girl was to blame. He -thrust the thought away for a moment but when it returned again he -hugged it eagerly. He wanted to believe it; he chose to believe it. - -“Good-night, Norah. I’ll see you again to-morrow before you go away.” He -released her arms and went out through the gateway. She could hear his -footsteps for a long while but never looked after him. A great fear -settled on her heart; she was suddenly conscious of having done -something terribly wrong, and it seemed as if the very fabric of her -life had been torn to shreds. Weeping, she stole back to the shed like -a frightened child. - -The party was in a great state of excitement. A rat chased by some -prowling dog had just run into the shed and passed between the legs of -Maire a Glan, who was warming her hands at the fire. - -“Mercy be on us! a dirty, big grey rat,” Maire was saying. “It was that -long, as the man said.” She stretched a long lean arm out in front of -her as she spoke. - -“If we caught it we’d put paraffin oil all over it and set fire to its -hair,” said Micky’s Jim. “That’s what scares the rats!” - -“Ye wouldn’t set fire to a dumb animal, would ye?” asked Brigid Doherty. - -“Wouldn’t I? What would yerself do with it?” - -“One might kill it in an easier way.” - -“Any way at all, for it’s all the same,” said Micky’s Jim. “Last year me -and Dermod Flynn killed a lot on yon farm in Rothesay. The farmer gave -us a penny a tail and we made lots of tin. How much did we make, Norah -Ryan?” he asked. “It’s yerself that has the memory and ye were always -concerned about Dermod.” “I don’t remember,” said Norah, who was -standing at the door of the shed. - -“The old mad farmer was goin’ to cheat us out of a tanner, anyway,” said -Micky’s Jim. “But I soon put up my fives to him. ‘Smell them fists,’ I -says to him----” - -“Ye never stop talkin’ about fights,” said Biddy Wor. - -“That’s the kind of him,” said Maire a Glan. “His people had the -contrary drop in their veins always. D’ye mind, Norah Ryan, the way -that----” - -But when the old woman looked round Norah had disappeared. She had -stolen out through the starlight to her bed, her mind groping blindly -with a terrible mystery which she could not fathom. - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - -REGRETS - - -I - -In the June of the following year Norah Ryan received a letter from -Scotland. It ran: - -“47, Ann Street, -“Cowcaddens, -“Glasgow. - - “MY DEAR NORAH, - - “It is a long while now since you heard a word from me. I often - intended to write to you, but my hand was not used to the pen; it - comes foreign to my fingers. I am not like you, a scholart that was - so long at the Glenmornan school-house with Master Diver. - - “I am working away here in Scotland, the black country with the - cold heart. I have only met one of the Glenmornan people for a long - while. That was Oiney Dinchy’s son, Thady, and he’s a dock labourer - on the quay. He told me all about the people at home. He said that - poor Maire a Crick, God rest her soul! is dead. Do you mind the - night on Dooey Head long ago? Them was the bad and bitter times. He - said that Father Devaney has furnished his new house and the cost - of it was thousands of pounds, a big lot for a poor parish to pay. - He also told me that you were over with the potato squad in - Scotland and that you were looked on with no unkindly eyes by a - rich farmer’s son. But whoever he is or whatever he is, you are too - good for him, for it is yourself that was always the comely girl - with the pleasant ways. Whatever you do, child, watch yourself - anyway, for the men that are in black foreign parts are not to - have the great trust put in them. - - “Mac Oiney Dinchy was saying that no word has come from Dermod - Flynn for a long time. He didn’t send much money home to his own - people and they think that he has gone to the bad. Well, for all - they say, Dermod was a taking lad when I knew him. - - “And old Farley McKeown--the Lord be between us and harm!--got - married! What will we see next? I wonder what an old dry stick like - him wants to get married for; and Mac Oiney Dinchy says that he - gave his wife sixty thousand pounds as a wedding present. Well, - well! - - “I do be lonely here often, and I am wishful that you would take up - the pen and write me a long letter when you get this one, and if - ever you come to Scotland again come to Glasgow and spend a couple - of days with me. - - “Hoping that yourself and your mother is in good health, - -“SHEILA CARROL.” - - - -“Who would that letter be from?” asked Mary Ryan from her seat in the -chimney corner. A pile of dead ashes lay on the hearth; the previous -summer had been wet and the turf was not lifted from the bog. - -“It’s from Sheila Carrol, mother.” - -“From that woman, child! And what would she be writing to you for, -Norah?” - -“She’s dying to hear from the Frosses people,” answered the girl. “And -it is very lonely away in the big city.” - -“Lonely!” exclaimed the mother. “If she is lonely it’s her own fault. -It’s the hand of God that’s heavy on her because of her sin.” - -“That’s no reason why the tongue of her country people should be bitter -against her.” - -“Saying that, child!” cried the woman. “What’s comin’ over you at all, -girsha? Never let me hear of you writing to that woman!” - -Norah went to the door and looked at the calm sea stretching out far -below. The waves were bright under the glance of the sun; a dark boat, a -little speck in the distance, was moving out towards the bar. - -“Where are you going, Norah?” asked the woman at the fire. - -“Down to the sea, mother,” answered the girl as she made her way towards -the beach. - - -II - -Between the ragged rocks the grass was soft to the feet and refreshing -to the eyes. Two lone sycamore trees showed green against the sky; a few -stray leaves, shrivelled and filed through by caterpillars, were -fluttering to the earth. A long fairy-thimble stalk, partly despoiled by -some heedless child but still bearing three beautiful bells at the -extreme top, whipped backwards and forwards in the wind, and Norah, -reaching forward, pulled off one of the flowers and pinned it to her -breast. - -The tide was on the turn. The girl sat on a rock by the shore and put -her small brown feet in the water. Down under the moving waves they -looked as if they didn’t belong to her at all. Here it was very quiet; -the universal silence magnified the tranquillity of things. Under the -girl’s feet it was very deep, very dark, and very peaceful; there, where -a reflected swallow swept through a wide expanse of mirrored blue, in -the sea under her, were no regrets, no heart-sickness, and no sorrow. -When the tide went out a fair young body, a white face with closed eyes -would lie on the strand. Then the Frosses people would know why the -terrible phantom, Death, was courted by a girl. - -“It was all a great mistake,” she said to herself, and in the -excitement caused by the stress of thought she sank her nails into her -palms. The memory of a night passed seven months before came vividly to -her mind. How many tearful nights had gone by since then! How many times -had she written to Alec Morrison telling him of her plight! No answer -had come; the man was indifferent. - -“I wasn’t the girl for the likes of him, anyway,” said Norah, looking at -her feet in the water. “But why has all this happened to me?” - -As in all great crises of a person’s life, there came a moment of vivid -consciousness to Norah and every surrounding object stamped itself -indelibly on her mind. The tide was sweeping slowly out; the seaweed in -the pool beneath swayed like the hair of a dead body floating in the -water. Two little fish with wide-open eyes looked up and seemed to be -staring at her. Beneath in the water the fleecy clouds looked like -little white spots against the blue of the mirrored sky, and the bar -moaned loudly on the frontier of the deep sea. - -“No matter what I do now, no one will think me worse than I am,” said -the poor girl. “I’ll have no joy no more in my life, for there’s no -happiness that I can look forward to.” - -She pulled the fairy thimbles from her breast and crushed them in her -hand. Out near the bar she could see the little black boat heaving on -the waves. Norah rose to her feet. - -How dark the water looked under her. The sand sloped sharply from her -feet to the bottom of the pool, which was bedded with sharp rocks -covered with trailing, slimy seaweed. She peered in, catching her breath -sharply as she did so. Then one little brown foot went further into the -water, afterwards the other. She bent down, cut the water apart with her -hands; a slight ripple spread out on both sides and was lost almost as -soon as it was formed. - -“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, pray for me a sinner now and at the hour of my -death, Amen,” she said, repeating a prayer which had flowed countless -times since childhood from her lips. - -A sudden thought struck her and a look of perplexity overspread her -face. “This is pilin’ one sin on top of the other,” she said in a low -voice and looked round, fearing that somebody had overheard her. -Everything about was silent as if in fear; in that moment she thought -that the sea had ceased to move, the swallow to circle, herself even to -live; the world seemed to be waiting for something--an event of great -and terrible purport, hidden and unknown. - -Suddenly the child that was in her leapt under her heart and a keen but -not unpleasant pain swept through her body. She drew back from the pool, -horror-stricken at the thing which she intended to do. - -“I’ll go home,” she said meekly, as if obeying some command. “Maybe -he’ll have pity on me when I go over again beyond the water. This day -week Micky’s Jim, he goes again. And I can go to Sheila Carrol. She -knows and she has the good heart. God in His heaven have pity on me and -all that’s like me! for it’s the ignorant girl that I was.... If anyone -had told me.... But I knew nothin’, nothin’, and I’m black now in the -eyes of God as I’ll soon be black in the eyes of the world, of Dermod -Flynn, of me mother and everybody that knows me. Nobody will speak to me -then atall, atall!” - - - - -CHAPTER XXII - -ON THE ROAD - - -I - -A dead weight lay on Norah’s heart; the child beneath her heart was a -burden. But even yet (it was now the month of August) those in Micky’s -Jim’s squad did not suspect her condition. She knew, however, that she -could not conceal her plight much longer, and she wanted to run away and -hide. How could she endure the glance of her country people, of Micky’s -Jim and Maire a Glan, when the truth became known? - -The squad would soon set off to Morrison’s. Things would go well if once -she got there, she assured herself. At present she wished that she had -someone to confide in, somebody to whom she could tell her story. But in -the squad there was none whom she could take into her confidence. The -old women from Glenmornan and Frosses, brimful of a narrow, virtuous -simplicity, were not the ones to sympathise with her; they would only -condemn. If Gourock Ellen was here, Norah felt that she could sigh her -misfortune into that woman’s heart; but neither Gourock Ellen nor Annie -had turned up for the last two years, and nobody knew what had become of -them. - -One day Norah felt that her secret was discovered. No one spoke of it; -no one hinted at her condition, but all at once a curious feeling of -restraint, of suspicion, charged the atmosphere of the barn and potato -field. Whenever she asked a question those to whom she spoke fixed on -her a stare of thinly-veiled pity, not pity in essence but in design, -before replying. Once or twice when ploughing through the fields, her -head bent upon her work, she glanced round covertly to see the eyes of -everybody in the squad fixed on her. No one spoke and all silently -resumed their work when she looked at them. The silence terrified and -crushed the girl. “How much do they know?” she asked herself. That -afternoon as she ploughed her way through the wet fields Micky’s Jim -came up and stood behind her. Instinctively she knew that he was going -to speak and she waited his words in fear and trembling. - -“Norah Ryan,” he said, and his words came out very slowly, “who is to -blame? Is it----” - -Jim bent down, lifted a potato which she had passed over, threw it into -the barrel and left the sentence unfinished. - -It was Friday, the day on which the weekly wages of the party were paid. -That night, when Norah received her money, she stole away from the squad -intending to call on Alec Morrison. - - -II - -It was the last day of August. The swallows and swifts circled above -Norah’s head and from time to time swept down over the sodden pastures -where the farm cattle were grazing. The birds snapped greedily at the -awkward crane-flies that were now rising on their great September -flights. Morrison’s farm was twenty miles distant, and not wanting to -spend the money which she had earned at her work, Norah travelled all -night long. In the morning she found that she had lost her way and had -to retrace her steps for full seven miles in order to regain her former -course. At a wayside post-office she sent half the money in her -possession home to her mother. Late in the evening, feeling footsore and -very weary, she came to the farm. Although she had not eaten food since -leaving the squad she did not feel in the least hungry. Now and again -dizziness seized her, however, and a sharp pain kept tapping as if with -a hammer in her head. - -“Everything will be all right now,” she said as she saw the lights of -the farm glowing through the haze of the evening, but for all that she -said the grave doubts which weighed upon her could not be shaken away. -She entered the farmyard. A few stars were out in the sky, a low wind -swept round the newly-built hayrick and the scent of hay filled her -nostrils. Alec would surely be at home. She uttered the word “Alec” -aloud; she had never given it utterance in his presence, she -recollected, and wondered why she thought of that now. - -The windows of the house were lighted up, and a long stream of light -quivered out into the darkness. Norah approached the door, stood for a -moment looking at the shiny brass knocker but refrained from lifting it. -She was very frightened; the heart within her fluttered like a little -bird that struggles violently against the bars of the cage in which it -is imprisoned. One frail white hand was slowly lifted to the knocker; -between the girl’s fingers it felt very cold and she let it go without -moving it. A great weariness had gripped her limbs, and her hand, heavy -and dead, seemed as if it did not belong to her. - -She came away from the door and approached the window. She could hear -loud laughter from the inside and somebody was playing on the piano. A -dark blind hid the interior of the room from her view, but the light -streaming out showed where the blind had been displaced at one corner, -and pressing her brow against the pane Norah looked in. - -The piano suddenly ceased; a frail shadow came between the light and the -window; then a young and beautiful girl passed like a vision across the -stretch of room open to the watcher’s eyes. Norah’s glance took in the -girl for a moment; she noticed a fair head firmly poised, a small hand -raised to brush back the tresses that fell down over a white brow. Even -as the small hand was raised, a hand, larger, but almost as white, -reached out and the fingers of the girl were gripped in a firm embrace. - -Norah started violently, hitting her head sharply against the -window-pane, and with difficulty restraining the cry that rose to her -lips. The hand, white as a woman’s almost, with the glittering ring on -the middle finger, how well she knew it. And who was the fair girl, the -fleeting and beautiful vision on whom she looked in from the cold and -darkness of the night? Norah did not know, but instinctively she felt -rising in her heart a great resentment against the woman in the room. -Hatred filled her soul; her breath came sharply through her nostrils and -a mist gathered before her eyes. - -“I’m not goin’ to cry!” she said defiantly, and began to weep silently -even as she spoke. - -A withered husk of moon crept up the sky; a dying wind moaned feebly on -the roof overhead and on the ground beneath the girl’s feet; a -blundering moth struck sharply against her face, fell to the ground, -rose slowly and as slowly disappeared. All around was the vast breathing -silence of the infinite, the mystery of the world. - -Norah looked into the room again and old Farmer Morrison was facing her, -a long white pipe in his mouth and a starched collar under his chin. A -broad grin overspread his face, and he looked like a fat, serious frog -that had suddenly begun to smile. The upturned end of the blind slowly -fluttered down and the whole interior of the room was hidden from the -girl’s eyes. - -“Here am I out in the cold, and everyone is happy inside,” said the poor -girl, pressing her hand tightly against her breast as she spoke. “What -was I doin’ atall, atall, when I was here before? How I call to mind -that night of all nights, a dear night to me! And it is forever written -red in my soul.... There he’s in there and in there is another girl--not -me. I’m out here in the cold.... Mother of God! What am I to do?” - -Norah went back from the window, caring nothing for the noise she made; -caring little for what might now happen to her. Her face twitched, her -breath stressed through her nostrils, her shoulders rose slowly and fell -rapidly. The breeze gathered strength; it swept as if in a light passion -around the farmyard and caused the girl’s skirts to cling closely about -her legs. She leant for support against the shed in which Micky’s Jim -and his squad had taken up their quarters so often. How bare and lonely -the place looked now! Somewhere in the far corner a rat was gnawing at -the woodwork with its sharp teeth; presently it ran out into the open, -moving along rapidly, but as softly as a piece of velvet trailed on -polished wood. - -At that moment an intense and sudden revulsion of feeling took place -within Norah. She was filled with a strange dislike for everything and -everybody. A great change began to operate in her soul. In one vivid -flash the whole world lay as if naked before her. Man lived for pleasure -only; he had no thought for others; he cared only for himself, his -passions and desires. What had she been doing all her life? Working for -others, slaving that others might be happy. She worked to bring money -to the landlord (ah! the dresses that the landlord’s daughters wore!), -to Farley McKeown (ah! the lady that got sixty thousand pounds to become -his wife!), and to the priest (ah! the big mansion and the many rooms!). -At this awful moment she dared not go to one of her people for help. -Even her mother would give her the cold glance if she went home; she -might shut the very door in her daughter’s face. There was nobody to -care for her--but even at that moment she recollected Gourock Ellen and -Sheila Carrol, and felt that in these two women great wells of sympathy -were open and at these she might refresh her weary soul. - -Before her for an instant the world lay exposed to its very core; then -as if by a falling curtain the sight was hidden again from her eyes and -she found herself, a lonely little girl, leaning against the cold wall, -her head sunk on her breast and her numb fingers, that almost lacked -feeling, pressing against the rough masonry of the shed. A great wave of -self-pity surged through the girl and she burst into tears. - -She took no heed of the voice near her, did not see the dark forms which -stood beside her, and only started violently and looked round when a -hand was laid upon her shoulder. Two persons, a man and a woman, were -looking at her. But even then in the terrible isolation of her own -thoughts she took little heed of the strangers. She gazed at them -vacantly for a moment, then turned towards the wall again as if nothing -interested her but the bleak shed and the rats squeaking in the corner. -When, after a moment, the strange woman ventured to speak, Norah looked -round in surprise. She had forgotten all about the two people. -Recollection of having seen them before came to her; they were the man -and woman that had made such an impression on Morrison when he viewed -them sleeping in the pig-sty. - -“What’s wrong with ye?” asked the woman in a not unkindly voice. Norah -could detect the odour of whisky in her breath and concluded that both -the man and woman were drunk. - -“Poor girl!” said the man when Norah did not answer. He looked closely -at her and seemed to understand her plight. “Poor lassie!” he -repeated.... “Where’s yer folk? Ah, I know who ye are, for I saw ye -before. Ye were here with the tattie diggers last year, weren’t ye?” - -“Come doon to the shed with us,” said the woman. “It’s warmer there than -here.” - -The woman took the girl gently but firmly by the hand and led her into -the sty in which herself and the man lived. Norah made no protest and -followed the woman without a word. In the dwelling-place of the man and -woman it was very dark and rats were scampering all over the place. - -“Jean,” said the man on hearing the scurrying in the corner, “rats!” - -“Last night they ate all our food,” said the woman. - -“Last night, Jean?” interrogated the man. - -“The night before,” the woman corrected. - -The man drew a match from his pocket, rubbed it on his trousers and lit -a candle stuck in the neck of a black bottle which stood on the floor. -Near it a small pile of wood, hemmed with a few lumps of coal, was ready -for lighting. To this the man applied the match and in a few minutes the -fire was burning brightly. A dark smoke rose to the roof, which was -broken in several places; something small like a bird fluttered out from -the rafters and whirred in the air above. - -“Jean,” said the man, “a blind bat!” - -“Sit doon here, lass,” said the woman, drawing forward a splintered -chest and placing it beside Norah. “We’ll gie ye somethin’ to eat in a -meenit. Are ye hungry?” - -“Not hungry,” said Norah, sitting down on the box, “but dry.” - -“This is what ye need,” said the man, drawing a bottle from his pocket -and handing it to the girl. - -“I don’t drink,” said Norah. “I’ve the pledge.” - -“Jean,” said the man, looking at his wife and pointing to a tin -porringer which lay on the ground beside him, “water.” - -The woman went out and returned in a few minutes with a porringer of -water which she handed to Norah, who drank deeply. - -“Jean,” said the man, uncorking the bottle which he held in his hand, -“drink!” The woman returned the bottle when she had drunk a mouthful. - -“Jean, tea!” - -The woman emptied the porringer from which Norah had drunk and went out -again. - -“She’s a rare body that!” said the man to Norah when the woman clattered -away through the darkness. “I like her, I like her--like----” he paused -for a moment and bit the nail of his thumb; “like blazes!” he concluded. - -Norah looked round and took a sudden interest in the place. An -instinctive liking for this man and woman crept into her soul. True they -were both half-tipsy, and the man now and again without any apparent -reason uttered words which were not nice to hear. - -“Yer wife is a kindly woman,” said Norah, breaking through the barriers -of her silence. - -“Wife!” said the man and laughed a trifle awkwardly. “Wife! Well, I -suppose it is all the same.” - -The man was a stunted little fellow, unshaven and ragged, but his -shoulders were very broad. The little finger of his left hand was -missing and his toes peeped out through his boots. His teeth were -stained a dirty yellow with tobacco juice. - -“It’s not much of a place, this,” he said. “We never have much company -here ’cept the bat that lives in the rafters and the wind that comes in -by the door and the stars that look down through the roof.” - -He laughed loudly, but seeing that Norah did not join in his laughter, -he suddenly became silent. Norah’s eyes again roved round the place. It -was dirty and squalid, well in keeping with the occupants. A potato -barrel stood in one corner; beside it was a pile of straw covered with a -few dirty bags. This was the bed. The guttering candle gleamed feebly in -the corner and the grease ran down the bottle. Overhead the bat was -still fluttering madly, hitting against the joists every moment. - -The woman re-entered the shed and placed the porringer of water on the -fire; the man went to the barrel, lifted the bag which served as a -cover, and brought out little packets of food. - -“Can I be of any help to you?” asked Norah, rising to her feet. - -“Ye’re tired and worn,” said the woman. - -“Jean,” said the man, “don’t let the lass work.” - -Norah sat down again. A box came from the dark recess of the room; the -woman wiped it with her apron and laid it on the floor by the fire. The -man placed a loaf, some sugar, a piece of butter, and a tin mug on the -table. - -“Donal,” said the woman suddenly, “milk.” - -The man went out and returned in about ten minutes with some warm milk -at the bottom of a large wooden pail. - -“We just get a wee drop from the farmer’s cows when there’s nobody -about,” he explained. - -When tea was ready the girl was handed the tin porringer filled to the -brim; the pannikin in which the tea was made served the other two, both -drinking from the vessel in turn. Norah ate the bread greedily; she felt -very hungry. The man and woman had recourse to the bottle once more when -the meal was finished. - -“Where is the tattie squad now?” asked Donal. - -“Down at G---- farm, near S----,” answered Norah. - -“Donal, dinna speir,” said the woman in a sharp voice. - -“Jean, haud yer tongue,” answered the man, but he did not press the -question when he noticed a startled look steal into Norah’s eyes. - -“Things maun be some way,” said the woman in a voice of consolation, -though she seemed to be addressing nobody in particular, “and things -will happen.” - -“There’s great goings-on in there,” said Donal, pointing his thumb over -his shoulder in the direction of the farmhouse. “Morrison’s son has been -and engaged to a young lady. Happen that ye may have seen the young man -when ye were here afore.” - -Norah looked at Donal straight in the eyes and he felt that she was -seeing through him into a world far beyond. The man looked at Jean; -their glances met and a message flashed between them. - -“Him!” said the woman. - -“The feckless rascal!” exclaimed the man. - -He threw another lump of coal into the fire, kicked the others into a -riotous blaze, shook up the straw in the corner and spread out the -blankets and bags. - -“Bed, lassie,” he said to Norah, pointing at the straw. - -“But where’ll yerselves sleep?” asked the girl. - -“Jean, where’ll we doss?” - -“By the fire,” answered the woman. - -“But it’ll be wrong of me,” said Norah; then stopped and left the words -that rose to her tongue unuttered. Sleep was stealing over her; she -shut her eyes. A gentle arm was laid on her shoulders; she rose, because -a voice suggested that she should rise, and afterwards found herself -lying on the bed of straw. - -A vision of a lighted window came to her; she was looking in at the man -she loved and his lips were pressing those of another woman. Then scenes -and objects vague and indistinct passed before her eyes, big dark -shadows mustered together in the centre of the roof above her, then -other shadows from all sides rushed in and joined together, trembled and -became blended in complete obscurity. Norah fell asleep. - -“Poor lassie!” said Donal, throwing himself down on the floor by the -fire, “poor lassie!” - -“God have pity on her,” said the woman; “and her sic a comely lass!” - - - - -CHAPTER XXIII - -COMPLICATIONS - - -I - -On the night of Norah’s arrival at the steading Alec Morrison slept -well, but wakened with the dawn and sat up betimes. He was very pleased -with himself and his position at the bank; things had gone well, his -father had doubled his allowance, and on the strength of that the young -man had become engaged. - -He had broken with the little girl in Glasgow; for while admiring her -good looks he deplored her lack of intelligence. She spent a great deal -of her time in dressing herself, and Morrison knew that there would come -a day when dresses would not please, when a husband would require -something more worthy of respect, something more enduring than pretty -looks and gaudy garments. Besides this drawback there was another. The -girl, who took her good looks from her mother, long dead, had a -grasping, greedy father whom nobody could love or admire. Morrison had -met him twice and disliked him immensely. He was a dirty little man and -generally had three days’ growth of hair on his chin. When shaking hands -his thumb described a curious backward turn, forming into a loop like -one of those on the letter S. The daughter had the same peculiarity. -Before meeting the father this movement of the girl’s thumb amused -Morrison; afterwards it disgusted him. Finally he took his departure -and again got into tow with Ellen Keenans, the live woman with advanced -views ten years ahead of her age. Morrison fell in love easily, -indifferently almost. He was an attractive young man, well built and -muscular, who cultivated the art of dress with considerable care. All -good-looking women fascinated him, but none held him captive for very -long. He had become engaged to the girl with the advanced ideas and took -her to his people’s home. The old farmer liked her but did not -understand many of the things of which she spoke. That was not to be -wondered at, seeing that he was a plain, blunt man, although a gentleman -farmer, and the girl was ten years ahead of her time. - - -II - -Alec Morrison, the sleep gone entirely from his eyes, his face a little -red after shaving, came downstairs to the breakfast-room. Ellen Keenans -was sitting on the sofa, a book in her hand. - -“Up already, dear?” asked Morrison, and bent to kiss the girl. She laid -down the book which she had been reading and met the kiss with her lips. - -“The country life is so quiet, so refreshing; one cannot have too much -of it,” she said, drumming idly with her fingers on the edge of the -sofa. - -“What are you reading, dear?” the young man asked. - -“Kautsky’s _Ethics of Materialist Conception of History_.” - -“Rather a big thing to tackle before breakfast.” - -She cast a look of reproof at the young man, lifted the book from the -table, then, as if something occurred to her, laid it down again. - -“You haven’t read it, I bet,” she said; then before he could answer: -“You promised last night to let me see some queer people--” - -“Wrecks of the social system.” - -“--who live on this farm.” - -“An old man and woman,” said Morrison. “A quaint pair they are, stunted -and seedy. They seem to have no souls, but I suppose deep down within -them there is some eternal goodness, some fundamental virtue.” - -“Who are you quoting?” asked the girl, getting to her feet. “Where are -these two people?” - -“In an outhouse near by,” he told her. “It’s terrible the abyss to which -some people sink,” he went on. “How many of these derelicts might be -saved if some restraining hand was reached out to help them, if some -charitable soul would take pity on them.” - -“When did you begin to look upon charity as a means of remedying social -evils?” asked the girl almost fiercely. “Charity is a bribe paid to the -maltreated so that they may hold their tongues.” - -Morrison, as was his custom when the girl spoke in that manner, became -silent. - -“In here,” he said when they arrived at the dilapidated door of the -pig-sty. - -“In there?” questioned the girl and looked at Morrison. - -Morrison entered with rather an important air; he was showing a new -world to his fair companion. The girl hesitated for a moment on the -threshold, then followed the young man into the dark interior. - -Donal and Jean were seated at the fire drinking tea from the same can. -On a small and dirty board which lay on the ground between them a chunk -of dry bread and a little lump of butter could be seen. The two -occupants of the sty took very little notice of the visitors; the man -said “Good-morning” gruffly, the woman looked critically at the girl’s -dress then went on with her meal. - -“It must be cold here,” said the young girl, looking curiously round and -noticing a streak of grey daylight stealing through the roof. - -“Jean, is it cold here?” asked the man by the fire, biting the end of -his crust. - -“As cold as the grave,” answered the woman. - -Ellen Keenans looked closely at the speaker. The broken nose, almost on -a level with her face, the pockmarked flesh of the cheeks and chin, the -red eyelids, the watery, expressionless eyes filled the young lady with -nauseous horror. In the renovated society of which Ellen Keenans dreamt, -this woman would be entirely out of place, just as much as her -sweetheart and herself with their well-made clothing, their soft leather -shoes and gold rings, were out of place here. And these two people, the -man who wolfed up his bread like a dog and the woman with the disfigured -face, might have something great and good in their natures. Alec had -given such sentiments voice often. How noble-minded he was, she thought. - -The door of the building faced east. The early sun, rising over a bank -of grey clouds, suddenly beamed forth with splendid ray and lit up the -dark interior of the sty. This beautiful beam disclosed what the -darkness had hidden, the dirt and squalor of the place. - -The floor, on which crawled numberless wood lice and beetles, was -indented with holes filled with filthy smelling water, and the blank -walls were literally covered with reddish cockroaches. The sunlight -beamed on a spider’s web hanging from the roof; the thin silky threads -were covered with dead insects. Rats had burrowed into the base of the -walls and the whole building was permeated with an overpowering and -unhealthy odour. Ellen Keenans glanced up at the joists where the -sun-rays struck them, then down the stretch of dark slimy wall, down, -down to the floor, and there, in bold relief against the darkness, she -saw in all its youthful beauty the face of a sleeping girl. Ellen turned -an enquiring glance to the woman by the fire; then to Morrison, whose -face wore a troubled expression. - -“Who have you here, Donal?” asked the young man. - -“A lass that we found greetin’ outside your door last night,” said the -man, this time not appealing to Jean for an answer. “Happen that ye know -her?” - -The two by the fire looked at the young couple. The woman’s watery eyes -took on a new expression; they seemed suddenly to have become charged -with condemnation and contempt. - -“Is she one of Jim Scanlon’s squad?” asked Morrison. Although putting -the question he had recognised Norah instantly, and now he wished to be -away. Donal and Jean looked suddenly terrible in his eyes; the pity he -felt for them a moment ago now gave place to a fear for himself. Odd -little waves of expression were passing over the woman’s face and in her -eyes he read a terrible accusation. - -“It was all her fault, not mine,” he muttered under his breath. “That -night and the dog howling and the stars out above us.... But it was all -her own fault. Why did she keep following me about? She might have known -that I could never have.... We’ll go back to the house now,” he said -aloud to Ellen Keenans. “We’ve seen all that is to be seen.” - -The girl glanced at him interrogatively, curious. “Who is she?” came the -question. - -“Ye’ll soon know,” said the woman by the fire, rising and going to the -shake-down by the wall. “Wake up, lass!” she cried to the sleeper. - -Norah rose in bed, her mind groping darkly with her surroundings. She -had been dreaming of home and wakened with a vivid remembrance of her -mother’s cabin still in her mind. The light of the sun shone full in her -face and she lifted her hand up to shield her eyes. Then in a flash it -was borne to her where she had spent the night. Several dark objects -stood between her and the door; these developed into a grouping of -persons, in the midst of which Alec Morrison stood out definitely. -Norah, fully dressed, just as she had gone to sleep, moved towards him. - -“Alec Morrison, I’ve come back,” she said, paused and looked at the girl -beside him, then began to talk hurriedly. “I left the squad the day -before yesterday; I travelled all the dark night and lost me way, for me -mind would be busy with the thoughts that were coming to me.... Last -night I came to yer door.... Alec Morrison, why are ye so scared -lookin’? Sure ye’re not afraid of me!” - -Morrison was in a very awkward fix, and this he confessed to himself. He -never intended to marry the girl and never for a moment thought that the -adventure of Christmas Eve would lead him into such a predicament. “And -you are as well rid of her,” some evil voice whispered in his ear. “Look -at her as she is now. Is she a suitable companion for you?” Morrison -gazed covertly at the girl. Her hair, which had not been combed for two -days, hung over her eyes and ears in tangled tufts; even the face, which -still retained all its splendid beauty, was blackened by the dust which -had fallen from the roof during the night. - -“Are ye goin’ to do the right thing to the girl?” asked Donal. “It’s the -only way out of it if ye have the spirit of a man in ye.” - -Morrison gazed blankly at the man, then at Norah. A fierce and almost -animal look came into her eyes as she faced him. - -“I’ll do the right thing,” he said in a hoarse voice and turned and went -out of the building, Ellen Keenans following at his heels. Norah watched -them go, making no effort to detain them. When they went out she -tottered towards the wall, reaching upwards with her hands as if wanting -to touch resignation. - -“It’s all over!” she exclaimed. “It’s him that has the black heart and -will be goin’ to do the right thing with little bits of money. The right -thing!” She leant against the cockroach-covered wall, her little voice -raised in loud protest against the monstrous futility of existence. - - -III - -An hour later Morrison returned to the sty, carrying gold in his pocket -but feeling very awkward. He and Ellen had quarrelled. When they went -out into the open from the sty she turned on him fiercely. - -“How many of these souls might be saved if some restraining hand was -reached out to help them!” she quoted sneeringly. - -“But, Ellen, it was more the girl’s fault than mine. And when one is -young one may do many things that he’s sorry for afterwards. And I’ll do -the right thing for the girl.” - -“The right thing?” queried Ellen Keenans, and a troubled expression -settled on her face. “But you cannot. It’s impossible. To two----” - -“I’m wealthy now, you know. My allowance----” - -“Oh, I see,” said the girl and, strangely enough, a suggestion of relief -blended with her voice. - -“I suppose you’ll think me a prig, Ellen,” said the young man. “But it -wasn’t altogether my fault, neither was it the girl’s, I suppose. I -suppose it was fate.... The girl won’t be highly sensitive. I’ve seen -ones working here on the farm, young women, and they made a slip. But it -did not seem to affect them. And we all make mistakes, Ellen....” - -His speech came to an end and he left her and went towards the house; an -hour later he re-entered the sty. - -The woman with the pock-marked face looked at him angrily. Norah sat -beside her on the upturned box, one arm hanging loosely by her side, the -other resting on her knees, the hand pressed against her chin and a -tapering finger stretching along her cheek. The old woman had given -Norah a broken comb to dress her hair and now it hung to her waist in -long, wavy tresses. But in the middle of the work she had dropped the -comb and fallen into a deep reverie. - -“I’ve come to see you,” Morrison began with an abruptness which showed -that he wanted to hurry over a distasteful job. He was going to make -atonement for his sin, and atonement represented a few pieces of gold, a -few months’ denial of the luxuries which this gold could procure. He -looked straight at Norah’s bowed head, taking no notice of the other -occupants of the hovel. - -“I’ve come to see you,” he repeated, but the girl paid no heed to him. -He drew an envelope from his pocket, shook it so that the money within -made a loud rattle, and placed it on her lap. The girl roused herself -abruptly as if stung, lifted the envelope and looked at the man. Fearing -that she was going to fling the terrible packet in his face, he put up -his hand to shield himself. Norah smiled coldly and then handed him back -the packet, which he had not the courage to refuse nor the audacity to -return. The girl seemed to be performing some task that had no interest -for her, something out and beyond the scope of her life. For a moment -Morrison felt it in him to pity her, but deep down in his heart he -pitied himself more. - -“I thought ... I would like.... You know that....” he stammered. “I’ll -go away just now,” he said in a low voice. - -“You’d better,” said Donal, crouching by the fire like a cat ready to -spring. - -Alec Morrison left the sty. At the hour of noon Norah bade good-bye to -Donal and Jean and set off for Glasgow, where she intended to call on -Sheila Carrol, the beansho. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIV - -THE RAT-PIT - - -I - -The address on the letter which Norah received from Sheila Carrol was -“47, Ann Street, Cowcaddens,” but shortly after the letter had been -written the Glasgow Corporation decided that 47 was unfit for human -habitation, and those who lived there were turned out to the streets. - -It was late in the evening of the day on which she left Jean and Donal -that Norah came to No. 47, to find the place in total darkness. She -groped her way up a narrow alley to the foot of a stair and there -suddenly stepped on a warm human body lying on the ground. - -“What the devil!--Ah, ye’re choking me, an old person that never done no -one no harm,” croaked a wheezy voice, apparently a woman’s, under -Norah’s feet. “I only came in oot of the cauld, lookin’ for a night’s -shelter. Hadn’t a bawbee for the Rat-pit. Beg pardon! I’m sorry; I’ll go -away at once; I’ll go now. For the love of heaven don’t gie me up to the -cops. I’m only a old body and I hadn’t a bawbee of my own. I couldn’t -keep walkin’ on all night. Beg pardon, I’m only a old body and I hadn’t -a kirk siller piece[F] for the Rat-Pit!” - -“I’m sorry, but I didn’t know that there was anyone here,” said Norah, -peering through the darkness. “I’m a stranger, good woman.” - -“Ye’re goin’ to doss here too,” croaked the voice from the ground. - -“I’m lookin’ for a friend,” said Norah. “Maybe ye’ll know her--Sheila -Carrol. She lives here.” - -“Nobody lives here,” said the woman, shuffling to her feet. “Nobody but -the likes of me and ones like me. No human being is supposed to live -here. I had at one time a room on the top of the landin’, the cheapest -room in Glasgow it was. Can’t get another one like it now and must sleep -out in the snow. Out under the scabby sky and the wind and the rain. It -wasn’t healthy for people to sleep here, so someone said, and we were -put out. Think of that, and me havin’ the cheapest room in the -Cowcaddens. If the cops find me here, it’s quod. Wha be ye lookin’ for?” - -“A friend, Sheila Carrol.” - -“Never heard of her.” The voice, almost toneless, seemed to be forcing -its way through some thick fluid in the speaker’s throat. The darkness -of the alley was intense and the women were hidden from one another. - -“Everybody that stayed here has gone, and I don’t know where they are,” -the old woman continued. “Don’t know at all. Ye dinna belong to Glesga?” -she croaked. - -“No, decent woman.” - -“By yer tongue ye’ll be a young girl.” - -“I am.” - -“Mind ye, I’m a cute one and I ken everything. It’s not every one that -could tell what ye are by yer tongue. Are ye a stranger?” - -“I am,” answered Norah. “I was never in Glasgow before.” - -“I knew that too,” said the old woman. “And ye want lodgin’s for the -night? Then the Rat-pit’s the place; a good decent place it -is--threepence a night for a bunk. Beg pardon, but maybe ye’ll have a -kid’s eye (threepence) extra to spare for an old body. Come along with -me and I’ll show the way. I’m a cute one and I know everything. Ye -couldn’t ha’e got into better hands than mine if ye’re a stranger in -Glasgow.” - -They went out into a dimly-lighted lane and Norah took stock of her new -friend. The woman was almost bent double with age; a few rags covered -her body, she wore no shoes, and a dusty, grimy clout was tied round one -of her feet. As if conscious of Norah’s scrutiny she turned to the girl. - -“Ah! Ye wouldn’t think, would ye, that I had once the finest room in the -Cowcaddens, the finest--at its price?” - -“The Rat-pit’s a lodgin’ place for women,” the old creature croaked -after an interval. “There are good beds there; threepence a night ye pay -for them. Beg pardon, but maybe ye’ll pay for my bunk for the night. -That’s just how I live; it’s only one night after another in my life. -Beg pardon, but that’s how it is.” She seemed to be apologising for the -crime of existing. “But ye’ll maybe have a kid’s eye to spare for my -bunk?” she asked. - -“All right, decent woman,” said Norah. - -“What do they cry ye?” - -“Norah Ryan.” - -“A pretty name; and my name’s Maudie Stiddart,” said the old woman. - - -II - -Ten minutes later the two women were seated in the kitchen of the -Rat-pit, frying a chop which Norah had bought on their way to the -lodging-house. - -The place was crowded with women of all ages, some young, children -almost, their hair hanging down their backs, and the blouses that their -pinched breasts could not fill sagging loose at the bosom. There were -six or seven of these girls, queer weedy things that smoked cigarettes -and used foul words whenever they spoke. The face of one was pitted with -small-pox; another had both eyes blackened, the result of a fight; a -third, clean of face and limb, was telling how she had just served two -months in prison for importuning men on the streets. Several of the -elder females were drunk; two fought in the kitchen, pulling handfuls of -hair from one another’s heads. Nobody interfered; when the struggle came -to an end the combatants sat down together and warmed their hands at the -stove. At this juncture a bare-footed woman, with clay caked brown -behind her ankles and a hairy wart on her chin, came up to Norah. - -“Ye’re a stranger here,” she said. - -“I am, decent woman.” - -“Ye’re Irish, too, for I ken by yer talk,” said the female. “And ye’ve -got into trouble.” - -She pointed at the girl with a long, crooked finger, and Norah blushed. - -“Dinna be ashamed of it,” said the woman; then turning to Maudie -Stiddart she enquired: “And ye’re here too, are ye? I thought ye were -dead long ago? Jesus! but some people can stick it out. There’s no -killin’ of ’em!” - -“Oh, ye’re a blether, Mary Martin,” said Maudie, turning the chop over -on the stove. “Where are ye workin’ now?” - -“On the free coup outside Glesga.” - -“The free coup?” asked the young girl who had just left prison, lighting -a cigarette. “What’s that atall?” - -“The place to where the dung and dust and dirt of a town is carried away -and throwed down,” Mary Martin explained. “Sometimes lumps of coal and -pieces of metal are flung down there. These I pick up and sell to -people and that’s how I make my livin’.” - -“Is that how you do?” asked the girl with a shrug of her shoulders. - -“Everyone isn’t young like you,” said Mary, sitting down on a bench near -the stove. The girl laughed vacantly, tried to make a ring of the -cigarette smoke, was unable to do so, and walked away. Mary Martin -turned to Maudie and whispered something to her. - -“Ah, puir lass!” exclaimed Maudie. - -“And the one to blame was a toff, too!” said Mary. “They’re all alike, -and the good dress often hides a dirty hide.” - -“Beg pardon, but have ye got anything to ate?” asked Maudie. - -“Nothin’ the night,” answered Mary. “Only made the price of my bed for -my whole day’s work.” - -“Will ye ate something with us?” asked Norah. - -“Thank ye,” said Mary Martin, and the three women drew closer to the -chop that was roasting on the stove. - - -III - -The beds in the Rat-pit, forty in all, were in a large chamber upstairs, -and each woman had a bed to herself. The lodgers undressed openly, -shoved their clothes under the mattresses and slid into bed. One sat -down to unlace her boots and fell asleep where she sat; another, a young -girl of seventeen or eighteen, fell against the leg of the bed and sank -into slumber, her face turned to the roof and her mouth wide open. The -girl who had been in prison became suddenly unwell and burst into tears; -nobody knew what she was weeping about and nobody enquired. - -Maudie, Mary, and Norah slept in three adjoining beds, the Irish girl in -the centre. The two older women dropped off to sleep the moment their -heads touched the pillows; Norah lay awake gazing at the flickering -shadows cast by the solitary gas-jet on the roof of the room. The heat -was oppressive, suffocating almost, and not a window in the place was -open. Women were still coming in, and only half the bunks in the room -were yet occupied. Most of the new-comers were drunk; some sat down or -fell on the floor and slept where they had fallen, others threw -themselves in on top of the bed and lay there with their clothes on. An -old woman whose eye had been blackened in a fight downstairs started to -sing “Annie Laurie,” but forgetting what followed the first verse, -relapsed into silence. - -Norah began to pray under her breath to the Virgin, but had only got -half through with her prayer when a shriek from the bed on her left -startled her. Maudie was sitting upright, yelling at the top of her -voice. “Cannot ye let an old body be?” she cried. “I’m only wantin’ a -night’s doss at the foot of the stairs. That’s not much for an old un to -ask, is it? Holy Jesus! I cannot be let alone for a minute. Beg pardon; -I’m goin’ away, but ye might let me stay here, and me only an old -woman!” - -Maudie opened her watery eyes and stared round. Beads of sweat stood out -on her forehead, and her face--red as a crab--looked terrifying in the -half-light of the room. - -“Beg pardon,” she croaked, and her voice had a sound like the breaking -of bones. “Beg pardon. I’m only an old woman and I never did nobody no -harm!” - -She sank down again, pulled the blankets over her shoulders and fell -asleep. - -Fresh arrivals came in every minute, staggered wearily to their bunks -and threw themselves down without undressing. About midnight a female -attendant, a young, neat girl with a pleasing face, entered, surveyed -the room, helped those who lay on the floor into bed, turned down the -gas and went away. - -Slumber would not come to Norah. All night she lay awake, listening to -the noise of the dust-carts on the pavement outside, the chiming of -church clocks, the deep breathing of the sleepers all around her, and -the sudden yells from Maudie’s bunk as the woman started in her sleep -protesting against some grievance or voicing some ancient wrong. - -The daylight was stealing through the grimy window when Norah got up and -proceeded to dress. A deep quietness, broken only by the heavy breathing -of the women, lay over the whole place. The feeble light of daybreak -shone on the ashen faces of the sleepers, on the naked body of a -well-made girl who had flung off all her clothing in a troubled slumber, -on Mary Martin’s clay-caked legs that stuck out from beneath the -blankets, on Maudie Stiddart’s wrinkled, narrow brow beaded with sweat; -on the faces of all the sleepers, the wiry and weakly, the fit and -feeble, the light of new-born day rested. Suddenly old Mary turned in -her sleep, then sat up. - -“Where are ye goin’ now?” she called to Norah. - -“To look for a friend,” came the answer. - -“A man?” - -“A woman called Sheila Carrol is the one I’m lookin’ for,” said Norah. -“I went to 47, Ann Street last night, for I had a letter from her there. -But the place was closed up.” - -“Sheila Carrol, they cry her, ye say?” said the old woman, getting out -of bed. “Maybe it’s her that I ken. She came from Ireland with a little -boy and she used to work with me at one time. A comely strong-boned -wench she was. Came from Frosses, she once told me.” - -“That’s Sheila!” - -“And she’s left 47?” - -“So I hear.” - -“Then take my advice and try No. 46 and No. 48,” said Mary Martin; “and -also every close in the street. The people that lived in 47 will not -gang far awa’ from it. They’ll be in the next close or thereabouts. What -do they cry you, lass?” asked the old woman, slipping into her rags. - -“Norah Ryan.” - -“A pretty name it is, indeed. And have ye threepence to spare for my -breakfast, Norah Ryan? I haven’t a penny piece in all the wide world.” - -Norah gave threepence of her hard-earned money to Mary, sorted her dress -and stole out into the streets to search for Sheila Carrol. - - - - -CHAPTER XXV - -SHEILA CARROL - - -I - -Norah travelled through the streets all day, looking for her friend and -fearing that every eye was fixed on her, that everybody knew the secret -which she tried to conceal. Her feet were sore, her breath came in -short, sudden gasps as she took her way into dark closes and climbed -creaking stairs; and never were her efforts rewarded by success. Here in -the poorer parts of the city, in the crooked lanes and straggling -alleys, were dirt, darkness, and drunkenness. A thousand smells greeted -the nostrils, a thousand noises grated on the ears; lights flared -brightly in the beershops; fights started at the corners; ballad singers -croaked out their songs; intoxicated men fell in the gutters; policemen -stood at every turning, their helmets glistening, their faces calm, -their eyes watchful. The evening had come and all was noise, hurry, and -excitement. - -“Isaac Levison, Pawnbroker; 2 Up,” Norah read on a plate outside the -entrance of a close and went in. - -“I wonder if Sheila will be here?” she asked herself, and smiled sadly -as she called to mind the number of closes she had crawled into during -the whole long trying day. - -Dragging her feet after her, she made her way up the crooked stairs and -rapped with her knuckles at a door on which the words “Caretaker’s -office” were painted in black letters. A woman, with a string for a neck -and wisps of red hair hanging over her face, poked out her head. - -“Up yet,” was the answer when Norah asked if anybody named Sheila Carrol -dwelt on the stairs. - -“After all my searchin’ she’s here at last,” said the young woman. “It’s -Sheila Carrol herself that’s in the place.” - -The beansho opened the door when she heard a rapping outside. She knew -her visitor at once. - -“Come in, Norah Ryan,” she said, catching the girl’s hands and squeezing -them tightly. “It’s good of ye to come. No one from Frosses, only Oiney -Dinchy’s gasair, have I seen here for a long while. But ye’ll be tired, -child?” - -“It’s in an ill way that I come to see ye, Sheila Carrol,” said Norah. -“It’s an ill way, indeed it is,” and then, sitting down, she told her -story quietly as if that which she spoke of did not interest her in any -way. - -“Poor child!” said Sheila, when the pitiful tale came to an end. “Why -has God put that burden on yer little shoulders? But there’s no use in -pining, Norah. Mind that, child!” - -“I would like to die, Sheila Carrol,” said Norah, looking round the bare -room, but not feeling in the least interested in what she saw. One -chair, a bed, a holy water stoup, a little black crucifix from which the -arms of the Christ had fallen away, an orange box on which lay a pair of -scissors and a pile of cloth: that was all the room contained. A feeble -fire burned in the grate and a battered oil-lamp threw a dim light over -the compartment. - -“I once had thoughts that were like that, meself,” said Sheila. She -placed a little tin pannikin on the fire and fanned the flame with her -apron. “People face a terrible lot in body and in soul before they face -death. That’s the way God made us, child. We do be like grains of corn -under a mill-stone, and everything but the breath of our bodies squeezed -out of us. Sometimes I do be thinkin’ that the word ‘hope’ is blotted -from me soul; but then after a wee while I do be happy in my own way -again.” - -“But did ye not find yer own burden hard to bear, Sheila?” - -“Hard indeed, child, but it’s trouble that makes us wise,” said the -beansho, pouring tea into the pannikin that was now bubbling merrily. -“The father of me boy died on the sea and me goin’ to be married to him -when the season of Lent was by. The cold grey morning when the boat came -in keel up on Dooey Strand was a hard and black one for me. Ah! the cold -break of day; sorrow take it! The child came and I was not sorry at all, -as the people thought I should be. He was like the man I loved, and if -the bitin’ tongues of the Frosses people was quiet I would be very -happy, I would indeed, Norah! But over here in this country it was sore -and bitter to me. I mind the first night that I stopped in Glasgow with -the little boy. He was between my arms and I was lookin’ out through the -window of 47 at the big clock with the light inside of it. It was a lazy -clock that night and I thought that the light of day would never put a -colour on the sky. But the mornin’ did come and many mornin’s since -then, and stone-cold they were too!” - -Then Sheila told the story of her life in Scotland, and Norah, hardly -realising what was spoken, listened almost dumbly, feeling at intervals -the child within her moving restlessly, stretching out as if with a hand -and pressing against her side, causing a quivering motion to run through -her body. - -Sheila’s story was a pitiful one. When first she came to Glasgow she -took an attic room at the top of a four-storeyed building and for this -she paid a weekly rent of three shillings and sixpence. - -“‘Twas the dirty place to live in, Norah, for all the smells and stinks -of the houses down under came up to me,” said the woman. “And three -white shillin’s and sixpence a week for that place that one wouldn’t put -pigs into! The houses away at home may be bad, but there’s always the -fresh air and no drunk men or bad women lyin’ across yer door every time -ye go outside. 47 was a rotten place; worse even than this, and this is -bad. Look at the sheets and blankets on the bed behind ye, Norah, look -at the colour of them and the writin’ on them.” - -Norah gazed at the bed and saw on every article of clothing, stamped in -large blue letters, the words: “STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT.” - -“That’s because someone may steal the rags,” said Sheila. “This room is -furnished by the landlord, God forgive him for the furnishin’ of it! And -he’s afraid that his tenants will run away and try to pawn the -bedclothes. Lyin’ under the blankets all night with STOLEN FROM JAMES -MOFFAT writ on them is a quare way of sleepin’. But what can a woman -like me do? And 47 was worse nor this; and the work! ’Twas beyond -speakin’ about! - -“The first job I got was the finishin’ of dongaree jackets, sewin’ -buttons on them, and things like that! I was up in the mornin’ at six -and went to bed the next mornin’ at one, and hard at it all the time I -wasn’t sleepin’. Sunday was the same as any other day; always work, -always the needle. I used to make seven shillin’s a week; half of that -went in rent and the other half kept meself and my boy. Talk about teeth -growin’ long with hunger at times when the work was none too plentiful! -Sometimes, Norah----” - -Sheila paused. Norah was listening intently, her lips a little apart, -like a child’s. - -“Sometimes, Norah, I went out beggin’ on the streets--me, a Frosses -woman too,” Sheila resumed with a sigh. “Then one night when I asked a -gentleman for a few pence to buy bread he handed me over to the police. -Said I was accostin’ him. I didn’t even know what it meant at the time; -now--But I hope ye never know what it means.... Anyway I was sent to -jail for three weeks.” - -“To jail, Sheila!” Norah exclaimed. - -“True as God, child, and my boy left alone in that dirty attic. There -was I not knowin’ what was happenin’ to him, and when I came out of -prison I heard that the police had caught him wanderin’ out in the -streets and put him in a home. But I didn’t see him; I was slapped into -jail again.” - -“What for, Sheila?” - -“Child neglect, girsha,” said the woman, lifting her scissors and -cutting fiercely at a strip of cloth as she spoke. “I don’t know how -they made it out again’ me, but the law is far beyond simple people like -us. I was put in for three months that time and when I came out----” - -A tear dropped from Sheila’s eyes and fell on the cloth which lay on her -lap. - -“The little fellow, God rest his soul! was dead,” said the woman. “Then -I hadn’t much to live for and I was like to die. But people can stand a -lot one way and another, a terrible lot entirely. After that I thought -of making shirts and I got a sewin’ machine from a big firm on the -instalment system. A shillin’ a week I had to pay for the machine. I -could have done well at the shirt-makin’, but things seemed somehow to -be again’ me. On the sixth week I couldn’t pay the shillin’. It was due -on a Friday and Saturday was my own pay day. I prayed to the traveller -to wait for the morrow, but he wouldn’t, and took the machine away. -’Twas the big firm of ---- too, that did that. Think of it! them with -their mills and their riches and me only a poor woman. Nor it wasn’t as -if I wasn’t wantin’ to pay neither. But that’s the way of the world, -girsha; the bad, black world, cold as the rocks on Dooey Strand it is, -aye, and colder. - -“Sometimes after the sewin’ machine went I used to go out on the streets -and sing songs, and at that sort of work, not at all becomin’ for a -Frosses woman, I could always make the price of a bunk in the Rat-pit, -the place where ye were last night, Norah. Ah! how often have I had my -night’s sleep there! Then again I would come back to 47 and start some -decent work that wasn’t half as easy or half as well paid as the singin’ -of songs. So I went from one thing to another and here I am at this very -minute.” - -Sheila paused in her talk but not in the work which she had just -started. - -“Not much of a room, this one, neither,” she remarked, casting her eye -on the bed, but not missing a stitch in her sewing as she spoke. “Four -shillin’s I pay for it a week and it’s supposed to hold two people. -Outside the door you can see that ticketed up, ‘To hold two adults,’ -like the price marked on a pair of secondhand trousers. I’m all alone -here; only the woman, old Meg, that stops in the room behind this one, -passes through here on her way to work. But ye’ll stay here with me now, -two Frosses people in the one room, so to speak.” - -“What kind of work are ye doin’ here?” asked Norah, pointing to the -cloth which Sheila was sewing. - -“Shirt-finishin’,” Sheila replied. “For every shirt there’s two rows of -feather-stitchin’, eight buttonholes and seven buttons sewed on, four -seams and eight fasteners. It takes me over an hour to do each shirt -and the pay is a penny farthing. I can make about fifteen pence a day, -but out of that I have to buy my own thread. But ye’ll be tired, child, -listenin’ to me clatterin’ here all night.” - -“I’m not tired listenin’ to ye at all, but it’s sorrow that’s with me -because life was so hard on ye,” said Norah. “Everything was black -again’ ye.” - -“One gets used to it all,” said Sheila with the air of resignation which -sits on the shoulders of those to whom the keys of that delicious -mystery known as happiness are forever lost. “One gets used to things, -no matter how hard they be, and one doesn’t like to die.” - -But now Norah listened almost heedlessly. Thoughts dropped into her mind -and vanished with the frightful rapidity of things falling into empty -space; and memories of still more remote things, faint, far away and -almost undefined, were wafted against her soul. - -The girl fell into a heavy slumber. - - -II - -In the morning she awoke to find herself lying in bed, the blankets on -which the blue letters STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT were stamped wrapped -tightly around her, and Sheila Carrol lying by her side. For a moment -she wondered vaguely how she had got into the bunk, then raising herself -on her elbow, she looked round the room. - -The apartment was a very small one, with one four-paned window and two -doors, one of which led, as Norah knew, out to the landing, and one, as -she guessed, into the room belonging to old Meg, the woman whom Sheila -had spoken of the night before. The window was cracked and crooked, the -floor and doors creaked at every move, a musty odour of decay and death -filled the whole place. A heap of white shirts was piled on the orange -box that stood in the middle of the floor, one shirt, the “finishing” of -which had not been completed, lay on an old newspaper beside the -fireplace. It looked as if Sheila had become suddenly tired in the midst -of her feather-stitching and had slipped into bed. She was now awake and -almost as soon as she had opened her eyes was out of the blankets, had -wrapped a few rags round her bony frame and was busy at work with her -needle. Sleep for the woman was only a slight interruption of her -eternal routine. - -“Have a wee wink more,” she cried to Norah, “and I’ll just make a good -warm cup of tay for ye when I get this row finished. Little rogue of all -the world! ye’re tired out and worn!” - -Norah smiled sadly, got up, dressed herself, and going down on her knees -by the bedside, said her prayers. - -“It’s like Frosses again,” said Sheila, when the girl’s prayers came to -an end. “Even seein’ ye there on yer knees takes back old times. But -often I do be thinkin’ that prayin’ isn’t much good. There was old -Doalty Farrel; ye mind him talkin’ about politics the night yer father, -God rest him! was underboard. Well, Doalty was a very holy man, as ye -know yerself, and he used to go down on his knees when out in the very -fields and pray and pray. Well and good; he went down one day on his -knees in the snow and when he got home he had a pain in one of his legs. -That night it was in his side, in the mornin’ Doalty was dead. Gasair -Oiney Dinchy was tellin’ me all about it.” - -“But they say in Frosses that God was so pleased with Doalty that He -took him up to heaven before his time,” said Norah. - -“But it’s not many that like to go to heaven before their time,” Sheila -remarked as she rose from her seat and set about to kindle the fire. At -the same moment the door leading in from the compartment opened, and an -old woman, very ugly, her teeth worn to the gums, the stumps unhealthily -yellow, her eyes squinting and a hairy wart growing on her right cheek, -entered the room. - -“Good morra, Meg,” said Sheila, who was fanning the fire into flame with -her apron. “Are ye goin’ to yer work?” - -“Goin’ to my work,” replied Meg and turned her eyes to Norah. “A friend, -I see,” she remarked. - -“A countrywoman of my own,” said Sheila. - -“Are ye new to Glesga?” Meg asked Norah, who was gazing absently out of -the window. - -“I have only just come here,” said the girl. - -“Admirin’ the view!” remarked Meg with a wheezy laugh as she took her -place beside the girl at the window. “A fine sight to look at, that. -Dirty washin’ hung out to dry; dirty houses; everything dirty. Look down -at the yard!” - -A four-square block of buildings with outhouses, slaty grey and ugly, -scabbed on to the walls, enclosed a paved courtyard, at one corner of -which stood a pump, at another a stable with a heap of manure piled high -outside the door. Two grey long-bodied rats could be seen running across -from the pump to the stable, a ragged tramp who had slept all night on -the warm dunghill shuffled up to his feet, rubbed the sleep and dirt -from his eyes, then slunk away from the place as if conscious of having -done something very wrong. - -“That man has slept here for many a night,” said Meg; then pointing her -finger upwards over the roofs of many houses to a spire that pierced -high through the smoke-laden air, she said: “That’s the Municipal -Buildin’s; that’s where the rich people meet and talk about the best -thing to be done with houses like these. It’s easy to talk over yonder; -that house cost five hunner and fifty thousand pounds to build. A gey -guid hoose, surely, isn’t it, Sheila Carrol?” - -“It’s comin’ half-past five, Meg, and it’s time ye were settin’ out for -yer work,” was Sheila’s answer. “Ye’d spend half yer life bletherin’.” - -“A good, kindly and decent woman she is,” Sheila told Norah when Meg -took her departure. “Works very hard and, God forgive her! drinks very -hard too. Nearly every penny that doesn’t go in rent does in the -crathur, and she’s happy enough in her own way although a black -Prodesan.... Ah! there’s some quare people here on this stair when ye -come to know them all!” - -Over a tin of tea and a crust Sheila made plans for the future. “I can -earn about one and three a day at the finishin’,” she said. “I have to -buy my own thread out of that, three bobbins a week at twopence ha’penny -a bobbin. - -“Ye used to be a fine knitter, Norah,” Sheila continued. “D’ye mind the -night long ago on Dooey Strand? God knows it was hardships enough for -the strong women like us to sleep out in the snow, not to mention a -young girsha like yerself. But ye were the great knitter then and ye’ll -be nimble with yer fingers yet, I’ll go bail. Sewing ye might be able to -take a turn at.” - -“I used to be good with needle, Sheila,” said the girl. - -“Then that’ll be what we’ll do. We’ll work together, me and yerself, and -we’ll get on together well and cheaper. It’ll be only the one fire and -the one light; and now, if ye don’t mind, we’ll begin work and I’ll show -ye what’s to be done.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXVI - -THE PASSING DAYS - - -I - -They came and went, days monotonously slow, each bearing with it its -burden of sorrows and regrets, of fear and unhappiness. The life of the -two women was ever the same: out of bed at five in the morning, a -salutation exchanged with old Meg as she went to her work; breakfast--a -crust of bread and a cup of tea; the light, weak and sickly, peeping -through the narrow, murky window, the eternal scissors and needles, the -white heaps of shirts, the feather-stitching and finishing. In the -morning the cripple next door clattered downstairs on crutches, the card -with the rude inscription, PARALYSED FOR LIFE, shaking to and fro as he -moved. All day long he lay on the cold flagged pavement begging his -daily bread. Tommy Macara, the lad with the rickets, came out singing to -the landing on his way to the industrial school. He stuck his head -through the door and shouted: “Ye twa women, warkin’ hard.” Both loved -little Tommy, his cheery laugh, his childish carelessness, his poor body -twisted out of shape by the humours of early disease. His legs would -twitch as he stood at the door, making an effort to control the tremors; -sometimes he would laugh awkwardly at this and hurry away. Thus the -morning. - -Noon.--A quarrel at No. 8. The two loose women who lived there argued -about the spoils taken from a drunken sailor the night before, and came -to blows. One was dressed, the other, just out of bed, had only time to -wrap the blanket round her body. Both came out on the landing tearing at -each other’s hair and swearing. All the doors in the place opened; women -ragged to the point of nudity, men dirty and unshaven, hurried out to -watch the fight, which was long and severe. The women bit and scratched, -and the younger--Bessie was her name--a plump girl wearing the blanket -on which the words STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT could be read at a -distance--was deprived of her only article of apparel, and she scurried -rapidly indoors. The onlookers laughed loudly and clapped their hands; -the elder, a light-limbed lassie with very white teeth, returned to her -room closing the door behind her. Now and again a shriek could be heard -from the apartment, then a hoarse gurgle, as if somebody was getting -strangled, afterwards silence. The watchers retired indoors, and peace -settled on the stairhead. Only the two women, Sheila and Norah, never -ceased work; the needles and scissors still sparkled over and through -the white shirts. - -Evening.--Meg returned half-tipsy and singing a chorus, half the words -of which she had forgotten. The day’s work had been a very trying one, -the dust rising from the rags did not agree with her asthma. On entering -she looked fixedly at Sheila, shook her head sadly, ran her fingers over -Norah’s hair and began the chorus again, but stopped in the middle of it -and started to weep. After a while she reeled into her own room, closed -the door behind her, and sank to sleep on the floor beside the dead -fire. - -Little Tom Macara came up the stair, looked in, the eternal smile on his -pinched face, and cried out in a thin voice: “Ah! the women are warkin’ -awa’ yet. They never have a meenit to spare!” - -“Never a minute, Tom,” Sheila answered, and the boy went off, whistling -a music-hall tune. Tom’s mother was consumptive, his father epileptic; -he had two brothers and three sisters all older than himself. After Tom, -the man with the crutches came upstairs. From the street to the top of -the landing was a weary climb, but often he got helped on the journey; -sometimes the two whores escorted him up, sometimes Sheila gave him an -arm, and everybody on the stairs liked the man. He was always in good -humour and could sing a capital song. - -Later in the evening, those who indulged in intoxicants became drunk; an -ex-soldier, with one sleeve of his coat hanging loosely from his -shoulder, who lived with two women, kicked one unmercifully and got -dragged off to prison; the two harlots netted two men, one of them a -well-dressed fellow with a gold tie-pin and a ring on his finger, and -took them to their room; the paralytic could be heard singing and his -voice seemed to be ever so far away. Sheila and Norah were still busy -with the shirts, sewing their lives into every stitch of their work. - -“And them two women at No. 8, there’s not the least bit of harm in them -at bottom,” Sheila would exclaim. “They help the old cripple up every -time they meet him on the stairs. And to think of it! there’s seventeen -thousand women like them in Glasgow!” - -“God be good to us!” - -Midnight came and quiet, and still the two women worked on. Outside on -the landing into the common sink the water kept dripping from the tap. -Sheila made a remark about the people away home in Frosses and wondered -if they were all asleep at that moment. Outside, the city sank to its -repose; only the unfortunate and the unwell were now awake. The -epileptic’s wife coughed continually; Bessie, the plump girl, stole the -pin from the tie of her lover; downstairs the caretaker, the woman with -the red wisps of hair, counted the number of men who went to No. 8; half -the profits went to her. - -One o’clock came and, as if by mutual consent, the Irish women left -their work aside and looked out of the window for a moment. High up they -could see the spire of the town hall prodding into the heavens; nearer -and almost as high the tower of a church with the black hands passing on -the lighted face of a clock; closer still the dark windows of the houses -opposite. Glasgow with all its churches, its halls, with its shipping -and commerce, its wharves and factories, its richness and splendour, its -poor and unhappy, its oppressed and miserable, Glasgow, with its -seventeen thousand prostitutes, was asleep. - - -II - -Norah and Sheila went to bed, wrapped the blue-lettered blankets round -their bodies and placed their heads down on the condemnatory sentences: -STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT. Almost immediately Sheila was asleep, her -knees drawn up under her (for the bed was too short for her body) and -her arms around Norah. The young girl could not sleep well now; short -feverish snatches of slumber were followed by sudden awakenings, and -fears and fancies, too subtle to define, constantly preyed on her mind. -Sometimes, when under the influence of a religious melancholy that often -took possession of her, she repeated the _Hail Mary_ over and over -again, but at intervals she stopped in the midst of a prayer, started as -if stung by an asp and exclaimed: “What does the Virgin think of me, me -that has committed one of the worst mortal sins in the world!” - -In the midst of a prayer she dropped to sleep, maybe for the third time -in an hour, but immediately was awakened by a sharp rapping at the -door. Sheila heard nothing, she lay almost inert, and perspiring a -little. - -“Who’s there?” Norah called out. - -“The sanitary,” a hoarse voice answered from the landing. - -The girl slipped out of bed, hardly daring to breathe lest her companion -was disturbed, fumbled round for the matches, lit the oil-lamp and -opened the door. Two strangers in uniform stood outside; one, a tall man -with a heavy beard, held a lamp, the other, a sallow-faced, shrunken -individual, hummed a tune in a thin, monotonous voice and picked his -nose with a claw-like finger. The two entered, brushing against the girl -who took up her stand behind the door, making a slight rapping noise -with her heels on the bare floor. - -“How many here?” asked the tall man with the beard. - -“Two,” Norah answered, “the woman in the bed and me.” - -“No one else under the bed?” - -“No one,” Norah replied, but the man knelt on the floor, lifted the -bedclothes and peeped under. - -“Only one in the next room?” asked the sallow-faced fellow, pointing at -Meg’s door. - -“Only one and nobody else.” - -They chose not to believe the girl’s statement, rapped on the door, -which was opened after a long delay by old Meg, who had risen naked from -bed and was now hiding her withered body behind a blanket stamped with -the blue lettering. The sentence STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT ran from the -left knee to the right shoulder; the left shoulder was bare, as was also -the left leg from ankle to hip. - -“Only one here,” she croaked, glowering evilly at the men who had -disturbed her slumber. “Christ! an auld body has no peace at all here, -for there are always some folk crawlin’ round when decent folk are in -bed. Bed! callin’ it a bed and so particular about it. One would almost -be as well off if they were thrown out a handful of fleas and allowed to -sleep on the doorstep. God’s curse on ye both, comin’ at this hour of -the night to pull an old woman like me from my scratcher.” - -The bearded man entered the room, his companion took out a note-book and -wrote something down, shut the book and placed it in his pocket. The -tall man came out again; both bade Norah “Good-night” in apologetic -tones and took their leave. Sheila had slept unmoved through it all. - -The young girl closed the door, extinguished the light and re-entered -the bed. She was very tired, but sleep would not come to her eyes. An -hour passed. Sheila was snoring loudly, but Norah awake could hear the -water dropping into the sink on the landing, and the vacant laugh of -Bessie escorting a man upstairs. At night this woman never slept; her -business was then in full swing. - -Someone knocked at the door again, and Norah cried, “Who’s there?” “Is -this No. 8?” enquired a man’s voice. Norah answered, “No,” and steps -shuffled along the passage outside. Next instant the crash of someone -falling heavily was heard, then a muttered imprecation, and afterwards -silence. - -Norah fell asleep again. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVII - -THE NEW-COMER - - -I - -Three weeks, laggard and leaden in movement, passed away. It was late -evening; nine o’clock was just striking, and Sheila, true to her usual -habit, counted the strokes aloud. - -“The clock goes faster now than it did the first night I was here,” she -said. “I suppose they’ll all be goin’ to bed in Frosses now, or maybe -sayin’ the rosary. Are ye tired, Norah?” she suddenly asked her -companion. - -“No, not tired, only....” - -“Maybe ye would like to go to bed,” said Sheila, anticipating Norah’s -desires and looking very wise. - -“I think that.... Oh! it’s all right,” answered Norah, an expression of -pain passing across her face. - -“I know,” said Sheila, laying down her scissors and stirring up the -fire, which was brighter than usual. “Ye must go to bed now and keep -yerself warm, child. Ye’ll be all right come the mornin’.” - -“I’m very unwell, Sheila. I feel.... No, I’m better again,” said Norah, -making a feeble attempt to smile and only succeeding in blushing. - -She undressed to her white cotton chemise, lay down, and Sheila gathered -the blankets round the young woman with tender hands. Norah appeared -calm, her fingers for a moment toyed with the tresses over her brow, -then she drew her hand under the blankets. Her face had taken on a new -light; the cold look of despair had suddenly given place to a new and -nervous interest in life and in herself. It seemed as if things had -assumed a new character for her; as if she understood in a vague sort of -way that a woman’s life is always woven of dreams, sorrow, love, and -self-sacrifice. She was now waiting almost gladly, impatient for the -most solemn moment in a woman’s life. - -“I’m not one bit afraid,” she said to the serious Sheila who was bending -over her. “Now don’t be frightened. One would think....” Norah did not -proceed. It was a moment of words half-spoken and the listener -understood. - -Suddenly Norah sighed deeply, clutched Sheila’s dress in a fierce grip -and closed her eyes tightly and tensely. She was suffering, but she -endured silently. - -“I’m better again,” she said after a moment. “Don’t heed about me, -Sheila. I’m fine.” - -The older woman went back to her work with the large shiny scissors and -the bright little needle. Only the swish-swish of the cutting shears and -the noise of a falling cinder could be heard for a long while. On the -roof wave-shadows could be seen rushing together, forming into something -very dark and breaking free again. - -“Will ye have a drop of tea, Norah?” - -“No, Sheila,” said the girl in the bed in a low strained voice: then -after a moment she asked: “Sheila, will ye come here for a minute?” - -A cinder fell into the grate with a sharp rattle, the scissors sparkled -brightly as they were laid aside. Sheila rose and went towards the bed -on tiptoe. - -“I’m not needin’ ye yet,” said Norah. “I thought.... I’m better again.” - -The woman went back to her work, stepping even more softly than before. -The night slipped away; the noises on stair and street became less and -less, the women of No. 8 had retired to their beds, a drunken man sang -homewards, a policeman passed along with slow, solemn tread; even these -signs of life suddenly abated, and the noise of the cutting scissors, -the clock striking out the hours, and the wind beating against the -window were all that could be heard in the room. - -About three o’clock the sanitary inspectors called. Sheila whispered to -them at the door and they went away muttering something in an apologetic -voice. - -The grey dawn was lighting up the street; the blind had been drawn aside -and the lamp flickered feebly on the floor. Sheila turned it down and -approached the bed. On Norah’s face there was the calmness of -resignation and repose. She had suffered much during the night, but now -came a quiet moment. Her brow looked very white and her cheeks -delicately red. Her face was still as beautiful as ever; even so much -the more was it beautiful. - -“There’s great noises in the streets, Sheila,” she said to the woman -bending over her. - -“‘Tis the workers goin’ out to their work, child,” was the answer. “How -are ye feelin’ now?” - -“Better, Sheila, better.” - -But even as she spoke the pain again mastered her and she groaned -wearily. And Sheila, wise with a woman’s wisdom, knew that the critical -moment had come. - - -II - -The child who came to Norah, the little boy with the pink, plump hands, -the fresh cheeks and pretty shoulders, filled nearly all the wants of -her heart. The fear that she had had of becoming a mother was past and -the supreme joy of motherhood now was hers. She knew that she would be -jealous of the father if he was with her at present; as matters stood -the child was her own, her very own, and nothing else mattered much. -Sometimes she would sit for an hour, her discarded scissors hanging from -her fingers, gazing hungrily at the saffron-red downy face of the child, -anticipating every movement on its part, following every quiver of its -body with greedy eyes. In the child lay Norah’s hopes of salvation; it -was the plank to which she clung in the shipwreck of her eternity. All -her hopes, all her fortunes lay in the babe’s fragile bed; the sound of -the little voice was heavenly music to her ears. In Norah’s heart welled -up this incomparable love, in which are blended all human affections and -all hopes of heaven, the love of a mother. The great power of motherhood -held her proof against all evils; dimly and vaguely it occurred to her -that if that restraining power was withdrawn for a moment she would -succumb to any temptation and any evil which confronted her. - -She found now a great joy in working with Sheila: both talked lovingly -of home and those whom they had left behind. Sometimes Norah mingled -tears with her recollections. Sheila Carrol never wept. - -“Years ago I could cry my fill,” she told Norah, “but for a long while, -save on the night yerself came here, the wells of my eyes have been very -dry.” - -At another time when the mother was giving the breast to the child -Sheila said: “Ye look like the Blessed Virgin with the child, Norah.” - -A difficulty arose about the child’s name: that of the father was out of -the question. - -“One of the Frosses names for me,” said Sheila. “Doalty, Dony, or -Dermod, Murtagh, Shan, or Fergus; Oiney, Eamon, or Hudy; ah! shure, -there’s hundreds of them! All good names they are and all belonging to -our own arm of the glen. The trouble is that there’s too many to pick -from. We’ll be like the boy with the apples; they were all so good that -he didn’t know what one to take and he died of fargortha while lookin’ -at them. Dermod or Fergus, which will it be?” asked the beansho. - -“Dermod,” said Norah simply. - -“I thought so,” said the woman. “And I hope another Dermod will come one -of these days to see us. Then maybe ... Dermod Flynn was a nice kindly -lad, comely and civil.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXVIII - -THE RAG-STORE - - -I - -Once a week, on Friday, Sheila took a bundle of finished shirts to the -clothes-merchant’s office. Seven months after Norah’s arrival Sheila -went out one day with her bundle and in the evening the woman did not -return. Midnight came and went. From the window Norah watched the lazy -hands of the clock crawl out the seconds of existence. Steps could be -heard coming up and going down the stairs; then these suddenly ceased. -Far away the flames flaring from the top of a chimney-stack glowed -fiercely red against the dark sky. A policeman came along the dimly -lighted street, walking with tired tread and examining the numbers on -the closed entrances. He suddenly disappeared below; afterwards a knock -came to the door. - -“A woman was run down by a tram-car,” said the policeman, speaking -through his heavy moustache, when Norah gave him admittance; “she was -killed instantly.... She had a slip of paper ... this address ... maybe -you can identify.” - -Norah lifted the sleeping babe, wrapped it in her shawl and followed the -man. At the police mortuary she recognised Sheila Carrol. The dead woman -was in no way disfigured; she lay on a wooden slab, face upwards, and -still, so very still! - -“Sheila Carrol!... she’s only sleepin’!” said Norah. - -“Sheila Carrol, you say,” said a uniformed man who had just entered and -who overheard Norah’s remark. “Twice convicted, once for being on the -streets, once for child neglect,” he muttered, looking not a little -proud of his knowledge. “The back of the head and the spine that’s hurt. -When one is struck hard in them places it’s all over.” - -Norah felt like a cripple whose crutches have been taken away. That -night when she returned to her room she slept none and wept bitterly, at -times believing that the dead woman was with her in the room. Being very -lonely she kept the light burning till morning, and as the fire had gone -out she shivered violently at intervals and a dry tickling cough settled -on her chest. - - -II - -The merchant who supplied cloth to the two women had gone bankrupt. -Probably Sheila was so much overwhelmed by this that she forgot to avoid -the dangers of the crowded streets on her way home. Perhaps she was -planning some scheme for the future, and as is the case when the mind -dwells deeply on some particular subject, the outside world was for a -while non-existent to her. An eye-witness of the tragedy said that -Sheila had taken no heed of the oncoming tram; that death was -instantaneous. - -When morning came Norah Ryan was conscious of a dull sickly pain behind -her left shoulder-blade. The child slept badly during the night and -coughed feebly when it awoke. There were no matches to light the fire; a -half-loaf, a pennyworth of tea and a quarter hundred-weight of coal was -all that remained in the room. - -Norah went into Meg’s compartment. The door was lying open. The woman -sat by a dead fire, having just awakened from a drunken sleep on the -floor. She was a kind-hearted soul, generous and sympathetic, but fond -of drink. A glass of whisky made her very tipsy, two glasses made her -very irritable. - -“Ye’re up early, lass,” said the old woman, rising to her feet and -scratching her head vigorously. “Is Sheila sleepin’ yet?” - -“She’s dead.” - -“Dead!” exclaimed old Meg, sitting down on the only chair in the room -and raising both hands, palms outwards, to a level with her face. - -“A tram struck her last night when she was comin’ home,” said Norah. -“Killed at once, the policeman said that she was.” - -Meg wept loudly for a few moments, then: “What are ye goin’ to do now?” -she asked, drying her eyes. - -“I don’t know.” - -“There’s often a chance goin’ in the rag-store where I work and it’s not -a hard job at all,” said the old woman. “The job may be a wee bit dirty -and clorty, but think it over. Six shillin’s a week is the pay to start -wi’, then it rises to eight.” - -“Thanks for the help that ye are to me,” said Norah; “and when d’ye -think that I’ll get the job?” - -“Maybe at any time now, for there’s one of the young ones goin’ to get -marrit a fortnight come to-morrow,” said the old woman. “Then there’s a -woman that lives at No. 27 of this street, Helen McKay is her name; -‘Tuppenny Helen,’ the ones on the stairhead ca’ her. She takes care of -children for twopence a day.” - -“I’m not goin’ to leave my child,” cried Norah. She spoke fiercely, -angrily. “D’ye think that I would give up my child to a woman like -Tuppenny Helen? God sees that I can keep my own child whatever happens -to me!” - -“Whatever ye say it’s not for me to say the word agen it,” said Meg, -surprised at Norah’s wrath. - -“Could I take the boy with me if I get a job?” - -“Nae fear; nae fear of that,” said the old woman. “It would smother a -child in a week in yon place. Dust flyin’ all over the place; dirty rags -with creepin’ things and crawlin’ things and maybe diseases on them; -it’s a foulsome den. But folks maun eat and folks maun earn siller, and -that’s why some hae to wark in a place like a rag-store. But dinna take -the child wi’ ye there. For one thing ye winna be allowed and for -another the feelthy place would kill the dear little thing in less than -a week.” - -For a fortnight following Norah looked in vain for a job at which she -might work with the child beside her. At the end of that time the old -woman spoke again of a vacant post in the store where she laboured. -Norah put the child out to Twopenny Helen, a stumpy little woman with -very large feet and hacked hands, then applied for and obtained the -vacant post in the rag-store. - - -III - -In the chill, damp air of the early morning the two women tramped to -their work, wearing their boots to save the tram fare. The old woman -always walked with her head down, humming little tunes through her nose -and breaking into a run from time to time. Her long red tongue was -always out, slipping backwards and forwards over her upper lip, her -hair, grey as a dull spring morning, eternally falling into her eyes, -and her arms swinging out in front of her like two dead things as she -trotted along. - -The rag-store opened out on a narrow, smelling lane; the office where a -few collared clerks bent over grimy ledgers and endless rows of figures -was on a level with the street; the place where the women sorted the -rags was a basement under the office. There were in all thirty human -machines working in this cellar, which stretched into the darkness on -all sides save one, and there it now and again touched sunshine, the -weak sunshine that streamed through a dirty cobwebbed window, green with -moisture and framed with iron bars. - -All day long two gas-jets flared timidly in the basement, spluttering as -if in protest at being condemned to burn in such a cavern. The women, -bowed over their work, were for the most part silent; all topics of -conversation had been exhausted long ago. Sometimes Monday morning was -lively; many came fresh to their work full of accounts of a fight in -which half the women of the close joined and which for some ended in the -lock-up, for others with battered faces and dishevelled hair. These -accounts roused a certain interest which lasted a few hours, then came -the obstinate dragging silence again. - -All day long they worked together in the murky cavern sorting the rags. -The smell of the place was awful, suffocating almost; the damp and -mouldy rags gave forth an unhealthy odour; dust rose from those that -were drier and filled the place and the throats of the workers. Each -woman knew every wrinkle of her neighbour’s face, on all the yellowish -white and almost expressionless faces of the spectres of the cellar. And -now and again the spectres sang their ghost-songs, which died away in -the lone corners of the basement like wind in a churchyard. - -It was amongst these women that Norah started work. - -“A new start!” exclaimed one, a little sallow-faced thing who looked as -if she had been gradually drying up for several years, on seeing the -new-comer. “Ye’ll soon get the blush oot o’ yer cheeks here, lass!” - -“D’ye know that there are only three people in the worl’ when all is -said and done?” another woman called to Norah. “The rag-picker, the -scavenger, and the grave-digger are the three folk who count most in the -long run.” - -Everybody but Norah laughed at this remark, though all, save Norah, had -heard it made a thousand times before. - -“Ah! lass, ye’ve the red cheek,” said a bow-legged girl of seventeen. - -“They’ll soon be pale enough,” another interrupted. - -“And such white teeth!” - -“They’ll soon be yellow!” - -“And such long hair!” - -“It’ll soon be full o’ dust.” - -But they said no more, perhaps because Norah was so beautiful, and -beauty calls forth respect in even the coarsest people. - -The new start had many troubles at first. Being new to the work and -unable to do as much as the other women, she was paid only five -shillings a week. After a while the natural dexterity of her fingers -stood her in good stead, and she became more adept at the rag-picking -than anyone in the basement. Therefore her companions who had before -laughed at her inexperience became jealous of Norah and accused her of -trying to find favour with the boss. - -But the girl did not mind much what they said; her one great regret was -in being separated from her boy for the whole livelong day. Her breasts -were full of the milk of motherhood, and severance from the little child -was one of the greatest crosses which she had to bear. - -The master seldom came near the place; it didn’t agree with his health, -he said. He was a stout, well-built man with small, glistening eyes -overhung with heavy red brows. The hairs of his nostrils reached -half-way down his upper lip and he was very bald. When the women saw the -bald head appear at the foot of the basement stairs, shining a little as -the gaslight caught it, they whispered: - -“There’s the full moon; turn yer money!” and one of the workers who was -very fond of swearing would invariably answer: “There’s not much money -in the pockets o’ them that’s workin’ in this damned hole!” - -Whenever he came down into the rag-store he took the bow-legged girl to -one side and spoke to her about something. The two seemed to be on very -familiar terms and it was stated that the girl got a far higher wage -than any of the other workers; ten shillings a week was paid to her, -some hinted. Suddenly, however, she left the place and did not come back -again: but now the master came down the stairs oftener than ever before. -One evening just as work was stopping the moon-head appeared, shone for -a moment under the gaslight, then came forward. - -“There’s some linen rags here that I want sorted up to-night,” he said, -licking his lips. “I want one of ye to stay here and do the work.” - -He looked round as he spoke and his eyes rested on Norah, who was -wrapping her shawl over her shoulders. - -“Will ye stay here?” he asked. - -“All right,” said Norah, and took off her shawl again. - -The rest of the workers went upstairs, a bit envious perhaps of the girl -who was picked out for special work in the fetid hole. Master and -servant were left alone, but Norah wished that she had gone away with -the rest; she wanted so much to see her child. The cough which the -little boy had contracted on the night of Sheila Carrol’s death, ten -months before, had never gone wholly away, and now it was worse than -ever. The mother herself was not feeling very well; the sharp pain in -her chest troubled her a great deal at night. - -“Ye’re a good sorter, I hear,” said the master, licking his lips, and -Norah noticed the hairs of his nostrils quivering as if touched by a -breeze. “Ye’ll not live well on seven shillin’s a week, will ye?” he -asked. - -“One must live somehow,” said Norah, bending down and picking up a -handful of rags from the floor. “And a few shillin’s goes a long way -when one is savin’.” - -She started even as she spoke, for a large soft hand had gripped her -wrist and she looked up to find her master’s little glistening eyes -looking into hers. She could see the wrinkles on his forehead, the red -weal that the rim of his hat had left on the temples, the few stray -hairs that yet remained on the top of the pink head. - -“What would ye be wantin’ with me?” she asked. - -“I could raise yer screw, say to ten bob a week,” said the man, slipping -his arms round her waist and trying to kiss her on the lips. If one of -the dirty rags had been thrust into her mouth she could not have -experienced a more nauseous feeling of horror than that which took -possession of her at that moment. She freed herself violently from the -grasp of the man, seized her shawl and hurried upstairs, leaving him -alone in the cellar. In the office she had a misty impression of a -grinning clerk looking at her and passing some meaningless remark. When -she got back to her room she told Meg of all that had happened. - -“Ye’re a lucky lass, a gie lucky lass,” said the old woman enviously. -“Just play yer cards well and ye’ll soon hae a pund a week in the store. -I heard to-day about the bowdy girl that left us a month gone. The -master had a fancy for her but a mistake happened and she was in straw. -But it’s now all right and she’s gettin’ a pund a week. Just ye play yer -cards well, Norah Ryan, and ye’ll have a gey guid time,” she added. - -“Meg Morraws!” - -“Ha, ha!” cried the old woman, laughing and showing her yellow stumps of -teeth, worn to the gums. “That’s the way to act. Carry on like that with -him and he’ll do onything ye ask, for ye’re a comely lass; a gey comely -one! Often I wondered why ye stayed so long workin’ in the rag-store. -Life could be made muckle easier by a girl wi’ a winnin’ face like -yours, Norah Ryan. God! to think that a girl like ye are warkin’ in that -dirty hole when ye could make ten times as muckle siller by doin’ -somethin’ else!” - - -IV - -Norah did not go back to the rag-store. She took her child from Twopenny -Helen and looked for other work. The boy with his round chubby legs and -wonderful pink toes, which she never tired of counting, was a wonder and -delight to her. Everything was so fresh about him, the radiant eyes, the -red cheeks that made the mother so much long to bite them, the little -soft lips and the white sharp teeth that were already piercing through -the gums. The child was dressed poorly, but, as befitted a sanctuary -before which one human being prostrated herself with all the unselfish -devotion of a pure heart, with the best taste of the worshipper. - -The cold which the child caught months before had never entirely gone -away; whenever the cough that accompanied it seized him he curled up in -his mother’s lap in agony, while she feared that the little treasure -that she loved so much was going to be taken away. The thought of the -boy dying occurred to her many times and almost shattered the springs of -action within her. If he died! She shuddered in terror; her fear was -somewhat akin to the fear which possesses a man who hangs over a -precipice and waits for the overstrained rope to break. If the child -was gone she would have nothing more to live for. - -Her funds were very low; when she left the rag-store she had only the -sum of nineteen shillings in her possession. This would pay rent for a -few weeks, but meanwhile food, fuel, and clothing were needed. What was -she to do? - -Then followed weary days searching for work. Norah went from house to -house in the better parts of the city, offering herself for employment. -She left the child lying on a bed on the floor and locked the place up. -She no longer sent it out to Twopenny Helen; Norah could not now spare -twopence a day. - -Again she got work, this time finishing dongaree jackets, and made -tenpence a day. She had now to work on Sunday as well as Saturday, and -she usually spent eighteen hours a day at her task. Winter came and -there was no coal. The child, whose cold got no better, was placed in -bed while the mother worked. The dry and hacking cough shook the -mother’s frame at intervals and she sweated at night when asleep. She -ate very little; her breasts were sore when she suckled her child, and -by and by milk refused to come. Her eyes became sore; she now did part -of her work under the lamp on the landing and by the light from the -window across the courtyard. Old Meg, when she was drunk, had pence to -spare for the child. - -“Just for the little thing to play wi’,” she would explain in an -apologetic voice, as if ashamed of being found guilty of a good action. -Afterwards she would add: “Ye should have taken the twa extra shillin’s -a week when they were offered ye.” - -One evening towards Christmas when the old woman was speaking thus, -Norah asked: - -“If I went back now, would I get a job?” - -“The man has got marrit and the place, as ye know yerself, has been -filled up ages and ages ago.” - -A strange expression, perhaps one of regret, showed for a moment on the -face of Norah Ryan. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIX - -DERMOD FLYNN - - -I - -When the old woman left her, Norah sat for a while buried in thought, -her scissors lying on one knee, one hand hanging idly by her side. The -boy was very ill, the cough hardly left him for a moment and his eyes -were bright and feverish. - -“If he dies what am I to do?” Norah asked herself several times. “Then -it would be that I’d have nothing to live for.” - -She rose and followed Meg into the room. The woman sat beside the fire, -humming an old song. A candle, stuck in the neck of a beer-bottle, was -alight, and a cricket chirped behind the fireless grate. “I’m goin’ out -for a while,” said Norah in a low, strained voice. “Will ye look after -the boy until I come back? I’ll take him in here.” - -“All right,” said the woman, rising to her feet. “Take the little thing -in.” - -When Norah re-entered her own room the boy was coughing weakly but -insistently in the darkness. She lit a candle, sat down on the corner of -the bed and was immediately deep in thought. Her money had now dwindled -away; she had only one and threepence in her possession. She even felt -hungry; for a long while this sensation was almost foreign to her. The -weekly rent was due on the morrow, and the child needed the doctor, -needed food, needed fresh air and, above all, the attention which she -was unable to give him. - -She lifted him tenderly from the bed and carried him in to Meg, who -began to crow with delight when the child was placed in her withered -arms. Once back in her own room Norah resumed her seat on the bedside -and seemed to be debating some very heavy problem. The candle flared -faintly in the sconce on the floor; large shadows chased one another on -the grimy ceiling ... the cripple came upstairs, Norah could hear the -rattle of his crutches ... the noise of the city was loud outside the -windows. - -Norah rose, swept the floor, lit the lamp, a thing which she had not -done for many nights, candles being much cheaper than oil. She went out, -bought some coal and a penny bundle of firewood: these she placed on the -grate, ready for lighting. The bed she sorted with nervous care, sighing -as she spread out the blankets and arranged the pillows. - -She then began to dress herself carefully, brushing back her hair with -trembling fingers as she looked into the little broken hand-mirror, one -of Sheila Carrol’s belongings. Her well-worn dress still retained a -certain coquetry of cut and suited her well, her broad-brimmed hat, -which she had not worn for a long while, gave an added charm to her -white brow and grey eyes. - -When dressed she stood for a moment to listen to the child coughing in -Meg’s room. Stifling with an effort the impulse to go in and have one -look at the boy, she crossed herself on forehead and lips and went out -on the landing. For a moment something seemed to perplex her; she stood -and looked round on all sides. The place was deserted; nothing could be -heard but the cripple singing “Annie Laurie” in a loud, melodious voice. -Norah again crossed herself, stepped slowly down the stairs, and went -out to the street. - - -II - -At midnight she returned for her child. The boy was still coughing, but -more quietly than before, and the old woman was lying flat upon her -stomach, asleep by the fireside. Norah lifted the child, took him into -her own room and placed the frail bundle, in which was wrapped up all -her life and all her hopes, on the bed. - -The fire was burning brightly, the oil-lamp gave out a clear, comforting -light which showed up the whole room, the bare floor, the black walls -enlivened by no redeeming feature save the crude picture of the Virgin -and Child and the little black cross hanging from a rusty nail near the -window; the pile of dongaree jackets shoved into a corner, the -orange-box and the bed with the blankets, which Norah had sorted such a -short time before, now in strange disorder. - -Old Meg suddenly bustled into the room, a frightened look on her face. -“I thought that some yin had stolen the little dear,” she cried, her -breath reeking with alcohol. “Ah, here he is, the wee laddie,” she cooed -on seeing the little pink face in the bed. “I hae got a fright, I hae -indeed, Norah Ryan!” - -The woman sat down on the orange box and looked curiously round, first -at the lighted lamp, then at the fire, then at Norah, and afterwards -back to the fire again. - -“Hae ye got siller the noo, lassie?” she exclaimed at last. “Has yer -rich uncle kicked the bucket? Fire and light the noo and everything? Ah! -what’s this?” she exclaimed, bending down and lifting a half-smoked -cigarette from the floor. She looked at it for a moment, then threw it -into the flames. - -“Has it come to this, Norah Ryan?” she asked, and a faint touch of -regret mingled with the woman’s tones. - -Norah, who was bending over the child, turned round fiercely; for a -moment she looked like some beautiful animal cornered in its own lair. - -“It has come to this, Meg Morraws!” she shouted. “Did ye think that I -couldn’t sell my soul? I would do anything under heaven to save my boy; -that’s the kind of me, Meg Morraws. I’ve money now and Dermod won’t die. -I won’t let him die!... What wouldn’t I do for him, child of my own and -of my heart?... It’s ill luck that’s drawin’ me to ruin, Meg, but not -the boy. He can’t help the sickness and it’s myself that has got to make -him well again.... I had whisky this night: that made me brave. I -could.... Isn’t it time that ye were in bed, Meg Morraws? I’m not -feelin’ kind towards anyone but the child. I want no one here but -Dermod, my little boy.” - -Meg went into her room, closing the door softly behind her. Norah took -some money--five shillings--from her pocket and put it on the -mantelpiece, under the picture of the Virgin and Child. It made a -tinkling sound as she put it down and the silver coins sparkled -brightly. - -Then she turned down the light, threw some more coals on the fire, and -taking the child from the bed she sat down and held the little bundle of -pink flesh against her bosom. She could hear the water bubbling from the -tap out on the landing; the noise of footsteps on the stairs; loud, -vacant laughter from No. 8. Why did those women laugh, Norah -wondered.... The fire blazed brightly, and as she raised her eyes she -could see the silver coins on the mantelpiece shining like stars. - - -III - -Someone rapped; and receiving no answer, the caretaker, the woman with -the red wisps of hair, and a string for a neck, poked her head through -the door. - -“Not in bed yet, Norah Ryan?” she asked. - -“Just goin’,” the girl answered. - -“They’re doin’ a big trade at No. 8 the night,” said the woman. - -“I’m not wantin’ to hear; it’s nothing to me.” - -The caretaker smiled, showing her teeth, sharp as a dog’s and in a good -state of preservation. - -“I’m only just tellin’ ye,” said the woman. “I suppose ye ken, lassie, -that half the rooms up this stair are lyin’ idle, wi’ no yin to take -them. What is the reason for that? I’ll tell ye. Some people, decent -folk, ye ken, will not come to sic a place because they dinna like women -of the kind at No. 8. If these two women were put away, this landing -would be fillt ev’ry night. But I let the women stay. Why’s that? -Because I like fair play. Give everyone a chance to live, is what I say. -And they’re makin’ guid siller, them twa lassies at No. 8. Three pounds -a night between them sometimes. And I wouldna turn them oot; wouldna do -it for wurl’s, because I like fair play. But as ye ken yersel’, they -must pay me a little more than other lodgers.” - -“What do ye want me to pay extra?” asked Norah in a hard voice. “Tell me -at once and leave me to meself.” “Say half and half,” answered the -red-haired woman, glaring covertly at the Irish girl. “That’ll be fair, -for ye’ll earn the money very easy, so to speak. And then ye can stay -here as long as ye like. I wouldna turn ye oot, no for onything, because -I like fair play. It’s not ev’ry house, ye ken, that would.... But ye -know what I mean. I wish ye good-night, and I’ll make a note of all the -men that come up. And if the police come along I’ll gi’e ye the wink. -Good-night and good luck!” - -The woman went out, but presently poked her red wisps in again. “I’ll -take it that every man I see comin’ in here gies ye five bob. If they -gie ye more ye can tell me; but five bob’ll be the least, and half and -half is fair play. Good-night; good-night and good luck!” - -“A dirty hag she is!” said old Meg, who had been listening at the door -during the conversation and who now came into the room. “Dirty! and her -makin’ piles of tin. Full of money she is and so is the woman that owns -the buildin’. Mrs. Crawford they cry her, and she lives oot in Hillhead, -the rich people’s place, and goes to church ev’ry Sunday with prayer -books under her arm. Strike me dead! if she isn’t a swine, a swine -unhung, a swine and a half. Has a motor car too, and is always writin’ -to the papers about sanitary arrangements. ‘It isn’t healthy to have too -many people in the one room,’ she says. But I ken what she’s up to, her -with her sanitary and her fresh air and everything else, the swine! If -few people stay in ev’ry room she can let more of them; God put her in -the pit, the swine! And the woman downstairs, the thin-necked serpent! -is just as bad. If the likes of her finds women like me and you goin’ to -hell they try to rob us outright before Old Nick puts his mits on our -shoulders.” - - -IV - -In the days which followed, Norah learned much which may not be written -down in books, sad things that many dare not read, but which some, under -the terrible tyranny of destiny, dare to endure. It now seemed to the -girl that all freedom of action, all the events of her life had been -irrevocably decided before she was born. Deep down in her heart this -thought, lacking expression and almost undefined, was always with her. - -She bought new dresses, learned the art of making every curl on her -white brow look tempting, and every movement of her face and body to -express desires which she did not feel. She followed up her new -profession like one sentenced to death, with reason clogged, feeling -deadened and intellect benumbed. As an alternative to this there was -nothing but starvation and death, and even purity is costly at such a -price. Dragged to the tribunal which society erects for the prosecution -of the poor and pure, she was asked to renounce all that she cherished, -all her hopes, her virginity, her soul. Society, sated with the labour -of her hands, asked for her soul, and society, being the stronger, had -its demand gratified. - -But over it all, over the medley of pain and sorrow, over the blazing -crucible of existence in which all fair dreams and hopes of the woman -were melted away, greater and more powerful than anything else in -Norah’s life, intense and enduring, unselfish and pure, shone the -wonderful flame, the star of passionate love shining in the holy heaven -of motherhood. - -The child’s illness grew worse. One doctor was called in; then another. -Both looked wise for a moment, strove to appear unconcerned, passed -different verdicts and went away. One condemned the bedclothes; they -were unsanitary. Norah procured new clothes; but the child became worse. -Medicines were bought one day; they were condemned the next. A pretty -pink dress was obtained for the child; it did not suit. When taken back -to the clothes-seller he declared it was ruined and charged afresh for -new garments. - -So day after day, each full of a killing anxiety and bringing its own -particular trouble, passed by. Her house had attained a certain fame as -houses of the kind rapidly do. - -The hooligans who stood at the street corner soon knew her by repute, -for an ill name flies far and sticks fast. Little Tommy Macara looked in -at her door no more; the boy’s mother had warned him against the woman. -Life was now to Norah one vast intolerable burden that crushed her down. -If only the child were dead things would be clearer; then she would know -what to do. If Dermod died everything would be simplified; one easy -plunge into the river where it swirled under Glasgow Bridge would for -ever end all heartbreak and sorrow. - - -V - -Norah went out into the city on her usual errand; she had now known the -life of the streets for fully two months. It was nearly midnight, the -streets were well nigh deserted, save for the occasional prowlers and -drunken men who were coming home from their clubs or from the foul -haunts of the city. - -As she walked along, her head held down against the cutting breeze that -had suddenly risen and was now whirling round every corner, she heard -steps coming behind her, and in these steps she detected something -strangely familiar. For a moment she felt like a wayfarer who goes -alone, along a dark road, and waits for some horrible apparition to -stretch out from the darkness and put a hand on his shoulder. The steps -drew nearer, came closer ... somebody was passing her. Norah looked up, -started a little and cried: - -“Under God, the day and the night! It’s Dermod Flynn that’s in it!” - -She was again looking at Dermod Flynn; he stood in front of her, his -hand stretched out in welcome. - -“Is this you, Norah?” he asked. - -The crushing fatality of her years pressed down upon her; she suddenly -realised that she had lost something very precious; that all her -accidents and faults were bunched together and now laid before her. He -had grown so big too; a man he looked. - -“Is it yerself that’s in it, Dermod Flynn?” she asked. “I didn’t expect -to meet you here. Have ye been away home since I saw ye last?” She -thought she detected a wave of pity sweeping over Dermod’s face and -resting in his eyes. - -“I have never been at home yet,” he answered. “Have you?” - -“Me go home!” she replied almost defiantly. “What would I be going home -for now with the black mark of shame over me? D’ye think that I’d darken -me mother’s door with the sin that’s on me, heavy on me soul? Sometimes -I’m thinkin’ long, but I never let on to anybody, and it’s meself that -would like to see the old spot again. It’s a good lot I’d give to see -the grey boats of Dooey goin’ out beyond Trienna Bar in the grey duskus -of the harvest evenin’. D’ye mind the time ye were at school, Dermod, -and the way ye struck the master with the pointer?” - -“I mind it well,” said Dermod with a laugh, “and you said that he was -dead when he dropped on the form.” - -“And d’ye mind the day that ye went over beyont the mountains with the -bundle under yer arm? I met ye on the road and ye said that ye were -never comin’ back.” - -“You did not care whether I returned or not. You did not stop to bid me -good-bye.” - -“I was frightened of ye,” answered Norah, who noticed that Dermod spoke -resentfully, as if she had been guilty of some unworthy action. - -“Why were ye frightened?” he asked. - -“I don’t know.” - -“And you did not even turn to look after me!” - -“That was because I knew that ye yerself was lookin’ round.” - -“Do you remember the night on the Derry boat?” Dermod asked wistfully. - -“Quite well, Dermod,” she replied. “I often be thinkin’ of them days, I -do indeed.” - -There was a momentary silence. Norah dreaded the next question which -instinctively she knew Dermod would ask. He was better dressed than -formerly, she noticed, and he was tall and strong. She felt that he was -one in whom great reliance could be placed. - -“Where are you going at this hour of the night?” he asked, and Norah -read accusation in his tones. - -“I’m goin’ out for a walk,” she answered. - -“Where are you workin’?” - -“How much does he know?” Norah asked herself. What could she tell him? -That she was a servant in a gentleman’s house. But even as the lie was -stammering on her tongue she faltered and burst into tears. - -“Don’t cry,” said the young man awkwardly. “Is there--what’s wrong with -ye, Norah?” - -She did not answer, but low sobs shook her bosom. How much she wished to -be away, and yet--how she liked to be beside him! Surely Dermod would -think her a very funny girl to weep like that! A momentary remembrance -of a morning long ago when she met him on the Glenmornan road flashed -across her mind, and she held out her hand. - -“Slan agiv, Dermod,” she said in a choking voice, “I must be goin’. It -was good of ye to speak to me in that nice way of yers, Dermod.” - -His hand closed on hers but he did not speak. The sound of far-off -footsteps reached her ears.... A window was lifted somewhere near at -hand ... a cab rattled on the streets. Norah withdrew her hand and went -on her journey, leaving Dermod alone on the pavement. - - - - -CHAPTER XXX - -GROWN UP - - -I - -To all souls who are sensitive to moods of any kind, whether joyful or -sorrowful, there comes now and again a delicious hour when it is not -night and no longer day; the timid twilight gleams softly on every -object and favours a dreamy humour that weds itself, as if in a dream, -to the dim play of light and shade. In that delightful passage of time -the mind wanders through interminable spaces and dwells lovingly on -vanished hopes, broken dreams, and shattered illusions. In that moment a -soul feels the wordless pleasure of a memory that drifts lightly by; a -memory to which only the accents of the heart can give life. Old scenes -are brought up again and are seen in the delightful haze of transient -remembrance; there are waters running to a sea; waves sobbing on a -shore; voices speaking softly and low, and trees waving like phantoms to -a wind that is merely the ghost of a wind. In these dreams there is a -joyful melancholy, a placid acceptance of sorrow and happiness that -might have only been realities of an earlier existence of long past -years. - -An hour like this came to Norah Ryan one evening as she sat in her room -waiting for a fight to come to an end on the landing outside. The -one-armed soldier, who had just returned from prison and found another -man in company with one of his loves, was now blackening the man’s -eyes. Norah knew that she would be molested when passing outside; she -chose to wait until the storm was over. She was dressed ready to go out; -old Meg had taken charge of the child; the fight was still in full -swing. A fire burned dimly in the grate at which Norah sat; a frail blue -fleeting flame flared nervously for a moment amongst the red tongues of -fire, then faded away. The blind was drawn across the window, but the -lamp had not been lighted yet. Norah sat on the floor, looking into the -glowing embers, her chin, delicately rounded, resting in the palm of her -hand, her long, tapering fingers touching a little pink ear that was -almost hidden under her soft, wavy tresses. The faintest flush mantled -her cheeks, her brow seen in the half-light of the room looked doubly -white, and her long lashes sank languidly from time to time over her -dream-laden eyes. - -Norah’s thoughts were far away; they had crossed the bridge of many -years and roved without effort of will over the shores of her own -country. Again she lived the life of a child, the life she had known in -her earlier years. The air was full of the scent of the peat, the sound -of the sea, the homesick song of the streams babbling out their plaints -as they hurried to the bosom of their restless mother, the ocean. - -It was evening. The sun, barely a hand’s breadth over the horizon, -coloured the waters of the bar and the sea beyond, amber, crimson, and -dun. The curraghs of Frosses were putting out from the shore; the -bare-footed men hurried along the strand, waving their arms and moving -their lips, but making no sound. Fergus was there, light-limbed and -dark-haired; her father, wrinkled and bearded; the neighbours and the -women and children who came down to the beach to see the people off to -the fishing. - -One dream blended with another. It was morning: the sun tipped the hills -and lighted Glenmornan; strips of gold in the clouds of the east were -drawn fine as the wrinkles on the brow of a woman; a mist rose from the -holms of Frosses, and the water of the streams sparkled merrily. In the -pools trout were leaping, breaking the glassy surface and raising a -shower of rainbow mist that dissolved in the air. A boy came along the -road; there was a smile on his face and his eyes were full of dreams, as -the eyes of a youth who goes out to push his fortune well may be. In one -hand he carried a stick, in the other a bundle. Dermod Flynn was setting -out for the hiring fair of Strabane.... - - -II - -So Norah Ryan dreamt, one vision merging into another and all bringing a -long-lost peace to her soul. She did not hear the first rap at the door, -nor the second. The third knock, louder and more imperative than the -others, roused her to a sense of her surroundings. In the fabric of her -existence the black thread of destiny again reappeared and she rose, -pushed back the erring lock of hair from her white forehead, placed some -more coal on the fire, turned up the lamp and lit it, then went and -opened the door. A young man dressed in sailor’s garb, his face cut and -covered with blood, stood on the threshold; behind him on the ground lay -a prostrate figure, the man with the empty sleeve. - -“Come in,” said Norah. She did not look at the visitor; all men were the -same now to her; all were so much alike. The sailor rubbed a -handkerchief over his face, staggered past the girl and sank into a -chair. - -“What’s that one-armed swine doin’?” he cried. “Strikin’ a man, an A.B. -before the mast, without any reason; him and his gabblin’ fools of -women! But I learned him somethin’, I did. One on the jowl and down he -went. An A.B. before the mast stands no foolin’. Has he got up?” he -called to the woman at the door. - -The ex-soldier staggered to his feet on the landing, and swore himself -along the passage. Norah closed the door. - -“He’s up on his feet and away to his own room,” she informed the sailor. - -“This No. 8?” he asked. - -“No,” answered Norah. “It’s three doors round on the left; I’ll show you -where it is.” - -“But is this house one like No. 8?” - -“The same.” - -“Then I’ll stay,” said the sailor, who was still busy with his face. “I -heard tell of No. 8 out abroad. I’m an A.B., you know. Before the mast -on half the seas of the world! I met a sailor who was here; not here, -but at No. 8. Ah! he had great stories of the place. So I said that I’d -come here too, if ever I came to Glasgow. Damn! that one-armed pig he -almost blinded me, did the beggar. But I gave one to him on the jowl -that he’ll not forget.... Where can I wash my face?” - -“On the landing,” Norah told him, and handed the man a towel. - -He went out and washed. Presently he re-appeared and Norah took stock of -him. He was dressed in sailors’ garb; his eyes were hazy from -intoxication, one of his hard and knotted hands was tattooed on the -back, his dark and heavy moustache was draggled at both ends and a red -scar on his right cheek-bone showed where the soldier had hit him. He -was young, probably not over thirty years of age. He sat down again. - -“D’ye know what it is?” he exclaimed, striking his fist heavily against -his knee. “A woman of yer kind may be as good as most and better than -many. I always say that, always. Some of them may be bad, but for the -others----” - -He banged his fist again against his knee and paused as if collecting -words for an emphatic finish to his sentence. - -“Others are as good as pure gold,” he concluded. He was silent for a -moment as if deep in thought, then he fixed his eyes on the girl. “Come -here and sit on my knee,” he said. - -She sat down on his knee and laughed, but her laugh was forced and -hollow. - -“Ye’re unhappy,” said the man, looking at her fixedly, and stroking his -face with his hand. “Don’t say that ye aren’t, for I know that ye are. -Ye’ll be new at this game, maybe.... D’ye belong to Glasgow?” - -“I do.” - -“Ye talk like an Irish girl.” - -“My father was Irish.” - -“Ah! that explains it,” said the man. “I’m Irish, ye know.” - -“Are ye?” exclaimed Norah with a start. - -“I am that,” said the man. “Why do ye jump like ye do? Maybe ye’re -frightened of me?” - -“No.” - -“Maybe it’s yer first time at this work?” - -The girl made no answer. Her cheeks were scarlet and she felt as if she -could burst into tears, but stifled bravely the sob that rose to her -throat. - -“Don’t be frightened of me,” said the man. “We sailors are a rough lot -at times, but we respect beauty, so to speak. My God, ye’re a soncy -lookin’ wench. New to this kind of life as well!” - -He paused. - -“And what’s this?” he cried, glancing at the Virgin’s picture and the -little black crucifix. He turned to the girl and saw that a tear which -she hastily tried to brush away was rolling down her cheek. - -“Ye’re a Catholic too,” he said in a milder voice. “It’s damned hard -luck. I myself am a Catholic, at least I was born one, but now -I’m--well, I’m nothin’.... A Catholic feels it most.... I’ve always said -that one may find women a great lot worse than women--than a woman like -yerself. The ladies that can gorge themselves at table when ye have to -do the likes of this for a livin’ are more guilty of yer sin than ye are -yerself.... Ye know I’m a bit drunk; not much wrong with me, though, for -I can see things clearly. If I’m a bit groggy ’twas mostly the fault of -that one-armed swine. But I forgive him.... I’m an advanced thinker.... -What is yer name?” - -“Jean.” - -“I mean yer real name. It’s rarely that an Irishman calls his children -by names unbeknown in his own country. Sit closer. There! ye’re a nice -girl. I like yer brow, it’s so white, and yer lips, they’re so pretty. -Now, give me a kiss. It’s nice to have a girl like yerself on my knee. -I’m three sheets in the wind, but I like ye. I’m an advanced thinker and -I’ve read, oh! ever so much: Darwin, Huxley. Have ye ever heard of these -men?” - -“Never,” Norah answered. “Who are they?” - -“They are the great minds of the world. They are the men who proved that -there was no heaven and no God.” - -“But there is a God!” - -“If there is, why do ye suffer like this?” - -“Because I’m bad.” - -“Ha! ha!” laughed the man. “How funny! how very funny! Ye are a child, -and God would feel honoured if ye allowed Him to lace yer shoes. If ye -kept very good and pure He might let ye to heaven when ye died--but -would He give ye a pair of shoes in mid-winter?... There’s no God.... -Kiss me again. By heaven! If ye weren’t so good lookin’ and so temptin’ -I’d be generous. I’d go down on my knees and salute ye as a -representative of sufferin’ womankind, and then go away feelin’ honoured -if ye only allowed me to kiss your hand. But ye are so winsome! I should -like ye to be always pure, but why do men like purity in a woman? They -like it so that they can take it away, so that they can kill that which -they love. But what am I talkin’ about anyway? I’m drunk; not so -much--just three sheets in the wind or so. I can see things clearly. I’m -a learned man and I know things, bein’ a great traveller, and a worker -on half the docks in the world, and a sailor too. A.B. before the mast I -am. I’ve seen things in my time, many things, most of them unjust, very -unjust. It’s seven years since I left home, think of that! Yer father -came from Ireland, ye say. What part of the country did he come from?” - -“I don’t know,” said Norah in a low voice. “I never asked him. What part -of Ireland did ye come from?” - -“I said that it is an unjust world, a danged unjust world,” said the -man, pressing her tightly and kissing her. “And in Ireland ye see more -injustice than can be seen anywhere in half the world. I’ve seen women -and girls in Ireland working for a penny a day. They were knittin’ socks -and they had to travel miles for the yarn; aye, and to cross an arm of -the sea that took them to their breasts. In the height of winter, too, -with the snow fallin’ and the sleet. Ah! if yerself had suffered such -hardships ye wouldn’t live to tell the tale. And children too had to go -out into the cold black water! My sister, a very little girl--just about -that size”--the sailor held out his hand about two feet from the -ground--“used to work fourteen hours a day when she was but twelve, and -her pay was sevenpence ha’penny a week! The hanged little thing! and -she wasn’t that size.... But I’ve made some money--salvage, ye know--and -I’m goin’ to make my sister a lady when I go back to Donegal. She was -such a nice wee girl. Wouldn’t it be fine if girls always kept young! I -think of my sister now as I left her, not grown up at all.... Ye too are -a nice lass, so different from those I’ve seen in the far corners of the -world.” - -“What is yer name?” asked Norah in a tremulous whisper. But she knew his -name, recognised her brother Fergus, saw in his face that indescribable -individuality which distinguishes each face from all others in the -world. With tense, strained look she waited for the answer to her -question. - - -III - -“Fergus Ryan of Frosses in the county Donegal,” replied the sailor, -banging his fist against the corner of the chair. “Fergus Ryan, -able-bodied seaman before the mast. I’ve sailed ever such a lot. -Singapore, Calcutta, New York, and Melbourne; I’ve seen all those -places, aye, and nearly all the countries of the world!... Ah! and I’ve -come across a lot of trouble, fighting and all the rest of it. Two times -a knife was left stickin’ in me; more than once I was washed into the -sea. Ah! I could tell ye things about other places if I liked.... What’s -wrong with ye? Ye seem scared. But ye’re not afraid of sailors, are ye? -They’re all decent fellows, honest, though a little careless at times. -My God! what’s comin’ over ye? Ye’re goin’ to faint!” - -Norah had suddenly become heavy in the man’s arms; the hand which he -held contracted tightly and a sickly pallor overspread her countenance. - -“Jean!” cried the sailor, staring at the girl with a puzzled expression. -“Jean! that’s not yer name, but it doesn’t matter. Ye aren’t afraid of -sailors, are ye? They’re rough fellows, most of them, but good at heart. -Has a man never told ye before that he got stuck in the ribs with a -knife? Women here know nothin’, but in Calcutta.... What am I talkin’ -about anyhow? Jean, waken up!” - -The man rose unsteadily, and bearing the senseless girl in his arms he -approached the bed and laid her down carefully, sorting with clumsy -fingers the stray tresses on her brow as he did so. Then seizing a glass -that stood on the mantelpiece, he rushed out and filled it with water -from the tap on the landing. He came in, held Norah up in his arms, and -pressed the glass to her lips. She opened her eyes. - -“Drink this,” said the sailor. “What else can I do to help ye?” - -“Leave me to myself,” said the girl. “Go away and leave me. At once, -now!” She sat upright in bed and freed herself from his arms; the glass -fell to the floor and broke with a musical tinkle; the water splashed -brightly and formed into little wells on the planking. The sailor put -his hands between his belt and trousers and gazed placidly at the girl. - -“Now, that is too bad,” he said, speaking slowly; “too dashed bad! All -sailors are decent fellows at heart, only now and then they tell stories -about their wild life. All that I said about the knifing was just a -tale.” - -“I haven’t mind of what ye said,” Norah replied in a whisper, then in a -louder voice: “Go away! do go away and leave me to myself.” - -“I’m not goin’ now,” he said in a voice of reproof. “I cannot go; it’s -impossible! I’ve plenty of money. Look!” He pulled a handful of gold -from his pocket. “My God! I cannot leave ye now, I cannot. Why do ye -want me to go away?” - -Norah looked at the picture of the Virgin and shuddered as if something -had stung her. Suddenly it came to her that Fate had done its worst; -that evil and unhappiness had reached their supreme climax. She looked -hard at her brother, a fixed and almost defiant look in her eyes, her -lips set in a firmly-drawn line. - -“Why do ye want me to go away?” he repeated. - -“Because I’m yer sister Norah, the one that wouldn’t be grown up when ye -went back.” She felt a grim, unnatural satisfaction in repeating the -man’s words, and strangely enough her voice was wonderfully calm. “I -made a mistake and it was all my own fault. This is how I’m livin’ -now--a common woman of the streets. Now go away and leave me to myself. -Fergus, I’m grown up!” - -“Ye’re my sister, ye’re Norah?” said the man as the girl freed herself, -almost reluctantly, from his arms. He stepped backwards, paused as if he -wanted to say something, approached the door, fumbled for a moment with -the knob, and went out. On the stairway he stood as if trying to collect -his thoughts. - -“Where am I?” he muttered. “It used to be red creepin’ things before, -and besides, I’m not very drunk at present, not more than three -sheets.... But the picture of the Blessed Virgin--that was funny! Fergus -Ryan, A.B., are ye drunk or are ye mad? Look around ye! This is a flight -of stairs, wooden steps; this is an iron railin’, that’s a window. Now, -ye aren’t very drunk when ye can notice these things. That’s where the -one-armed swine struck me. Now I’ll look at my watch. A quarter past -nine. If I was in the D.T.’s I couldn’t tell the time. Besides, I know -where I am at present. On the stairway leadin’ to a Glasgow kip-shop, -and I’ve been dreamin’. No, I haven’t been dreamin’, I’m mad! Talkin’ to -my sister, to Norah! One does dream funny things. She isn’t a person -like that.... Seven years is a long time and a lot might happen. I’ll -walk along the street to the quay and maybe the air off the river will -clear me up a bit. I’ll come back here and free her from the place, for -I’ve money, plenty of it.... I’m afraid of nothin’, nothin’ in the -world. Why should I, me with the track of two knives in my body? But -what is the use of talkin’ when I’m awfully sick with fear at this -moment! God! I’ve never ran up against a thing like this in all my life -before.... Have I not, though? Are they not all somebody’s sisters, some -mother’s children? I’ve never thought of it in that way before. I’ll go -up again.” - -He reached the top and tried to push the door open. It did not budge. He -put his ear to the keyhole and heard sobs, smothered as if by a hand, -very near him. On the other side of the door Norah was weeping. - -“That’s my sister,” he whispered hoarsely. Looking down he saw the light -shining through the splintered door. A cavity through which he might -pass his fist lay open before him. He put his hand in his pocket, took -out several pieces of gold and shoved them into the room; then turned -down the stairs and hurried out into the crowded streets. - - -IV - -At the end of an hour he found himself sitting on a capstan by the -river, his elbows on his knees and his head buried in his hands. He -could not tell how he had gotten there; his brain was throbbing dizzily -and myriad little red and blue spots danced before his eyes. - -The place was very dark, the sickly light of the few lamps along the -river did not light more than a dozen yards around them. On the deck of -a near boat a sailor walked up and down, stamping his feet noisily and -whistling a popular music-hall tune. Overhead a few stars glimmered -soberly; a smell of pitch was in the air; a boat loosened from her -moorings was heading downstream. About fifty paces back from the wharf a -public-house opened out on the river. Dark forms stood at the bar, arms -were waving in discussion, and hoarse voices could be heard distinctly. -Against the garish light the smallest perpendicular object was outlined -in black. Now and again a fist banged on a table and the glasses raised -a silvery tinkle of protest against the striker. A woman came out of the -place and went on her way along the street, reeling from side to side -and giving utterance to some incoherent song. The water lapped against -the wharf, a little wind wailed past Fergus’ ears; he rose, stretched -his arms, took a cigarette from his pocket but threw it away when it was -lighted. - -“It’s lonely here, but in the pub a man may forget things,” he said. “I -wish to heaven I could think of anything but it! I’ll try and forget it, -but it’s hard, danged hard.... If I had a fight I’d forget, for a moment -at least, what I have just seen. My sister Norah? And once I struck a -sailor because he said that no girl was as good as I made out my sister -to be.... A whore! my God, a whore! I’ll go’ver to the pub and get -drunk, mad drunk! What matters now? I’ll not go home, I’ll never go -home!” - -Thrusting his hands under his belt, he crossed the street, entered the -public-house and called for a glass of whisky at the bar. His face was -haggard and the palms of both his hands were bleeding. - -“I’ve driven my nails into them,” he said aloud, and looked round -angrily. Those who were staring at him turned away their eyes, renewed -their conversation and raised their glasses to their lips with evident -unconcern. Fergus lifted his liquor and swallowed all at one gulp. - -“The same again!” he shouted to the bar-tender, and lit another -cigarette. “No, not the same; gi’ me a schooner and a stick[G] in it. -God damn ye! what are ye starin’ at?” - -The bar-tender who was examining Fergus attentively made no reply, but -emptied out the liquor hastily. For a moment Fergus was deep in thought. -Suddenly rousing himself he struck the counter a resounding blow with -his fist, ripping his knuckles on the woodwork and causing everybody in -the room to look round. Then he swallowed his drink and went towards the -door. With his hand on the handle, he looked back. “I’m sorry for -kickin’ up a noise,” he said. “Good-night.” - -He passed out. The ray of light from the door showed him staggering -across the street towards the quay. Once there he sat down on the -capstan, put his hand in his pocket and brought out a fistful of money. -He raised it over his head and for a moment it seemed as if he was going -to throw it into the water. However, he kept hold of it and returned to -the pub, where he purchased a half-pint of whisky. He placed a sovereign -on the counter and went out without his change. - -Ten o’clock passed; then eleven. Fergus Ryan paced up and down the quay, -his hands deep down under his belt and the half-empty bottle in his -pocket. The air was now moist and cold; a smell of rotting wood pervaded -the place, and the water under the wharf was wailing fitfully. The -mooring ropes of the nearest vessel strained tensely on the capstan and -the giant vessel seemed eager as a stabled colt to get out, away and -free. - -“I would like to know where that boat is goin’ when she sails,” Fergus -said, but instantly his thoughts turned to something else. He pulled out -his watch and looked at it. - -“Would anyone know a new day if the clocks did not chime?” he asked -himself in a puzzled way. “I suppose not. It’ll soon be here, the new -day.... There, the clocks are beginnin’. Damn them! Damn them!... If it -had been anyone but my sister! Why did she come to Scotland? Landlord, -priest, and that arch-scoundrel, McKeown, livin’ on her earnin’s. I -suppose she’ll send home money even now, and some of it’ll go to the -priest to buy crucifixes and pictures of the Virgin, and some of it to -the landlord to buy flounces for his wife, and some will go to Farley -McKeown. I was goin’ to pay a surprise visit and I was livin’ on that -goin’ home for a long while. Ah! but the world is out at elbow. And I’m -drunk!” - -He stuck both his hands under his belt again and approached the edge of -the wharf. Three dark forms slunk out of the shadows and drew in on the -sailor. Only when they were beside him did anything warn him of danger. -He looked round into the face of the one-armed soldier, whose loose -sleeve was fluttering in the wind. - -“Ah! ye swine!” Fergus exclaimed and struggled with the belt which -prisoned his hands. But the three men were on top of him and the effort -was futile. In an instant he was flung outwards and dropped with a -splash into the water that seemed to rise and meet him as he fell. It -was as cold as ice and the belt held taut despite his efforts to break -free. He had a moment to wonder. “Why did he want to drown me?” he asked -himself. His mouth filled and he swallowed. He was now going down head -first, but slowly. He made another effort to free his hands, but was -unsuccessful. Then he resigned himself to his fate, and consciousness -began to ebb from him. He felt that he had forgotten something that was -very important, not to himself but to somebody else. Then came complete -darkness, and the book of life, as man knows it, was closed forever to -Fergus Ryan. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXI - -DESPAIR - - -I - -The light on the mantelpiece grew faint, flickered and was going out; -the wick, short and draggled, no longer reached the oil. The fire died -down and only one red spark could be seen glowing in the white ashes. -Twelve of the clock struck out slowly and wearily, as if the chimes were -tired of their endless toil. On the floor beside the door a pile of -sovereigns, scattered broadcast, glowed bright even under the dying -light; the figure on the black crucifix showed very white, save where -the daub of red paint told of the Saviour’s wounded side. - -Norah sat on the bare floor, one leg stretching out, her hands clasped -tightly round the knee of the other, which was almost drawn up to her -chin. Action was clogged within her, a terrible black monotony was piled -around and above her; a silence, not even broken by sighs, had taken -possession of the girl. - -Old Meg rapped at the door many times before Norah heard her; then she -rose, poured some oil into the lamp and turned up the light. Afterwards, -not because she wanted to, but because she was desirous of hiding from -everybody that which had taken place within the room during the last few -hours, she lifted the gold pieces and stuffed them into the pocket of -her dress. - -“Norah Ryan! Norah Ryan!” the old woman was crying outside the door. A -dim, hazy thought of all the good things which the gold would buy for -her child crossed Norah’s mind as she opened the door. - -“The little fellow has taken a turn,” the old woman said as she stepped -inside and looked curiously round. Of late Norah’s compartment had had a -curious interest for her: how many times each night between the hours of -six and twelve did she come to the door and listen to all that was going -on inside. “I thought that ye’d never hear,” she said. “I was knockin’ -and knockin’.” - -“He’ll soon be better now,” Norah said in a voice so tensely strained -that it caused the listener to look at her with surprise. “I can now pay -for doctors, dresses, everything. D’ye hear that, Meg Morraws?” The last -sentence sounded like a threat. - -The child was doubled up on Meg’s bed, and perspiring freely. The old -woman had put on a fire that was now blazing merrily. - -“I had twa stanes of coal, and I put them all on because of the kid,” -said the woman. “Have ye a penny and I’ll get some oil. There’s not a -drop in the house and I’m clean broke.” - -Norah handed the woman a sovereign and told her to keep it. Meg -ejaculated a grunt of surprise, made a remark about the shops being -closed, promptly discovered that she really had some oil, and put the -coin in her pocket. - -The night wore on; the child, breathing heavily and coughing, lay in -Meg’s bed, one little hand showing over the blue lettered sentence on -the blanket. The light burned fretfully, the old woman remarked that the -oil was mixed with water and that she had got poor value for her money. -Norah talked of removing the child into the other room; Meg said it -would be madness, and scraping up more coal, heaped it on the fire. In -the morning the old woman intended to get very drunk in the pub outside. - -A clatter was heard on the stairs; then the sound of a falling body -throbbed through the building. Meg went out and found a man--the -one-armed soldier--asleep on the landing. She bent down, fumbled with -the man’s coat, discovered a bottle of whisky, drank and returned the -bottle to the sleeper’s pocket. She entered the room again, smacking her -lips, threw herself down by the fire and started to weep. In a little -while she fell asleep. - -She woke instinctively at eight o’clock, the hour when the taverns were -opening, and rising to her feet, she rubbed her eyes vigorously with her -fingers. She found Norah sitting on the edge of the bed, one hand -pressed tightly against her knee, one resting lightly on the head of the -child. - -“Are the pubs open yet?” asked Meg, then in a lower voice: “I mean, is -the child better, the dear little thing?” - -“He’s dead,” said Norah quietly. “He died over an hour ago.” - -“An hour ago!” exclaimed the woman. “And why didn’t ye waken me?... I’m -a bad yin, Norah Ryan, a gey bad yin!” Saying these words the woman -approached the bed and for a moment stared fixedly at the child. Then -she paced backwards across the room, sobbing loudly and muttering -meaningless words under her breath. Through the dirty window she could -see the beer-shop opposite; the doors were open and a young man in -shirt-sleeves was taking off the shutters. - -“My heart is wae for ye, Norah,” said the old woman. “Death is a hard -thing to bear. But I suppose it’ll come to all of us yin day. Oh! oh! -and all of us maun gang some day.... I’m goin’ oot the noo,” she -suddenly exclaimed, stopping in her walk and looking very serious, as -if she had remembered something very important. “I’ll be back again in a -meenit or twa.” - -Meg tied her shawl over her head and without washing her face went out -and became speedily drunk. The young man with the white shirt, who took -down the shutters, made some sarcastic remarks about Meg’s dirty face, -and Meg, being short-tempered, lifted an empty bottle and flung it in -the man’s face, wounding him terribly. A policeman was called in and the -woman was hurried off to the police-station. - -Noon saw Norah Ryan still sitting on the bedside, her brother’s gold -jingling in her pocket whenever she moved, and her dead child lying cold -and silent beside her. - - -II - -A month of black sorrow passed by. There was a great void in Norah’s -heart, a void which could never be filled up. Every morning she rose -from bed, knowing that the day would have no joy, no consolation for -her. Life was almost unendurable; never was despair so overpowering, so -terrible. Nothing but the all-encompassing loneliness of the future -existed for her now--that terrible future from which she recoiled as a -timid animal recoils from the brink of a precipice. - -She had suffered so much, was healed a little; now the healing salve of -motherhood was wrenched from her by the hand of death. Nothing now -remained to the girl but regrets, terrible, torturing, lingering regrets -that tore at her mind like birds of prey. - -“No matter what I do now, nobody will think me no worse than I am,” she -cried, but the thought left her unmoved; even life did not interest her -enough to have any desire to end it. Shame had once covered her, -enveloped her as in a garment, but now shame was gone; she had thrust -it away and even the blind trust in some unshapen chance which had once -been hers was now hers no longer. - -She worked no more; only once was she roused to action, and that was -when she looked at the gold coins in her pocket. This was Fergus’ money, -and she had often wondered where he had gone to on that night of nights. -She went to a neighbouring post-office and sent ten pounds home to her -mother. Not a line, not a word went with the money order. - -“I’m dead, dead to everyone,” she said. “To me own mother, to Fergus, to -all the good people in the wide world.” - - -III - -She was coming back from the post-office and the loneliness weighed -heavily upon her. She thought of the letter on its way to her own -country. Soon the little slip of paper would be in the old home, would -be pressed by her mother’s fingers; and she, poor little suffering -Norah, would still be hemmed up in her narrow room, for all the world -just like a bird prisoned in its cage; hearing nothing but the vacant -laughter and sound of scurry and scuffle on the stairs and streets, and -seeing nothing but the filthy lanes, the smoky sky, and the misery and -squalor of the fetid Cowcaddens. - -She went into a public-house and purchased a bottle of whisky. That -night she got drunk and even happy; but the happiness was one of -forgetfulness. She awoke from a heavy sleep in the middle of the night -and lit her lamp. Then her eyes fell on the picture of the Virgin, the -holy water stoup, the little black crucifix and the white Christ with -extended arms and bleeding breast nailed upon it. - -“I’ve prayed to ye for years,” she cried, clutching the picture of the -Virgin in her hand. “And look at me to-night! It’s little good me -prayers has done me; me a drunkard and everything that’s worse nor -another!” So speaking, she flung the picture into the dead fire. A -spiral of ashes rose slowly, fluttered round and settled on the floor. -She brought down the holy water stoup, and resisting with a shudder the -desire, bred of long custom, to cross herself, emptied the contents into -the fireplace. Then she looked at the confidant of her innumerable vague -longings--the crucifix. - -“Sorrow!” she laughed. “Did ye ever know what a mother’s sorrow for her -dead child was? That’s the sorrow, the sorrow that would make me commit -the sins, the most awful in the whole world. But what am I saying? It’s -me that doesn’t know all the meanin’ of many things. If the people at -home, the master at school, the priest, any one at all had learned me -all the things that every girl should know I wouldn’t be here now like -something lost on a moor on a black night.” - -She went back to her bed, leaving the light burning and the crucifix -standing on the little shelf. She wondered why she had not thrown it -into the fire as she intended to do, and wondering thus she fell into a -deep and drunken slumber. - - -IV - -She awoke early, dressed, and went down the stairs into the street. It -was Sunday, solitary and silent, with a slight shower of snow falling. -Glasgow looked drearier than usual with its grimy houses and the wet -roofs, its dirty, miry streets where the snow dissolved as soon as it -fell. Norah’s spirits were in sympathy with the sombre surroundings, -and she felt glad that the oppressive noise of the week-days had abated. - -Heedless of direction, she walked along and was passing a Catholic -chapel when the worshippers who had been to early Mass showered upon -her. It was too late to turn back; she walked hurriedly through the -crowd, feeling that every eye was turned in her direction. - -“Potato-diggers,” someone said. “They’re goin’ back to Ireland -to-morrow.” - -Norah looked at the speaker, then to the crowd at which he pointed. It -was a party of Irish workers, now numbering about thirty in all, and a -few stragglers were still coming out to swell the ranks. A young girl -with very clear skin and beautiful eyes was putting her rosary, one with -a shiny cross at the end of it, into her pocket. An old woman with a -black shawl over her head was brushing the snow from her hair. Her face -was brown and very wrinkled; the few hairs that fell over her brow were -almost as white as the snow that covered her shawl. - -A young priest in cassock and gown came out, smiling broadly. “It’s -early in the year for snow,” he said, looking at the potato-diggers. - -“One may expect anything at this season of the year, yer reverence,” -said the old woman with the white hair. The young girl looked closely at -the priest, hanging on every word that he uttered. - -“Are you all goin’ across home, this winter?” asked the priest. - -“All of us,” said a man. - -“You like the old country?” enquired the priest. - -“Well may we,” answered the old woman. “It’s our own country.” - -Norah was moving away; the last words came to her like an echo. - -“Our own country!” Norah repeated half aloud, every word coming slowly -through her lips. “But I have no country at all, no country! He’s a -nice, kind priest, indeed he is. Speakin’ to them just as if they were -his own people! I would like to go and confess me sins to that priest!” - -The snow fell faster, and presently Norah felt cold. A fit of coughing -seized her and the sharp pain which seldom went away from her left -shoulder-blade began to trouble her acutely. She turned and went back to -her room. - -All that evening two pictures kept rising in her mind. One was of the -priest with the smiling face talking to the potato-diggers; the other -was the picture of the young girl with the clear skin and the beautiful -eyes putting the rosary, with the shiny cross at the end of it, into her -pocket. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXII - -CONFESSION - - -I - -A week passed; the hour was twelve o’clock on a Saturday night. The -clocks were striking midnight but the streets were still crowded with -people. A boat could be heard hooting on the Broomielaw; a train -whistling at Enoch Street station. A woman came along a narrow lane on -the Cowcaddens, shouldering her way amongst the people, and abusing in -no polite terms those who obstructed her way. She wore a shawl almost -torn to shreds and she staggered a little as she walked. Her features -were far from prepossessing; dry hacks dented her cheeks and brow; her -lips were rough and almost bloodless and wisps of draggled hair hung -over her face. As she walked along she broke into snatches of song from -time to time. - -Under the gaslight staring eyes set in sickly or swarthy faces glared at -her; rude remarks and meaningless jokes were made; sounds of laughter -rose, echoed and died away. Suddenly a noise, loud as a rising gale, -swept through the lane; a man hurried past and rushed along the streets, -a young girl followed. The crowd, as if actuated by one common impulse, -scurried past the woman, yelling and shrieking. A drunken man stared -stupidly after the mob, then fell like a wet sack to the pavement; a -labourer struck against the prostrate body; fell, and rose cursing. A -whistle was blown. “The slops! the slops!” a ragged youth shouted, and a -hundred voices took up the cry. “Run! Run!” others roared.... A little -toddling child stood on the pavement crying, one finger in its mouth and -its big curious eyes fixed on the rabble. - -“What are ye greetin’ for?” asked the woman in the ragged shawl. “Have -ye lost yerself?” - -“I want me mither!” wailed the child. - -“Ye’re here, are ye?” cried a stout, brazen-faced woman, ambling up and -seizing the infant, who was trying to chew a penny which the stranger -had just given it. “It’s a lass that’s fainted on the pavement,” -explained the mother, pointing to the crowd. “I think the corner boys, -rascals that they are, were playin’ tricks on her.” - -“That’s always the way with people,” said the strange woman. “See and -don’t let the child swallow the bawbee.” - -With these words she hurried into the press of people, the corners of -her shawl fluttering round her. A group of ragged men and women stood on -the pavement, chattering noisily. Against the wall a frail form was -propped up between two young girls, one of whom had a frightened look on -her face; the other was smiling and chewing an orange. A man, lighting a -pipe and sheltering the match under the palm of his hand, made some -suggestion as to what should be done, but nobody paid any heed. - -The woman with the torn shawl elbowed her way through the crowd, and -came to a standstill when she caught sight of the girl propped up on the -pavement. - -“It’s Norah Ryan!” she exclaimed. - -“That’s the name,” a female in the crowd said. “She lives up 42. She’s a -woman of the kind that.... But ye ken what I mean.” - -“And ye’d let her die here, wi’out givin’ a hand to help her!” cried the -new-comer, turning fiercely on the speaker. “Help me to take the lass to -her house.” - -The two girls assisted by two men helped the woman to carry Norah -upstairs. The crowd followed, pressing in and shoving against those in -front. Someone made a rude remark and the laughter which greeted it -floated far up even to the topmost landing, where the paralysed beggar, -somewhat the worse for liquor, was singing one of his cheery songs. - - -II - -The accident to Norah happened in this way. - -After seeing the Irish diggers come out of the chapel, she felt a sudden -desire to go and confess her sins to the young priest. This desire she -did not strive to explain or analyse; she only knew that she would be -happy in some measure if she went to the chapel again. - -The memory of her sins began to trouble her. How many they had been! she -thought. From that night when a ring sparkled in the darkness outside -Morrison’s farmhouse up till now, when she was a common woman of the -streets, what a life she had led! With her mind aspiring towards heaven -she became conscious of the mire in which her feet were set; the -religion of childhood was now making itself heard in the heart of the -woman. Nature had given Norah a power peculiarly her own that enabled -her to endure suffering and in turn counselled resignation; but that -power was now gone. She required something to lean against, and her -heart turned to the faith of which the little black crucifix on the -mantelpiece was the emblem. On the Saturday evening following her -meeting with the potato-diggers she went to confession. - -She entered the chapel, her shawl drawn tightly over her head and almost -concealing her face, which looked fair, white and childlike, seen -through the half-light of the large building. Although she tried to walk -softly her boots made a loud clatter on the floor and the echo caught -the sound and carried it far down through nave and chancel. A few -candles, little white ghosts with halos of feeble flame around their -heads, threw a dim light on the golden ornaments of the altar and the -figure of the Christ standing out in bold relief against the darkness -over the sacristy door. The sanctuary lamp, hanging from the roof and -swaying backwards and forwards, showed like a big red eye. - -Outside the confessional a number of men and women were seated on long -forms; one or two were kneeling, their rosaries clicking as the beads -ran through their fingers. Those seated, with eyes sparkling brightly -whenever they turned their heads, looked like white-faced spirits. An -old man was shuffling uneasily, his nailed boots rasping on the floor -from time to time; a woman having been seized with the hiccough rose and -went out, and the row on the seat gathered closer, each no doubt pleased -at the prospect of getting in advance of at least one other sinner. -Norah sat down at the end of the row, a strange fluttering in her heart, -and her fingers opening and closing nervously. She felt that the -penitents knew her, that they would arise suddenly and accuse her of her -sins. A man opposite looked fixedly at her and she hung her head. The -low mumbling voice of the priest saying the words of absolution over a -sinner could be heard coming from the confessional. But had there ever -been a sinner as bad as she was? Norah asked herself. For her sins it -was so hard to ask forgiveness. - -“Never, never will I get absolution,” she said under her breath. - -Then she began to wonder if the young, pleasant-faced priest who talked -to the potato-diggers was in the confessional. He would not be hard on -her; he looked so kind and gentle! - -“I’m afeared, very afeared,” she whispered to herself. “I’ll not go in -this time; I’ll go away and come back again.” - -But even as she spoke the woman with the hiccough came back and took up -her position on the end of the seat. Norah found that she could not get -away now without disturbing the woman. She bowed her head and began to -pray. - - -III - -She could not see the priest in the confessional, but could hear him -breathing in short, laboured pants like a very fat old woman. It -couldn’t be the young man, Norah thought, as she went down on her knees -and began the “Confiteor.” The priest hurried over the words in a weary -voice; Norah repeated them after him, stopping now and again to draw her -breath. A sensation, almost akin to that which precedes drowning, -gripped her throat. - -“What sins have ye committed?” asked the priest. “Tell me the greatest -first.” - -“I am a woman of the streets.” She had now taken the plunge and felt -calmer as she waited to be asked a question. - -“God’s merciful,” said the priest, and his voice was tinged with -interest. “Go on.” - -“I am the mother of a child that died but was never christened,” said -Norah. “It was all through my own fault.” - -“You haven’t been married?” - -“No,” said the girl, with a shudder. “I often thought of takin’ my own -life.” - -“Yes.” - -“I took to drink and then threw the picture of the Blessed Virgin and a -stoup of holy water into the fire.” - -She paused. - -“Ye’ve given up the life of the streets?” enquired the priest in a voice -teeming with curiosity. - -“I have,” answered Norah. - -“Did ye like it?” - -“No.” The answer was the echo of a whisper almost. - -“God’s merciful,” said the priest. His tones seemed hoarse with the -passion of a sensuous youth. “And yer other sins?” he asked. - - -IV - -She prayed for a long time before the altar, mingling tears with her -prayers. Footfalls came and went, but nobody paid any heed to the -kneeling woman. Of this she was glad. Norah wanted to do good, as other -people commit evil actions, secretly. The trembling shadows thrown by -the sanctuary lamp played round the Christ who, with outstretched hand, -stood over the sacristy door. How great and serious the Saviour looked! -The girl imagined that He was thinking of some great secret belonging to -humanity but hidden so deeply that it was unknown to man. - -At ten o’clock she returned to her room and sat there for a long while. -A great peace had stolen into her soul, a peace that was mingled with no -regrets. She had forgotten the pain in her shoulder, forgotten -everything but the figure of the Christ over the sacristy door, and the -hand that was held out above her head as if in blessing. - -It was near midnight when she went out to buy provisions for the next -day. The hooligans at the street corner were very drunk and very noisy. -There were no policemen about; a fight some distance off was engaging -their attention. - -“Ah! here’s one that’ll hae some siller, the kip-shop wench!” shouted -one of the roughs, a big, round-shouldered rascal, on seeing Norah. -“Fork out, my pretty, and gie us some tin.” - -“Fork out!” roared the rest of the gang in chorus. - -Norah stood undecided, one foot in the gutter, one on the pavement. The -grocer’s shop was a dozen paces away. - -“The cops will be here in a jiffy,” someone shouted in a tense whisper. -“Search her!” - -Then followed a wild rush and Norah was conscious of many things in the -next few minutes. The air seemed suddenly charged with the fumes of -alcohol; hands seized her, rough fingers fumbled at her blouse, opened -it and rested on her breasts; a whistle was blown, she fell to the -pavement, got dragged for a few paces on the wet street and was pulled -to her feet again. Someone laid hands on her purse and took it out; a -scramble ensued, then a fight for the money. Norah was thrown down again -and trampled upon. The hooligans tore the purse and several coins fell -to the ground. A second whistle was blown, and the crowd disappeared, -leaving Norah lying in a dead faint on the pavement. - - -V - -When she recovered consciousness she was in her own room, lying on the -bed. The lamp was lit and she could hear the coal crackling in the fire. -She raised herself up in bed and looked enquiringly around. A stranger, -a woman who was bending over the fire, hurried forward. - -“And how are ye, Norah Ryan?” asked the stranger. - -“It’s Ellen that’s in it,” exclaimed Norah, sinking back on the pillow, -but more from surprise than from weariness. “Where have ye come from, -Ellen?” - -“I was in the street,” explained the woman, who was indeed -Ellen--Gourock Ellen. “I saw ye lyin’ on the pavement and I kent ye at -once. A woman in the crowd knew where ye lived.... Ye hae nae muckle -changed, Norah Ryan. Ye’re just the same as ye was when I saw ye last in -Jim Scanlon’s squad. And d’ye mind how me and ye was in the one bed?” - -“Ellen, I’m glad that ye came,” said Norah in a low voice. “I used to be -often thinkin’ of ye, Ellen.” - -“Thinkin’ of me, lass?” exclaimed Ellen, bending over the bed, but -keeping her lips as far away as possible from Norah lest the young woman -should detect the smell of whisky off her breath. “Why were ye thinkin’ -about me? Someone worthier should be in your thoughts.... The rascals in -the streets! Ah, the muckle scamps! They should be run into the nick and -never let out again. Ill-treatin’ a little lassie like you!” - -Norah looked up at the woman. Ellen’s pock-marked face was still full of -the same unfailing good nature which belonged to her years before when -she worked in Micky’s Jim’s squad. - -“Where is Annie?” - -“I dinna ken. She went off with a man and I haven’t seen her never -since.” Ellen smiled, but so slightly that the smile did not change the -expression of her eyes. - -“Ye don’t tell me! And ye’ve never been back at the squad again?” - -“Never back. I was times workin’ at the rag-pickin’ and times gatherin’ -coal from the free coup.” - -“That’s what Mary Martin done,” Norah exclaimed. “She was a woman known -to me.” - -“And ye kent old Mary!” said Ellen. “Me and her have worked together for -many’s a day, makin’ a shillin’ a day each at the job.” - -The woman paused. - -“Are ye feelin’ a wee better, Norah?” she asked presently. - -“I’m fine, Ellen,” was the answer. “I could get up and run about and I’m -not in the least sleepy. What were the corner boys wantin’ to do?” - -“They wanted siller----” - -“My purse, Ellen! Have they taken it from me?” Norah searched nervously -in the pockets of her dress. - -“I’m afeared that they have.” - -“Mother of God! I haven’t one penny now, Ellen, not one brown penny!” -Norah exclaimed. “It’ll be the streets for me again.” - -“We’ll get along somehow, if we work together,” said Ellen. - -“We’ll work together; that’s the way,” Norah whispered after a moment’s -consideration. - -“Twa is always better than yin,” Ellen replied. - -Norah looked closely at the woman as if puzzling out something; then her -eyes closed gently and quietly and she fell asleep. She awoke several -times during the night, mumbled incoherent words, then sank into a deep -slumber again. And all night Gourock Ellen watched over Norah Ryan. -Morning found her still sitting beside the bed, weary-eyed but patient, -her eyes fixed on the face of the sleeping girl. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIII - -ST. JOHN VIII, I-II - - -I - -In the morning Norah was in a raging fever. She spoke in her delirium of -many things, prattling like a child about the sea and curraghs of -Frosses going out beyond Trienna Bar in the grey dusk of the harvest -evening. She held conversation with people visible to none but herself: -with Fergus, with Dermod Flynn, with her mother, with the dead child. -The girl’s whole history for the last three years was thus disclosed to -Gourock Ellen. Days came and went; the patient became no better. A -doctor was called in; he applied his stethoscope to Norah’s chest and -shook his head gravely. - -“Well?” asked Ellen eagerly. - -“I’ll come again to-morrow,” said the doctor, and his tones implied that -this was a very important announcement. “Meanwhile----” and he gave -Ellen instructions as to how she should treat the patient. - -Money was scarce; Norah had lost every penny of hers on the night that -the hooligans attacked her. The other woman had only twenty-five -shillings in her possession, and this went very quickly. Then Ellen -called on the Jew, Isaac Levison, who had the pawnbroking business on -the stair. - -“D’ye ken the lass Norah Ryan?” Ellen enquired of the man, an -undersized, genial-looking fellow with sharp eyes and a dark moustache. - -“I know her,” said the Jew. He knew Ellen by sight and reputation; the -kind way in which she was treating the girl was common talk on the -stairs. - -“I want the len’ o’ three pounds,” said Ellen. “I can only gie my -promise to pay it back when I get work. Is that enough of a security?” - -“I’ll take your word,” said the Jew, who was to some extent a judge of -character, and who was kindly disposed towards the woman, having heard -much that was good about her. “Five per cent.,” he added. “That’s extra -good terms.” - -When the doctor came the next day Ellen spoke to him. - -“Cash is gey scarce here,” she said, “but do yer best for the girl and -I’ll meet the bill some day. I’ll meet it, doctor, so help me God!” - -The doctor smiled slightly; such protestations were not new to him. -Besides, he was a kindly man. - -“I’ll do my best for her,” he said. “And as to payment--well, we’ll -see.” - -“Ye’ll get paid,” said Ellen fiercely. “Ye must wait, but it doesn’t -matter what happens, ye’ll get paid, mind that! Though the lass is no -blood relation of mine, I dinna want ye to work for charity. And I’ll -pay ye yer siller; aye, if I’ve to work my fingers to the bone to do -it.” - -The doctor looked at the woman and knew that she was speaking from the -depths of her heart. - - -II - -Another fortnight, and the tang of spring was in the air. Ellen had -procured work as a charwoman in a large school, and being a good, -reliable worker, several smaller jobs came her way. Her wages now -amounted to nine shillings a week. Norah had recovered a little; the -cough was not as hard as formerly; the pain under her left -shoulder-blade had lost its sting, but, though hardly noticeable, it was -always there. At first Ellen found it difficult to induce Norah to stop -in bed; the girl wanted to get about and do some work. Only when she got -to her feet did Norah become fully conscious of the weakness in her legs -and spine. - -As she lay there in her narrow bed she could discern through the cracked -window the sky, always sombre grey and covered with low, sagging clouds. -Now and again she could see a homing crow fly past on lazy wings or -perhaps a white sea-gull turning sharply far up in the sky with a glint -of sunshine resting on its distended wings. And often on a clear night, -when the moonbeams filtered through the ragged blind, Norah would dream -of Frosses, and the sea, the old home, with the moon rising over the -hills of Glenmornan and lighting up the coast of Donegal. - -“I have been a great trouble to ye, Ellen,” Norah said one evening, -turning round in the bed and looking earnestly at her friend. “I seem to -be only a trouble to everyone that I meet, and now to yerself most of -all. Ye have been the great friend to me, Ellen.” - -“Haud yer tongue, ye muckle simple hussy,” said Ellen with a smile, -sorting the blankets on the bed. “Now gang to sleep and dinna let me -hear ye fash any longer. Are ye happy?” - -“I’m very happy, Ellen, waitin’ for the minit.” - -“What are ye haverin’ aboot, silly lassie?” - -“I used to build castles on Dooey Strand, that’s home in Donegal, when I -was wee,” said Norah. “And then when they were big and high the tide -would come in and sweep them away in one little minit. Them castles were -like people’s lives. Used ye to make castles in the sand when ye were -wee, Ellen?” - -“Not in the sand, but in the air, Norah,” said Ellen reminiscently. “I -began the bad life gey early. My mither--she wasna what some people -might cry vera guid; but she was my mither, Norah. Maybe I wasna wanted -when I came, but she had the pain o’ bringin’ me forth. Well, I kent -most things before I was sixteen years auld. Sixteen is an age when a -girl dinna weigh her actions, and sixteen likes pretty dresses, and -sixteen disna like to starve. Though we were poor and often hungry I -kept pure for a long while. But to tell the truth I didna think it worth -it in the end, Norah.” - -She paused for a moment and sorted a piece of cloth to fit on the dress -she was patching. - -“At eighteen--that’s a gey guid wheen of years ago now--I took it in my -heid that I wisna goin’ to sin ony mair,” Ellen went on. “I got very -religious and bowed myself in the dust before God. ‘He’ll ne’er forgie -me my trespasses,’ I said, ‘for I’m a poor miserable sinner.’ I got a -Bible then and read in it mony things that were a consolation and an -upliftin’ to me. And last night I bought one on the streets, Norah. A -man with a barrow was sellin’ them, and I got one for a penny. I thought -that maybe we would read pieces from it together.” - -“The Catholic Church doesn’t allow us to read the Bible,” said Norah. - -“I’ll only read one little bit,” said Ellen, taking a dilapidated volume -from her pocket. “Ye’ll listen to it, Norah, won’t ye?” - -“Anything that pleases yerself, Ellen, will please me.” - - -III - -Ellen laid down her scissors, trimmed the wick of the lamp, resumed her -seat, wetted her thumb and began to turn over the pages of the volume. - -“Here it is,” she said, and commenced to read in a low voice. - -“‘And early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the -people came unto Him; and He sat down and taught them. And the Scribes -and Pharisees’--they were a kind of people that lived in them days, -Norah--‘brought unto Him a woman taken in’--who committed a bad sin; -‘and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto Him: Master, this -woman was taken’--when she was sinnin’--‘in the very act. Now Moses in -the Law commanded us that such should be stoned: but what sayest Thou? -This they said, temptin’ Him, that they might have to accuse Him. But -Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground, as though He -heard them not. So when they continued asking Him, He lifted up Himself -and said unto them: HE THAT IS WITHOUT SIN AMONGST YOU LET HIM FIRST -CAST A STONE AT HER. And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. -And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went -out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last, and Jesus -was left alone and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had -lifted up Himself and saw none but the woman, He said unto her: Woman, -where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? She said, No -man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her: Neither do I condemn thee; go, and -sin no more.’” - -Tears showed in Ellen’s eyes when she finished reading; then without -giving Norah time to speak, she went on with her own story. - -“I gave up the life on the streets for twa and twa--for nearly four -months, Norah. Then my mither took ill and was like to dee. I nursed her -for a long while, then the siller gaed awa’ and hunger came in its -place. I had never learnt ony trade; there was only one thing to be -done, Norah. I went oot tae the streets again, oot to sin knowingly, and -what was before an ignorant lassie’s mistake was then and after a fault, -black in the eyes of heaven.” - -Ellen paused and looked up at the roof. Perhaps she was again seeing -herself as she was on that evening long ago, a wistful and pretty girl, -a child almost, going out into the streets to earn the money that would -buy food and clothing for her ailing mother. - -“I came back the next morn, greetin’ a wee, if I remember right, and twa -pieces of gold in my pocket. When I came into our room I found my mither -lyin’ on her chair by the fire, and she was dead!” - -“Poor Ellen,” said Norah in a low voice. “Ye had a hard time of it from -the beginnin’.” - -“Hard’s not the word,” cried Ellen, and a fierce look came into her -eyes. “It was damnable!” - -There was silence for a moment, when the two women felt rather than -thought. As in a dream, they could hear crowds passing like tides along -the narrow lane outside. - -“Will God ever forgive us for our sins?” asked Norah. - -“Ye have never ceased to be pure in the sight of God, lass,” said Ellen; -“and if baith of us are judged accordin’ to our sufferin’s we needna hae -muckle fear. That’s the way I look at things, Norah!” - -And Ellen, taking up her scissors, restarted her work, a smile almost -angelic in its sadness playing in odd little waves over her face. And in -the poor woman’s soul, glowing brighter even in misfortune, burned that -divine and primary spark which evil and accident could never -extinguish. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIV - -LONGINGS - - -I - -Time wore on and Norah lived for the most part in a world of fancy, -spoke to imaginary individuals and at moments addressed Ellen as Sheila -Carrol or as Maire a Glan. Sometimes she was gloomy and reserved, made -folds in the sheet, murmured in an almost inaudible voice, and seemed to -be calculating distances. The least movement of the left arm pained her -and caused her to groan aloud. Now and again her eyes were dull, heavy, -and glassy; at other times they were re-lit and sparkled like stars. She -ate next to nothing; wrinkles formed round her eyes, her cheeks were -sunken; she became the shadow, the ghost of her former self. - -After a while the name of Dermod Flynn entered into her prattle; at -first she spoke of him, eventually she spoke to him as if he were in the -room. When her mind resumed its normal state all this was forgotten. -Once Ellen spoke to her of Dermod Flynn. - -“I would like to see him again, just once,” Norah said, then added: “I’m -a heart-break to ye, Ellen; to everybody that I ever met. I’m like a -little useless wean, useless, of no use at all.” - -Acting on Norah’s wishes a priest was called in, heard Norah’s -confession and administered the sacraments. This made the girl happy -for many days. Ellen disliked priests, but never gave hint of her -dislike to Norah. - -“Ye’re sic a funny little thing,” she exclaimed more than once. “I took -a fancy to ye when I saw ye for the first time that mornin’ on Greenock -Quay along wi’ Dermod Flynn. He was a comely laddie, and I would like to -see him comin’ here.” - -“I wonder where’ll he be now?” said Norah. - -“I wunner.” - - -II - -Spring was over the town. The sun shone almost daily through the window -and rested on Norah’s bed; the birds twittered on the roof; their songs, -even in the city slums, were filling the air. - -Starvation was very near the two occupants of the room. They were three -weeks behind with the rent, the landlord threatened to evict them; the -grocer grumbled, the coal man would not supply coals. Added to this, -Ellen had lost her job as charwoman in the school. The head-mistress, a -dear old pious soul! had made enquiries into Ellen’s past life, and the -result of the investigations was that the charwoman was told to leave -the premises. - -Ellen was thinking of these things one morning. Norah was tossing -restlessly in the bed, when a knock came to the door. - -“Come in!” Ellen cried. - -A man entered, one hand deep in his trousers’ pocket, a worn cap set -awkwardly on his shaggy head. He was a powerfully-built individual, -broad-shouldered and heavy-limbed. He had not shaved for weeks; his -beard stood out in sharp bristles from his jaw. - -“Moleskin Joe, what d’ye want?” Ellen asked, her voice charged with -resentment. - -“Did ye know Dermod Flynn?” asked the man, gazing curiously at the woman -tossing in the bed. - -“I kent him.” - -“I’m lookin’ for a wench--for an old sweetheart of his, so to speak,” -said the man. - -“It’s Dermod Flynn that he’s speakin’ about! D’ye know Dermod?” asked -Norah, sitting up in bed and gazing intently at the stranger. Her cheeks -flushed; all her young beauty seemed to have returned suddenly and -settled in her face. - -“It’s like this,” said the stranger, shuffling uneasily. “It’s like -this: me and Dermod’s pals. We did graft together on many’s a shift, -aye, and fought together too. And he can use his fives! Well, Dermod -often told me about an old flame of his, called--her name was----” - -“Norah Ryan,” said Ellen. - -“That’s it,” said the man, looking at the girl in the bed. “Perhaps -you’ll be her. If you are, you buckle on to Dermod. He’s one that any -girl should be proud of; and he can use his fives! But women don’t -understand these things.” - -“_Don’t_ they?” queried Ellen. - -“Some think they do,” said the man. “Well, Dermod went to London and -worked on a newspaper as a somethin’. Graft of that kind is not in my -line, and the job wasn’t in Dermod’s line neither. He came back here to -Glasgow, and he’s lookin’ for his old flame. I’m just helpin’ him.” - -“Well, that’s the lass he’s lookin’ for,” said Ellen, pointing to the -girl in the bed. “Now run awa’, Joe, and bring Dermod.” - -“By all that’s holy! she’s a takin’ wench,” said the man, looking first -at the girl, then at Ellen, then back to the girl in the bed again. -“Well, I’d better be goin’,” he said. - -“Ye’d better,” answered Ellen. - -“Are ye well off here?” asked the man, who was apparently unperturbed by -Ellen’s remark. - -“Gey poorly,” said the woman; “we’ll soon hae a moonlight flittin’; -that’s when we have anything to flit with.” - -The man dived his hand into his trousers’ pocket, rattled some money, -then as if a sudden thought struck him he went towards the door. - -“Send Dermod at once, will ye?” asked Norah. - -“I’ll do that,” said the man, then to Ellen: “I want to speak to you.” - -She accompanied Moleskin out on the landing and closed the door behind -her. - -“Isn’t she a comely wench!” said the man. - -“I know that. Is that all ye have to say to me?” - -“Why is she in bed at this hour of the day?” - -“She’s waitin’ for the meenit,” said Ellen in a low whisper. “She’ll -maybe no’ last another twenty-four hours.” - -“And she looks the picture of health!” said the man. - -Ellen told of the assault on Norah, her narrative bristling with short, -sharp, declamatory sentences. When she finished the man pulled some -money from his pocket and put it into Ellen’s palm. - -“Dermod’s my matey,” he explained apologetically. “I’ll bring the -youngster here and we’ll be back in a jiffy. He’s lodgin’ near the -wharf. And by heaven! we’ll cure the girl. She’ll be better in next to -no time.” - -Ellen shook her head sadly. “Lungs canna be put back again once they’re -gone,” she said. “But hurry and bring Dermod Flynn here.” - -The man turned and clattered downstairs. - - -III - -“Moleskin Joe is an old friend of mine,” said Ellen, coming in and -counting the money as she made her way towards the bed. “Thirty -bob--two--two fifteen--three, three punds nine and sixpence!” she cried. -“And Dermod will be here in a meenit.... My goodness! what’s gang wrang -wi’ ye, child?” - -Norah was lying unconscious on the bed, a stream of blood issuing from -her lips. One pale white hand was stretched over the blue lettering of -the blanket, the other was doubled up under her body. - -“Poor Norah Ryan!” exclaimed Ellen, opening the window and drawing back -the clothes from the girl’s chest. “It’s the excitement that’s done -it.... Wake up, Norah! It’s me, Ellen, that’s speakin’ to ye. Ye ken me, -don’t ye?” - -She placed her hand on Norah’s breast. Although her hand had lost most -of its delicacy of touch she could feel the heart beating faintly, -almost like the wing of a butterfly flickering against the net in which -it is imprisoned. - -“She’ll be better in a wee meenit! There, she’s comin’ to. She’ll ken me -as soon as she opens her eyes!” said Ellen, and she nearly cried with -joy. - -In a little while Norah recovered and looked round with large, puzzled -eyes; then, as if recollecting something-- - -“Is he comin’?” she asked eagerly, but so softly that Ellen had to bend -down to catch the words. “He was the kind-hearted boy, Dermod,” she went -on. “I always liked him better than anyone, Ellen.... ’Twas the bad girl -that I was ... and I’m a burden on ye more than on anyone else.” - -“God send that I bear the burden for long and many’s a day yet,” said -the woman. “Ye’ve been a guid frien’ to me, Norah, and I feel happy -workin’ awa here by yer side. Ye’ll get better too, for when Dermod -comes ye’ll be happy, and the happy live long.” - -Norah put out her hand and grasped that of her friend. “God bless ye, -Ellen,” she said. “Ye’ve been more’n a mother to me. But I’m not long -for this world now. Something tells me that I’m for another place. I’m -not afeared to die, Ellen; why should I? But sorrow is on me because I’m -leavin’ you.” - -The darkness fell; the two women were silent, their hands clasped -tightly and their eyes full of tears. But with them was a certain -strange happiness; one bright thought joined another bright thought in -their minds just as the beams of a newly-lit fire join together in a -darkened room. - -Norah fell asleep. The lamp, which had become leaky, had now gone out. -Ellen lit a candle, stuck it into the neck of a bottle and placed the -bottle on the floor. The place looked desolate and forbidding; dead -ashes lay in the fireplace; a pile of rags--Ellen’s bed--lay in the -corner. There was no picture in the place, nothing to lessen the -monotony save the little crucifix on the mantelpiece, and this relieving -feature was a symbol of sorrow. - -Ellen glanced at the sleeper. How strangely beautiful she looked now! It -seemed as if something spiritual and divine had entered the body of -Norah, causing her to look more like the creation of some delightful -dream than an erring human being bowed with a weight of sorrow. - -“I’ll go out and get some coals,” said Ellen, speaking under her breath. -“Then we’ll have a cheerful fire for Dermod Flynn when he comes. He was -sic a comely lad when in Jim Scanlon’s squad. And poor Norah! Ah! it’s -sic a pity the way things work out in this life. There seems to be a bad -management of things somewhere.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXXV - -THE FAREWELL MEETING - - -I - -For the rest of that evening, between short periods of sleep, one bright -vision merged with another in front of Norah’s eyes, and in every vision -the face of Dermod Flynn stood out distinctly clear. She spoke to him; -talked of home, of the people whom both had known, of the master of -Glenmornan schoolhouse, of Maire a Glan, of Micky’s Jim and the squad, -Willie the Duck, and all those whom they had known so well a few short -years before. But for all she spoke, Dermod never answered; he looked at -her in silence where she lay, the life passing from her as a spent -fountain weakens, as an echo dies away. - -The candle threw out a fitful flame in the room, shadows rushed together -on the ceiling, forming and breaking free, dancing and capering in -strange antics. Steps could be heard on the stairs; the tap was running -outside and the water fell with a hissing sound. Ellen was still out; -the room was deserted; nothing there but the shadows on the ceiling and -the sick girl on the bed by the window. - -She was asleep when Dermod Flynn came, and wakened to find him standing -by her bed, looking down at her with eyes full of love and pity. There -was no surprise written on her face when she saw him; to Norah for days -he had been as near in dreams as he was now in real flesh and blood. - -“I was dreamin’ of ye, Dermod,” she said in a low voice, sitting up with -one elbow buried in the pillow and her bare shoulders showing white and -delicate under her locks of brown hair. - -“Ye took the good time in comin’,” she went on, but there was longing, -not protest, in her voice. “Ellen told me that ye were lookin’ for -meself.” - -Dermod was down on his knees by the bedside. “‘Tis good to see you -again, darling,” he said. “I have been looking for you for such a long -time.” - -“Have ye?” she asked, her voice, tinged with a thousand regrets, rising -a little as if in mute protest, against the shadows dancing on the roof. -Sobbing like a child, she sank back in the bed. “It’s the kindly way -that ye have with ye, Dermod,” she said in a quieter voice. “Ye don’t -know what I am, and the kind of life I’ve been leadin’ for a good lot of -years, to come and speak to me again. It’s not for a decent man like -yerself to speak to the likes of my kind. It’s meself that has suffered -a big lot too, Dermod, and I deserve pity more than hate. Me sufferin’s -would have broke the heart of a cold mountainy stone.” - -“Poor Norah!” Dermod said, half in whispers; “well do I know what ye -have suffered. I have been looking for you for a long while, and now, -having found you, I want to make you very happy.” - -“Make me happy!” she exclaimed, withdrawing her hands from Dermod’s -grasp as if they had been stung. “What would ye be doin’, wantin’ to -make me happy? I’m dead to ev’rybody, to the people at home and to me -own very mother. What would she want with me now, her daughter and the -mother of a child that never had the priest’s blessin’ on its head. A -child without a lawful father! Think of it, Dermod! What would the -Frosses and Glenmornan people say if they met me now on the streets? It -was a dear child to me, it was. And ye are wantin’ to make me happy! -Every time ye come ye say the same.... D’ye mind seem’ me on the -streets, Dermod?” - -“I remember it, Norah.” - -He looked at her closely, puzzled no doubt by her utterances. She was -now rambling a little again. Dreams intermingled with reality and her -fingers were making folds in the sheets. Dermod remembered how in -Glenmornan this was considered a sign of death. She began to talk to -herself, her head on the pillow, one erring tress of hair lying across -her cheek. - -“It was the child, Dermod,” she said, a smile playing over her features; -“it was the little boy and he was dyin’, both of a cough that was -stickin’ in his throat and of starvation. As for meself, I hadn’t seen -bread or that what buys it for many’s a long hour, even for days itself. -I couldn’t get work to do. I would beg, aye, Dermod, I would, and me a -Frosses woman, but I was afeared that the peelis would put me in prison. -In the end there was nothin’ left to me but to take to the streets.... -There were long white boats goin’ out and we were watchin’ them from the -strand of Trienna Bay. The boats of our own people. Ah! my own townland, -Dermod!... I called the little child Dermod, but he never got the -christenin’ words said over him, nor a drop of holy water.... Where is -Ellen?... Ellen, ye’re a good friend to me, ye are! The people that’s -sib to myself don’t care what happens to me, one of their own kind; but -it’s ye yerself that has the good heart, Ellen. And ye say that Dermod -Flynn is comin’ to see me? I would like to see Dermod again.” - -“I’m here, Norah,” said the young man, endeavouring by his voice to -recall her straying fancy. “I’m here, Norah. I’m Dermod Flynn. Do ye -know me now?” - -There was no answer. - -“Norah, do ye remember me?” Dermod repeated. “I am Dermod--Dermod Flynn. -Say ‘Dermod’ after me.” - -She opened her eyes and looked at him with a puzzled glance. “Is it ye -indeed, Dermod?” she exclaimed. “I knew that ye were comin’ to see me. I -was thinkin’ of ye often, and many’s the time I thought that ye were -standin’ by me bed quiet like and takin’ a look at me. Ye’re here now, -are ye? Say ‘True as death.’” - -“True as death!” - -“But where is Ellen?” she asked, “and where is the man that came here -this mornin’, and left a handful of money to help us along? He was a -good, kindly man; talkin’ about fives too, just the same as Micky’s Jim. -Joe was his name.” - -She paused. - -“There were three men on the street and they made fun of me when I was -passin’ them,” she went on. “Then they made a rush at me, threw me down -and tramped over me. I was left on the cold streets, lyin’ like to die -and no one to help me. ’Twas Ellen that picked me up, and she has been a -good friend to me ever since; sittin’ up at night by my side and workin’ -her fingers to the bone for me through the livelong day. Ellen, ye’re -very good to me.” - -“Ellen isn’t here,” Dermod said, the tears running down his cheeks. With -clumsy but tender fingers he brushed back the hair from her brow and -listened to her talk as one listens to the sound of a lonely breeze, the -mind deep in unfathomable reflections. - -Gourock Ellen entered the room and cast a curious look round. Seeing -Dermod kneeling at the bedside the woman felt herself an intruder. She -came forward, however, and bent over the girl, her shoulder touching -the head of the young man. - -Norah’s eyes were closed and a pallor overspread her features. - -“Are ye asleep, lassie?” - -There was no answer to her question; the woman bent closer and pressed -Norah’s breast with her hand. - -“Are ye come back, Ellen?” Norah asked without opening her eyes. “I was -dreamin’ in the same old way,” she went on. “I saw him comin’ back -again. He was standin’ by me bed and he was very kind like he always -was.” - -“But he’s here, little lass,” said Ellen, turning to Dermod Flynn. -“Speak to her, man,” she whispered. “She’s been wearin’ her heart away -for you, for a long weary while. Speak to her and we’ll save her yet. -She’s just wanderin’ in her head.” - -Norah opened her eyes; the candle was going out and Dermod could mark -the play of light and shade on the girl’s face. - -“Then it was not dreamin’ that I was!” she cried. “It’s Dermod himself -that’s in it and back again. Just comin’ to see me! It’s himself that -has the kindly Glenmornan heart and always had. Dermod, Dermod! I have a -lot to speak to ye about!” - -Her voice became strained; to speak cost her an effort, and Dermod, who -had risen, bent down to catch her words. - -“It was ye that I was thinkin’ of all the time, and I was foolish when I -was workin’ in Micky’s Jim’s squad. It’s all my fault and sorrow is on -me because I made you suffer. Maybe ye’ll go home some day. If ye do, go -to me mother’s house and ask her to forgive me. Tell her that I died on -the year I left Micky’s Jim’s squad. I was not me mother’s child after -that; I was dead to all the world. My fault could not be undone; that’s -what made the blackness of it. Never let yer own sisters go to the -strange country, Dermod, never let them go to the potato squad, for it’s -the place that is evil for a girl like me that hasn’t much sense.... -Ye’re not angry with me, Dermod, are ye?” - -“Norah, I was never angry with you,” said the young man, and he kissed -her. “You don’t think that I was angry with you?” - -“No, Dermod, for it’s yerself that has the kindly way,” said the poor -girl. “Would ye do something for me if ever ye go back to yer own -place?” - -“Anything you ask,” Dermod answered, “and anything within my power to -do.” - -“Will ye hev a mass said for me in the chapel at home; a mass for the -repose of me soul?” she asked. “If ye do I’ll be very happy.” - -These were Norah Ryan’s last words. As she spoke she looked at Gourock -Ellen, and by a sign expressed a wish to speak to her. She sat up in -bed, but, as she opened her mouth, shivered as if with cold, looked at -Ellen with sad, blank eyes and dropped back on the pillow. Dermod and -Ellen stooped forward, not knowing what to do, but feeling that they -should do something. The girl was still looking upwards at the shadows -on the ceiling, but seeing far beyond. Then her eyes closed slowly, like -those of a child that falls into a peaceful sleep. - -Norah Ryan was dead. - -THE END - - -FOOTNOTES: - - [A] Girsha, girl. - - [B] Beanshee, a fairy woman. (Bean, a woman; shee, a fairy.) - - [C] Beansho, “That woman.” (A term of reproach.) - - [D] Brattie, an apron made of coarse cloth. - - [E] Shorgun, short gown. The uniform of the female farm servant: the - sleeves of the blouse reach the elbows, the hem of the skirt covers - the knees. - - [F] Threepenny piece. - - [G] A pint of beer and a glass of whisky mixed. - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rat-Pit, by Patrick MacGill - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RAT-PIT *** - -***** This file should be named 50895-0.txt or 50895-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/8/9/50895/ - -Produced by MWS, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Rat-Pit - -Author: Patrick MacGill - -Release Date: January 11, 2016 [EBook #50895] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RAT-PIT *** - - - - -Produced by MWS, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="308" height="450" alt="[bookcover image not -available]" /> -</div> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" -style="margin-left:60%;"> -<tr><td align="center" class="bb"><big><b>THE RAT-PIT</b></big></td></tr> -<tr><td align="center"><b><span class="smcap">PATRICK MacGILL</span></b></td></tr> -</table> - -<p><a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a> </p> - -<p><a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a> </p> - -<div class="bbox"> - -<h1> -<small>THE</small><br /> -RAT-PIT</h1> -<p class="c">BY<br /> -PATRICK<br /> -MACGILL<br /> -<br /><br /> -<img src="images/colophon.png" -width="50" -height="52" -alt="" -/><br /><br /> -<br /> -NEW YORK<br /> -GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</p> -</div> - -<p class="c"><a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a><br /> -Copyright, 1915,<br /> -<span class="smcap">By George H. Doran Company</span></p> - -<p><a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION</h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span><small>N</small> the city of Glasgow there is a lodging-house for women known as “The -Rat-pit.” Here the vagrant can get a nightly bunk for a few pence, and -no female is refused admittance: the unfortunate, the sick, and -work-weary congregate under the same roof, breathe the same fetid air -and forget the troubles of a miserable existence in strong drink, the -solace of the sorrowful, or in heavy stupor, the slumber of the -toilworn. The underworld, of which I have seen and known such a lot, has -always appeared to me as a Greater Rat-pit, where human beings, pinched -and poverty-stricken and ground down with a weight of oppression, are -hemmed up like the plague-stricken in a pest-house.</p> - -<p>It is in this larger sense that I have chosen the name for the title of -Norah Ryan’s story. By committing the “great sin” and subsequently by -allowing the dictates of motherhood to triumph over decrees of society, -she became a pariah eternally doomed to the Greater Rat-pit. Whilst my -former book, “Children of the Dead End,” was on the whole accepted as -giving a picture of the life of the navvy, there were some who refused -to believe that scenes such as I strove to depict could exist in a -country like ours. To them I venture the assurance that “The Rat-pit” is -a transcript from life and that most of the characters are real people, -and the scenes only too poignantly true. Some may think that such things -should not be written about; but public opinion, like the light of day, -is a great purifier, and to hide a<a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a> sore from the surgeon’s eye out of -miscalled delicacy is surely a supreme folly.</p> - -<p>A word about “Children of the Dead End.” I am highly gratified by the -success attained by that book in Britain and abroad. Only in Ireland, my -native country, has the book given offence. Reviewers there spoke -angrily about it, and one went so far as to say that I would end my days -by blowing out my brains with a revolver. The reference to a tyrannical -village priest gave great offence to a number of clergy, but on the -other hand several wrote to me speaking very highly of the book, and I -have been told that a Roman Catholic Bishop sat up all night to read it. -In my own place I am looked upon with suspicion, all because I “wrote a -book, a bad one makin’ fun of the priest,” as an old countryman remarked -to me last summer when I was at home. “You don’t like it, then?” I said. -“Like it! I wouldn’t read it for a hundred pounds, money down,” was the -answer.</p> - -<p class="r"> -<span class="smcap">Patrick MacGill.</span><br /> -</p> - -<p class="hang"> -London Irish,<br /> -St. Albans.<br /> -<i>Feb. 5th, 1915.</i><br /> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr><td><small>CHAPTER</small></td><td> </td><td><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Turn of the Tide</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_011">11</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">An Unsuccessful Journey</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_029">29</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">On Dooey Head</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_037">37</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Restless Youth</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_048">48</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Good News From A Far Country</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_056">56</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">School Life</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_064">64</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Plucking Bog-Bine</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_070">70</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Tragedy</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_077">77</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Wake</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_091">91</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Coffin and Coin</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_098">98</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Train From Greenanore</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_108">108</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Derry</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_119">119</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">A Wild Night</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_126">126</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></td><td> “<span class="smcap">Beyond the Water</span>”</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_137">137</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Drudgery</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_147">147</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Little Loves</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_157">157</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">A Game of Cards</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_162">162</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">In the Lane</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_170">170</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The End of the Season</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_179">179</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Original Sin</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_188">188</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Regrets</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_197">197</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">On the Road</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_202">202</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Complications</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_213">213</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Rat-Pit</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_222">222</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">XXV.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Sheila Carrol</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_230">230</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">XXVI.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Passing Days</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_240">240</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">XXVII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The New-Comer</span><a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_246">246</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">XXVIII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Rag-Store</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_251">251</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">XXIX.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Dermod Flynn</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_262">262</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">XXX.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Grown Up</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_272">272</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">XXXI.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Despair</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_286">286</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">XXXII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Confession</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_294">294</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">XXXIII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">St. John VIII, I-II</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_303">303</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">XXXIV.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Longings</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_309">309</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">XXXV.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Farewell Meeting</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_315">315</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<p><a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a></p> - -<hr style="width: 65%;" /> -<p><a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a></p> - -<p><a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a></p> - -<h1>THE RAT-PIT</h1> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I<br /><br /> -<small>THE TURN OF THE TIDE</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">“H</span><small>AVE</small> you your brogues, Norah?”</p> - -<p>“They’re tied round my shoulders with a string, mother.”</p> - -<p>“And your brown penny for tea and bread in the town, Norah?”</p> - -<p>“It’s in the corner of my weasel-skin purse, mother.”</p> - -<p>“The tide is long on the turn, so you’d better be off, Norah.”</p> - -<p>“I’m off and away, mother.”</p> - -<p>Two voices were speaking inside a cabin on the coast of Donegal. The -season was mid-winter; the time an hour before the dawn of a cheerless -morning. Within the hovel there was neither light nor warmth; the -rushlight had gone out and the turf piled on the hearth refused to burn. -Outside a gale was blowing, the door, flimsy and fractured, creaked -complainingly on its leathern hinges, the panes of the foot-square and -only window were broken, the rags that had taken their places had been -blown in during the night, and the sleet carried by the north-west wind -struck heavily on the earthen floor. In the corner of the hut a woman -coughed violently, expending all the breath in her body, then followed a -struggle for air, for renewed life, and a battle against sickness or<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a> -death went on in the darkness. There was silence for a moment, then a -voice, speaking in Gaelic, could be heard again.</p> - -<p>“Are you away, Norah?”</p> - -<p>“I am just going, mother. I am stopping the window to keep the cold away -from you.”</p> - -<p>“God bless you, child,” came the answer. “The men are not coming in yet, -are they?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t hear their step. Now the window is all right. Are you warm?”</p> - -<p>“Middling, Alannah. Did you take the milk for your breakfast?”</p> - -<p>“I left some for you in the jug,” came the reply. “Will you take it -now?”</p> - -<p>“That is always the way with you, Norah,” said the woman in a querulous -voice. “You never take your meals, but always leave them for somebody -else. And you are getting thinner on it every day. I don’t want -anything, for I am not hungry these days; and maybe it is God Himself -that put the sickness on me so that I would not take away the food of -them that needs it more than I do. Drink the milk, Norah, it will do you -good.”</p> - -<p>There was no answer. A pale-faced little girl lifted the latch of the -door and looked timorously out into the cold and the blackness. The gale -caught her and for a moment she almost choked for breath. It was still -intensely dark, no colour of the day was yet in the sky. The wind -whistled shrilly round the corners of the cabin and a storm-swept bird -dropped to the ground in front of the child. She looked back into the -gloomy interior of the cabin and for a moment thought of returning. She -was very hungry, but remembered her father and brother who would -presently come in from the fishing, probably, as they had come in for -days, with empty boats and empty stomachs. Another fit of coughing -seized the mother, and the girl<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a> went out, shutting the door carefully -behind her to stay the wrath of the wind which swept violently across -the floor of the house.</p> - -<p>The sea was near. The tide, sweeping sullenly away from the shore, -moaned plaintively near the land and swelled into loud discordant wrath, -far out at the bar. All round the house a tremulous gray haze enveloped -everything, and the child stole into its mysterious bosom and towards -the sea. The sleet shot sharply across her body and at times she turned -round to save her face from its stinging lash. She was so small, so -frail, so tender that she might be swept away at any moment as she moved -like a shadow through the greyness, keeping a keen lookout for the -ghosts that peopled the mists and the lonely places. Of these phantoms -she was assured. To her they were as true as her own mother, as her own -self. They were around and above her. They hid in the mists, walked on -the sea, roved in the fields, and she was afraid of them.</p> - -<p>Suddenly she called to mind the story of the Lone Woman of the Mist, the -ghost whom all the old people of the locality had met at some time or -another in their lives. Even as she thought, an apparition took form, a -lone woman stood in front of the little girl, barely ten paces away. The -child crossed herself seven times and walked straight ahead, keeping her -eyes fixed on the figure that barred the path. This was the only thing -to be done; under the steady look of the eyes a ghost is powerless. So -her mother had told her, and the girl, knowing this, never lowered her -gaze; but her bare feet got suddenly warm, her heart leapt as if wanting -to leave her body, and the effort to restrain the tremor of her eyelids -caused her pain. The ghost spoke.</p> - -<p>“Who is the girsha<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> that is out so early?” came the question.<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a></p> - -<p>“It’s me, Norah Ryan,” answered the child in a glad voice. “I thought -that ye were the Lone Woman of the Mist or maybe a beanshee.”<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a></p> - -<p>“I’m not the beanshee, I’m the beansho,”<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> the woman replied in a sharp -voice. “D’ye know what that means?”</p> - -<p>“It means that ye are the woman I’m not to have the civil word with -because ye’ve committed a great sin.”</p> - -<p>“Who said that? Was it yer mother?”</p> - -<p>“Then it was,” said the child, “I often heard her say them words.”</p> - -<p>“D’ye know me sin then?” enquired the woman, and without waiting for an -answer she went on: “Ye don’t, of course. This is me sin, girsha; this -is me sin. Look at it!”</p> - -<p>The woman loosened the shawl which was drawn tightly around her body and -disclosed a little bullet-headed child lying fast asleep in her arms. -The wind caught the sleeper; one tiny hand quivered in mute protest, -then the infant awoke and roared loudly. The mother kissed the wee thing -hastily, fastened the shawl again and strode forward, taking long steps -like a man, towards the sea. She was bare-footed; her feet made a -rustling sound on the snow and two little furrows lay behind her. Norah -Ryan followed and presently the older woman turned round.</p> - -<p>“That’s me sin, girsha, that’s me sin,” she said. “That’s a sin that can -never be undone. Mind that and mind it always.... Ye’ll be goin’ into -the town, I suppose?” “That I am,” said the child. “Is the tide full on -the run now?”</p> - -<p>“It’s nearly out. See! the sky is clearin’ a bit; and look it! there’s -some stars.”<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a></p> - -<p>“I don’t like the stars, good woman, for they’re always so cold -lookin’.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, they’re middlin’ like to goodly people,” said the woman. “There, -we’re near the sea and the greyness is risin’ off it.”</p> - -<p>The woman lifted her hand and pointed to the rocky shore that skirted -the bay. At first sight it appeared to be completely deserted; nothing -could be seen but the leaden grey sea and the sharp and jagged rocks -protruding through the snow that covered the shore. The tide was nearly -out; the east was clearing, but the wind still lashed furiously against -the legs and faces of the woman and the girl.</p> - -<p>“I suppose there’ll be a lot waitin’ for the tide,” said Norah Ryan. -“And a cold wait it’ll be for them too, on this mornin’ of all -mornin’s.”</p> - -<p>“It’s God’s will,” said the woman with the child, “God’s will, the -priest’s will, and the will of the yarn seller.” She spoke sharply and -resentfully and again with long strides hurried forward to the shore.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">H</span><small>OW</small> lifeless the scene looked; the hollows white with snow, the -gale-swept edges of the rocks darkly bare! Norah Ryan stepping timidly, -suddenly shrieked as her foot slipped into a wreath of snow. Under her -tread something moved, the snow rose into the air as if to shake itself, -then fell again with a crackling noise. The girl had stepped upon a -sleeping woman, who, now rudely wakened, was afoot and angry.</p> - -<p>“Mercy be on you, child!” roared the female in Gaelic, as she shook the -frozen flakes from the old woollen handkerchief that covered her head. -“Can you not take heed of your feet and where you’re putting them?”<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a></p> - -<p>“It’s the child that didn’t see ye,” said the beansho, then added by way -of salutation: “It’s cold to be sleepin’ out this mornin’.”</p> - -<p>“It’s Norah Ryan, is it?” asked the woman, still shaking the snow from -her head-dress. “And has she been along with you, of all persons in the -world?”</p> - -<p>“Is the tide out yet?” asked a voice from the snow.</p> - -<p>A face like that of a sheeted corpse peered up into the greyness, and -Norah Ryan looked at it, her face full of a fright that was not unmixed -with childish curiosity. There in the white snow, some asleep and some -staring vacantly into the darkness, lay a score of women, some young, -some old, and all curled up like sleeping dogs. Nothing could be seen -but the faces, coloured ghastly silver in the dim light of the slow -dawn, faces without bodies staring like dead things from the welter of -snow. An old woman asleep, the bones of her face showing plainly through -the sallow wrinkles of the skin, her only tooth protruding like a fang -and her jaw lowered as if hung by a string, suddenly coughed. Her cough -was wheezy, weak with age, and she awoke. In the midst of the heap of -bodies she stood upright and disturbed the other sleepers. In an instant -the hollow was alive, voluble, noisy. Some of the women knelt down and -said their prayers, others shook the snow from their shawls, one was -humming a love song and making the sign of the cross at the end of every -verse.</p> - -<p>“I’ve been travelling all night long,” said an old crone who had just -joined the party, “and I thought that I would not be in time to catch -the tide. It is a long way that I have to come for a bundle of -yarn—sixteen miles, and maybe it is that I won’t get it at the end of -my journey.”</p> - -<p>The kneeling women rose from their knees and hurried towards the channel -in the bay, now a thin string of water<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> barely three yards in width. The -wind, piercingly cold, no longer carried its burden of sleet, and the -east, icily clear, waited, almost in suspense, for the first tint of the -sun. The soil, black on the foreshore, cracked underfoot and pained the -women as they walked. None wore their shoes, although three or four -carried brogues tied round their necks. Most had mairteens (double thick -stockings) on their feet, and these, though they retained a certain -amount of body heat, kept out no wet. In front the old woman, all skin -and bones and more bones than skin, whom Norah had wakened, led the way, -her breath steaming out into the air and her feet sinking almost to the -knees at every step. From her dull, lifeless look and the weary eyes -that accepted everything with fatalistic calm it was plain that she had -passed the greater part of her years in suffering.</p> - -<p>All the women had difficulty with the wet and shifty sand, which, when -they placed their feet heavily on one particular spot, rose in an -instant to their knees. They floundered across, pulling out one foot and -then another, and grunting whenever they did so. Norah Ryan, the child, -had little difficulty; she glided lightly across, her feet barely -sinking to the ankles.</p> - -<p>“Who’d have thought that one’s spags could be so troublesome!” said the -beansho. “It almost seems like as if I had no end of feet.”</p> - -<p>“Do you hear that woman speaking?” asked the aged female who led the -way. “It’s ill luck that will keep us company when she’s with us: her -with her back-of-the-byre wean!”</p> - -<p>“You shouldn’t fault me for me sin,” said the beansho, who overheard the -remark, for there was no effort made to conceal it. “No, but ye should -be thankful that it’s not yourself that carries it.”</p> - -<p>The sun was nearing the horizon, and the women, now<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a> on the verge of the -channel (dhan, they called it), stood in silence looking at the water. -It was not at its lowest yet; probably they would have to wait for five -minutes, maybe more. And as they waited they came closer and closer to -one another for warmth.</p> - -<p>The beansho stood a little apart from the throng. Although tall and -angular, she showed traces of good looks which if they had been tended -might have made her beautiful. But now her lips were drawn in a thin, -hard line and a set, determined expression showed on her face. She was -bare-footed and did not even wear mairteens, and carried no brogues. Her -sole articles of dress were a shawl, which sufficed also for her child, -a thick petticoat made of sackcloth, a chemise and a blouse. The wind -constantly lifted her petticoat and exposed her bare legs above the -knees. Some of the women sniggered on seeing this, but finally the -beansho tightened her petticoat between her legs and thus held it -firmly.</p> - -<p>“That’s the way, woman,” said the old crone who led the party. “Hold -your dress tight, tighter. Keep away from the beansho, Norah Ryan.”</p> - -<p>The child looked up at the old woman and smiled as a child sometimes -will when it fails to understand the purport of words that are spoken. -Then her teeth chattered and she looked down at her feet, which were -bleeding, and the blood could be seen welling out through the mairteens. -She shivered constantly from the cold and her face was a little drawn, a -little wistful, and her grey eyes, large and soft, were full of a tender -pity. Perhaps the pity was for her mother who was ill at home, maybe for -the beansho whom everyone disliked, or maybe for herself, the little -girl of twelve, who was by far the youngest member of the party.<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a></p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">“I</span><small>T</small>’s time that we were tryin’ to face the water in the name of God,” -said one of the women, who supported herself against a neighbour’s -shoulder whilst she took off her mairteens. “There is low tide now.”</p> - -<p>All mairteens were taken off, and raising their petticoats well up and -tying them tightly around their waists they entered the water. The old -woman leading the party walked into the icy sea placidly; the others -faltered a moment, then stepped in recklessly and in a second the water -was well up to their thighs. They hurried across shouting carelessly, -gesticulating violently and laughing loudly. Yet every one of them, with -the possible exception of the woman in front, was on the borderland of -tears. If they had spoken not they would have wept.</p> - -<p>Norah Ryan, who was the last to enter the water, tucked up her dress and -cast a frightened glance at those in front. No one observed her. She -lifted the dress higher and entered the icy cold stream which chilled -her to the bone. At each successive step the rising water pained her as -a knife driven into the flesh might pain her. She raised her eyes and -noticed a woman looking back; instantly Norah dropped her clothes and -the hem of her petticoat became saturated with water.</p> - -<p>“What are ye doin’, Norah Ryan?” the woman shouted. “Ye’ll be wettin’ -the dress that’s takin’ ye to the town.”</p> - -<p>The child paid no heed. With her clothes trailing in the stream she -walked across breast deep to the other side. Her garments were soaked -when she landed. The old woman, placid fatalist, was pulling on her -mairteens with skinny, warty hands; another was lacing her brogues; a -third tied a rag round her foot, which had been cut by a shell at the -bottom of the channel.<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a></p> - -<p>“Why did ye let yer clothes drop into the dhan?” croaked the old woman. -She asked out of mere curiosity; much suffering had driven all feeling -from her soul.</p> - -<p>“Why d’ye ask that, Maire a Crick (Mary of the Hill)?” enquired the -beansho. “It’s the modest girl that she is, and that’s why she let her -clothes down. Poor child! she’ll be wet all day now!”</p> - -<p>“Her petticoat is full of water,” said Maire a Crick, tying the second -mairteen. “If many’s a one would be always as modest as Norah Ryan -they’d have no burden in their shawls this day.”</p> - -<p>“Ye’re a barefaced old heifer, Maire a Crick,” said the beansho angrily. -“Can ye never hold yer cuttin’ tongue quiet? It’s good that ye have me -to be saying the evil word against. If I wasn’t here ye’d be on to some -other body.”</p> - -<p>“I’m hearin’ that Norah Ryan is a fine knitter entirely,” someone -interrupted. “She can make a great penny with her needles. Farley -McKeown says that he never gave yarn to a soncier girl.”</p> - -<p>“True for ye, Biddy Wor,” said Maire a Crick grudgingly. “It’s funny -that a slip of a girsha like her can do so much. I work meself from dawn -to dusk, and long before and after, and I cannot make near as much as -Norah Ryan.”</p> - -<p>“Neither can any of us,” said several women in one breath.</p> - -<p>“She only works about fourteen hours every day, too,” said Biddy Wor.</p> - -<p>“How much can ye make a day, Norah Ryan?” asked the beansho.</p> - -<p>“Three ha’pence a day and nothing less,” said the girl, and a glow of -pride suffused her face.</p> - -<p>“Three ha’pence a day!” the beansho ejaculated, stooping down and -pulling out the gritty sand which had<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a> collected between her toes. “Just -think of that, and her only a wee slip of a girl!”</p> - -<p>“That’s one pound nineteen shillin’s a year,” said Maire a Crick -reflectively. “She’s as good as old Maire a Glan (Mary of the Glen) of -Greenanore, who didn’t miss a stitch in a stockin’ and her givin’ birth -to twins.”</p> - -<p>The party set off, some singing plaintively, one or two talking and the -rest buried in moody silence. It was now day, the sun shot up suddenly -and lighted the other side of the bay where the land spread out, bleak, -black, dreary and dismal. In front of the party rose a range of hills -that threw a dark shadow on the sand, and in this shadow the women -walked. Above them on the rising ground could be seen many cabins and -blue wreaths of smoke rising from the chimneys into the air. A cock -crowed loudly and several others joined in chorus. A dog barked at the -heels of a stubborn cow which a ragged, bare-legged boy was driving into -a wet pasture field ... the snow which lay light on the knolls was -rapidly thawing ... the sea, now dark blue in colour, rose in a long -heaving swell, and the wind, blowing in from the horizon, was bitterly -cold.</p> - -<p>“When will the tide be out again?” asked Judy Farrel, a thin, -undersized, consumptive woman who coughed loudly as she walked.</p> - -<p>“When the sun’s on Dooey Head,” came the answer.</p> - -<p>An old, wrinkled stump of a woman now joined the party. She carried a -bundle of stockings, wrapped in a shawl hung across her shoulders. As -she walked she kept telling her beads.</p> - -<p>“We were just talkin’ of ye, Maire a Glan,” said Biddy Wor. “How many -stockin’s have ye in that bundle?”</p> - -<p>“—— Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our -death, Amen,” said the woman, speaking in Gaelic and drawing her prayer -to a close; then to Biddy Wor: “A dozen long stockings that I have been -working<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a> on for a whole fortnight. The thread was bad, bitter bad, as -the old man said, and I could hardly get the mastery of it. And think of -it, good woman, just think of it! Farley McKeown only gives me thirteen -pence for the dozen, and he gives other knitters one and three. He gave -my good man a job building the big warehouse in Greenanore, and then he -took two pence off me in the dozen of stockings.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t say so!”</p> - -<p>“True as death,” said Maire a Glan. “And Farley is building a big place, -as the old man said. He has well nigh over forty men on the job.”</p> - -<p>“And what would he be paying them?”</p> - -<p>“Seven shillings a week, without bit or sup. It is a hard job too, for -my man, himself, leaves here at six of the clock in the morning and he -is not back at our own fire till eight of the clock at night.”</p> - -<p>“Get away!”</p> - -<p>“But that isn’t all, nor the half of it, as the man said,” Maire a Glan -went on. “Himself has to do all the work at home before dawn and after -dusk, so that he has only four hours to sleep in the turn of the sun.”</p> - -<p>“Just think of that,” said Maire a Crick.</p> - -<p>“That’s not all, nor half of it, as the old man said,” the woman with -the bundle continued. “My man gets one bag of yellow meal from Farley -every fortnight, for we have eight children and not a pratee, thanks be -to God! Farley charges people like yourselves only sixteen shillings a -bag, but he charges us every penny of a gold sovereign on the bags that -we get. If we do not pay at the end of a month he puts on another -sixpence, and at the end of six months he has three extra shillings on -the bag of yellow meal.”</p> - -<p>“God be praised, but he’s a sharp one!” said the beansho. -<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a> -“Is this you?” asked the woman with the bundle, looking at the speaker. -“Have you some stockings in your shawl too?”</p> - -<p>“Sorrow the one,” answered the beansho.</p> - -<p>“But what have ye there?” asked Maire a Glan; then, as if recollecting, -she exclaimed: “Oh, I know! It is the wean, as the man said.... And is -this yourself, Norah Ryan?”</p> - -<p>“It’s myself,” replied the child, and her teeth chattered as she -answered.</p> - -<p>“The blush is going from your cheek,” said Maire a Glan. “And your -mother; is she better in health? They’re hard times that are in it now,” -she went on, without waiting for an answer to her question. “There are -only ten creels of potatoes in our townland and these have to be used -for seed. God’s mercy be on us, as the old man said, but it was a bad -year for the crops!”</p> - -<p>“It couldn’t have been worse,” said Judy Farrel, clapping her thin hands -to keep them warm. “On our side of the water, old Oiney Dinchy (that’s -the man who has the dog that bit Dermod Flynn) had to dig in the pratee -field for six hours, and at the end of that time he had only -twenty-seven pratees in the basket.”</p> - -<p>“If the crows lifted a potato in Glenmornan this minute, all the people -of the Glen would follow the crow for a whole week until they got the -potato back,” said old Maire a Crick. “It’s as bad now as it was in the -year of the famine.”</p> - -<p>“Do you mind the famine year?” asked Norah Ryan. The water was streaming -from the girl’s clothes into the roadway, and though she broke into a -run at times in her endeavour to keep pace with the elder women, the -shivering fits did not leave her for an instant. The wind became more -violent and the sleet which had ceased for a while was again falling -from the clouds in white wavy lines.</p> - -<p>“I mind the bad times as well as I mind yesterday,”<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a> said Maire a Crick. -“My own father, mother, and sister died in one turn of the sun with the -wasting sickness and the hunger. I waked them all alone by myself, for -most of the neighbours had their own sick and their own dead to look -after. But they helped me to carry my people to the grave in the coffin -that had the door with hinges on the bottom. When we came to the grave -the door was opened and the dead were dropped out; then the coffin was -taken back for some other soul.”</p> - -<p>“At that time there lived a family named Gorlachs at the foot of Slieve -a Dorras,” said Maire a Glan, taking up the tale; “and they lifted their -child out of the grave on the night after it was buried and ate it in -their own house. Wasn’t that the awful thing, as the old man said?”</p> - -<p>“I wouldn’t put it past them, for they were a bad set, the same -Gorlachs,” said Maire a Crick. “But for all that, maybe it is that there -wasn’t a word of truth in the whole story.”</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">N</span><small>ORAH</small> R<small>YAN</small>, who was now lagging in the rear, got suddenly caught by a -heavy gust of wind that blew up from the sea. Her clothes were lifted -over her head; she tried to push them down, and the weasel-skin purse -which she held in her hand dropped on the roadway. The penny jingled -out, the coin which was to procure her bread in Greenanore, and she -clutched at it hurriedly. A sudden dizziness overcame her, her brain -reeled and she fell prostrate to the wet earth. In an instant the -beansho was at her side.</p> - -<p>“Norah Ryan, what’s coming over ye?” she cried and knelt down by the -girl. The child’s face was deathly pale, the sleet cut her viciously, -and her hands, lying palm upwards on the mire, were blue and cold. The -beansho<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a> tried to raise her but the effort was too much; the child which -the woman carried impeded her movements. Maire a Crick now hurried up -and the rest of the women approached, though in a more leisurely -fashion.</p> - -<p>“Mother of God! What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” asked the old woman -anxiously. “What has come over the child atall, atall? She’s starving,” -the old body went on, kneeling on the roadway and pressing her warty -hands on the breast of the young girl. “She’s starving, that’s it. In -her own home she hardly eats one bite at all so that her people may have -the more. So I have heard tell.... Norah Ryan, for God’s sake wake up!”</p> - -<p>The girl gave no heed, made no sign. The sleet sang through the air and -the women gathered closer, shielding the little one with their bodies.</p> - -<p>“What’s to be done?” asked the beansho. Biddy Wor told how people were -cured of fargortha (hunger) at the time of the famine, but little heed -was paid to her talk. The beansho unloosened her shawl, wrapped her -offspring tightly in it and handed the bundle to one of the women, who -crossed herself as she caught it.</p> - -<p>“Now up on my back with the girsha,” said the beansho authoritatively, -stooping on her knees in the roadway and bending her shoulders. “Martin -Eveleen has a house across the rise of the brae and I’ll carry her -there.”</p> - -<p>Three of the party lifted Norah and placed her across the beansho’s -shoulders.</p> - -<p>“How weighty the girsha is!” one exclaimed; then recollecting said: -“It’s the water in her clothes that’s doing it. Poor girsha! and it’ll -be the hunger that’s causing her the weakness.”</p> - -<p>The beansho with her burden on her shoulders hurried forward, her feet -pressing deeply into the mire and the water squirting out between her -toes. The rest of the party following discussed the matter and, being -most of<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a> them old cronies, related stories of the hunger that was in it -at the time of the great famine. Again it faired, the sun came out, but -the air was still bitterly cold.</p> - -<p>A cabin stood on the crest of the hill and towards this the beansho -hurried. Strong and lank though she was, the burden began to bear -heavily and she panted at every step. At the door of the house she -paused for a moment to collect her strength, then lifted the latch and -pushed the door inwards. A man, shaggy and barefooted, hurried to meet -the woman and stared at her suspiciously.</p> - -<p>“What do you want?” he asked in Gaelic.</p> - -<p>“It’s Norah Ryan that’s hungry, and she fainted on the road,” explained -the beansho.</p> - -<p>“In with her then,” said the man, standing aside. “Maybe the heat of the -fire will take her to. Indeed there’s little else that she can get -here.”</p> - -<p>Inside it was warm and a bright fire blazed on the cabin hearth. In a -corner near the door some cows could be heard munching hay, and a dog -came sniffing round the beansho’s legs. A feeling of homeliness pervaded -the place and the smell of the peat was soothing to the nostrils.</p> - -<p>“Leave her down here,” said the woman of the house, a pale, sickly -little creature, as she pointed to the dingy bed in the corner of the -room near the fire. Several children dressed in rags who were seated -warming their hands at the blaze rose hurriedly on the entrance of the -strangers and hid behind the cattle near the door.</p> - -<p>“Is it the hunger and hardships?” asked the man of the house as he -helped the beansho to place the inert body of the little girl on the -bed.</p> - -<p>“The hunger and hardships, that’s it,” said Maire a Crick, who now -entered, followed by the rest of the women.</p> - -<p>“Then we’ll try her with this,” said the man, and from<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a> behind the -rafters of the roof he drew out a black bottle which he uncorked with -his fingers. “It’s potheen,” he explained, and emptied some of the -contents into a wooden bowl. This he held to the lips of the child who -now, partly from the effects of the heat and partly from the effects of -the shaking she had received on the beansho’s back, awakened and was -staring vacantly around her. The smell of the intoxicant brought her -sharply to her senses.</p> - -<p>“What are ye doin’?” she cried. “That’s not right, and me havin’ the -holy pledge against drink!”</p> - -<p>The man crossed himself and withdrew the bowl, whereupon the woman of -the house brought some milk from the basin that stood on the dresser, -and this being handed to Norah Ryan, the child drank greedily. The -beansho gave her a piece of bread when the milk was consumed.</p> - -<p>“Where is me purse?” asked Norah suddenly. “It’s lyin’ on the road and -the brown penny is in the clabber. Where are we atall?”</p> - -<p>“In Martin Eveleen’s house, the house of a decent man,” said the -beansho. “Eat yer bit of bread, child, for ye’re dyin’ of hunger.”</p> - -<p>For a moment the child looked earnestly at the bread, then, as if -stifling the impulse to return it, she began to eat almost savagely. -Maire a Crick placed the purse and penny which she had lifted from the -road by the bedside and withdrew to the door, already sorry perhaps for -having wasted so much time on the journey. The beansho found her baby, -kissed a crumb into its mouth, tied it up again in her shawl and, when -Norah had eaten the bread, both went to the door together.</p> - -<p>“God be with ye, decent people,” said the child. “Some day I hope to be -able to do a good turn for you.”</p> - -<p>“We’re only glad to be of help to a nice girsha,” said<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a> the man, taking -down a bottle of holy water from the roof-beam. He made the sign of the -cross, dipped his fingers in the bottle, and shook the holy water over -the visitors.</p> - -<p>“God be with yer journey,” he said.</p> - -<p>“And God keep guard over your home and everything in it,” Norah and the -beansho made answer in one voice.<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II<br /><br /> -<small>AN UNSUCCESSFUL JOURNEY</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> hour was half-past ten in the forenoon. In the village (“town” the -peasantry called it) of Greenanore two rows of houses ran parallel along -a miry street which measured east to west some two hundred yards. At one -end of the street were the police barracks and at the other end the -workhouse. Behind the latter rose the Catholic chapel, and further back -the brown moors stretched to the hills which looked down upon the bay -where the women crossed in the early morning.</p> - -<p>The houses in the village were dull, dirty and dilapidated. There were -eight public-houses, a few grocers’ shops, a smithy where the -blacksmith, who mended scythes or shod donkeys, got paid in kind for his -services. The policemen, one to every fifty souls in the village, -paraded idly up and down the street, their heavy batons clanking against -their trousers, and their boots, spotlessly clean, rasping eternally on -the pavement. Their sole occupation seemed to be the kicking of -unoffending dogs that spent their days and nights in a vain search for -some eatable garbage in the gutter. The dogs were skeletons; and when -kicked they would slink quietly out of the way, lacking courage either -to snap or snarl. Even a kick brought no yelp from them, they were -almost insensible to every feeling but that of the heavy hunger which -dulled<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a> their natural activity. At night they were silent ghosts -prowling about looking for a morsel to eat. Now and again they howled -mournfully, sitting on their haunches in a circle; and when the people -heard the lonely sound they would say: “There, the dogs are crying -because they have got no souls.”</p> - -<p>A little pot-bellied man stepped briskly along the street of the -village, one gloved hand grasping a stout stick, the other, also gloved, -sunk in the capacious pocket of a heavy overcoat. He walked as if he -lacked knee-joints, throwing the legs out from his hips, but, save for -this, there was nothing remarkable about the man except perhaps his -stoutness. The people of Greenanore, battling daily against the terrible -spectre of hunger, had no time to grow fat, yet this man measured forty -inches round the waist. In the midst of extreme poverty he, strange to -say, had grown corpulent and rich. His name was Farley McKeown, now -possessor of £200,000, part of it invested in South American Railways -and part of it in the Donegal Knitting Industry, and nearly all of it -earned in the latter.</p> - -<p>Farley McKeown was now seventy years of age and unmarried. At one time, -years before, he had his desires as most young men have, and the sight -of a comely girl going barefooted to Greenanore imparted a fiery and not -unpleasant vigour to his body and caused strange but not unnatural -thoughts to enter into his mind. He was then a young man of twenty, -thoughtful and ambitious. Although his father was poor, the boy, -educated by some hedge schoolmaster, showed promise and evinced a desire -to become a priest. “It is an easy job,” he said to himself, “and a -priest can make plenty of money.” Farley McKeown desired to make money -anyway and anyhow.</p> - -<p>When the black potato blight, with the fever and famine that followed -it, spread over Donegal, Farley McKeown saw his chance. By dint of -plausible arguments<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a> he persuaded a firm of Londonderry grain merchants -to ship a cargo of Indian meal to Greenanore and promised to pay for the -consignment within two years from the date of its arrival. When the -cargo was landed on Dooey Head the people hailed it as a gift from God -and the priest blessed Farley McKeown from the altar steps. The peasants -built a large warehouse for McKeown, and in return for the work they -were allowed a whole year in which to pay for their meal. Meanwhile the -younger generation went off to America, and money flowed in to Donegal -and Farley McKeown’s pocket. At the end of two years he had paid the -grain merchants, but the peasants found to their astonishment that -<i>they</i> had only paid interest on the cost of their food. They were in -the man’s clutches, always paying for goods received and in some strange -way never clear of debt. This went on for years, and Farley McKeown, a -pillar of the Church and the friend of the holy priest, waxed wealthy on -the proceeds of his business.</p> - -<p>Then he started a knitting industry and again was hailed by the priest -as the saviour of the people. From far and near, from the most southerly -to the most northerly point of Donegal the peasant women came to -Greenanore for yarn, crossing arms of the sea, mountains and moors on -their journey, and carrying back bundles of yarn to their homes. The -journey was in many cases thirty miles each way, and these miles were -tramped by women between a sleep and a sleep, often with only one meal -in their stomachs.</p> - -<p>The daughters of Donegal are splendid knitters. But how difficult to -make are those wonderful stockings when there is nothing but the peat -fire or the rushlight to show the women the dreary and countless -stitches that go to make the whole marvellous work. How quick those -irons flash in the firelight, how they tinkle, tinkle one against<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a> -another as the nimble fingers wind the threads around them, but alas! -how wearying the toil! And the time usually taken to make a pair of -socks was sixteen hours, and the wages paid for sixteen hours’ work was -a penny farthing.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">F</span><small>ARLEY</small> <span class="smcap">McKeown</span> strutted along the street, inflating his stomach with -dignity as he walked and casting careless looks around him. All those -whom he met saluted him, the men raised their hands to their caps, the -women bowed gravely, and the children, when they saw him coming, ran -away. An old sow, black and dirty from her wallow in some near midden, -rushed violently into the street and grunted as she mouthed at the grime -in the gutter. A peasant boy, dressed in trousers and shirt, got hold of -one of the young pigs and the animal squealed loudly. This startled the -mother and she peered round, her little stupid eyes blinking angrily. On -seeing that one of her young was possibly in danger she charged full at -the youth, who, hurriedly dropping the sucker, sought the safety of a -near doorway. A few hens rushed off with long, remarkable strides that -made one wonder how the spider-shanked, ungainly birds saved themselves -from toppling over. A rooster—a defiant Sultan—who did not share in -the trepidacious exit of his wives, crowed loudly and looked valiantly -at the sow, as much as to say: “I, for one, am not the least afraid of -you.” The boy finding himself safe ventured out again into the street, -but coming face to face with Farley McKeown hurried off even more -rapidly than when pursued by the sow. The man noticed the doubtful mark -of respect which the youth showed him, purred approvingly and smiled, -the smile giving him the appearance of an over-fed, serious frog.</p> - -<p>McKeown walked along the street towards a spacious<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a> three-storied -building containing many large windows and heavy, painted doors. This -was the warehouse in which he stored his yarn. One door was open, and in -front of this a crowd of barefooted women and children were standing, -most of them holding large bundles of stockings which they frequently -changed from one hand to another. They did not dare to rest their -bundles on the street, which was wet with the slabbery sleet of -mid-November.</p> - -<p>Farley McKeown came to the door and from there surveyed the women with a -fixed stare. They shuffled uneasily, a few crossed themselves, and one, -a young girl, ventured to say: “It’s a cold morning this, Farley -McKeown, thanks be to God!”</p> - -<p>The merchant made no answer. To see those creatures, shrinking before -his gaze, filled him with a comfortable sense of importance. They were -afraid of him, just as he was afraid of God, and he thought that he must -be like God in their eyes. He fixed another withering glance on the -crowd, then turned and hurried upstairs to the top floor, there to enter -a room where two young men were seated over a desk struggling with long -rows of figures in dirty ledgers. A peat fire blazed brightly in one -corner of the room, and the cheerful flame was a red rag to the eyes of -the proprietor. He looked sternly at the fire, then at the clerks, then -at the fire, then back to the clerks again.</p> - -<p>“Warm here, isn’t it?” he exclaimed. “Yes, it’s warm, very warm; very -comfortable indeed, isn’t it? It’s nice to have a fire on a cold -morning, very nice indeed. If you were working in your fathers’ fields -you’d have a fire out by your sides, you’d carry a fire about in your -pockets all day, you would indeed. Is it not enough for you to have a -roof over you?” he cried in an angry tone, his voice rising shrilly; “a -roof over your head and four good walls to keep the winds of heaven away -from your bodies? No, it isn’t, it isn’t, it isn’t atall, atall! I gave -you orders not<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a> to put a fire on till I came into the office myself, and -what do I see here now? One would think that it’s not me that owns this -business. Who does own it, I’d like to know! Is it me or is it you?”</p> - -<p>Gasping for breath, he flopped down suddenly into a chair, and drawing -off his gloves he stuffed them into the pocket of his coat. Then taking -an account book he stroked out several figures with his pen, while -between every pen stroke he turned round and shouted: “Is it me that -owns this business or is it you? Eh?”</p> - -<p>After a while he ceased to speak, probably forgetting his rage in the -midst of the work, and for two hours there was almost total silence save -for the low scratchings of pen on paper and the occasional grunt which -emanated from the throat of Farley McKeown. Suddenly, however, he -stopped in the middle of his work and looked at the skylight above, -through which snow was falling, and some of it skiting off the -window-ledge dropped on the top of his head, which being bald was -extremely sensitive to climatic changes. Then he gave an order slowly -and emphatically:</p> - -<p>“Dony McNelis, close the window.”</p> - -<p>One of the clerks, a tall lank youth, rose like a rubber ball, bounded -on top of his seat and closed the window with a bang. On stepping down -to resume his work, he noticed the crowd of women, now greatly increased -by the party which had crossed the bay in the morning, standing huddled -together in the street. The sleet was falling thickly—it was now more -snow than sleet—and the clothes of the women were covered with a fleecy -whiteness. The clerk paused in his descent and looked at the women, then -he spoke to the yarn-seller.</p> - -<p>“Would it not be better to attend to these women now?” he asked. “Some -of them have been out on the cold street since the dawn.”<a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a></p> - -<p>Farley McKeown turned round sharply. “Is this my business or is it -yours?” he cried, rising from the chair and stamping his feet on the -floor. “Mine or yours, eh? Have I to run like a dog and attend to these -people, have I? I’ve kept them from death and the workhouse for the last -forty years, have I not? And now you want me to run out and attend on -them, do you? I’ve taken you, Dony McNelis, into my office out of pure -charity, and how much money is it that your mother owes me? Couldn’t I -turn her out of house and home at a moment’s notice? And in face of that -you come here and tell me how to run my own business. Isn’t that what -you’re trying to do? Eh?”</p> - -<p>The boy sat down without a word, and catching a piece of waste paper off -the table, he crumpled it angrily in his hand; then rising again he -confronted his master.</p> - -<p>“There are women out there from Tweedore and Frosses,” he said. “They -have travelled upwards of thirty miles, hungry, all of them, I’ll go -bail, and maybe not a penny in their pockets. If they don’t catch the -tide when it’s out they’ll have to sleep on the rocks of Dooey all -night, and if they do there’ll be more curses on your head in the -morning than all the masses ever said and all the prayers ever prayed -will be fit to wash away. It’s nearly one of the clock now, and they’ll -have to race and catch the tide afore it’s on the turn, so it would be -the best thing to do to attend to them this minute.”</p> - -<p>The youth stood for a moment after he had delivered this speech, the -longest ever made by him in his life, and seemed on the point of saying -something more vehement. All at once, however, he sat down again and -went on with his work as if nothing unusual had happened.</p> - -<p>Farley McKeown was a superstitious man. He feared the curse of an angry -woman as much as he feared the curse of a priest of the Catholic Church. -And those<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a> women would curse him if they slept all night on Dooey Head. -For a moment he glared angrily at Dony McNelis, then went to the window -facing the street, opened it and looked out on the shivering creatures -assembled in the falling snow.</p> - -<p>“Are there many Tweedore and Frosses people here?” he shouted.</p> - -<p>“There’s a good lot of us here, and we’re afraid that we’ll be a wee bit -late for the tide if we don’t get away this very minute,” said a voice -from the crowd. Maire a Crick, the fatalist, was speaking.</p> - -<p>“Have ye any stockings with ye?”</p> - -<p>“Sorrow the one has one that’s not on her feet, save Maire a Glan, and -she doesn’t come from our side of the water,” Maire a Crick answered. -“When we were here the last day we couldn’t get a taste of yarn and we -had to sleep all night on the rocks of Dooey. All night, mind, Farley -McKeown, and the sky glowering like a hangman and the sea rushing like -horses of war up on the strand. God be with us! but it will be a cold -place on a night like this. For the love of Mary, give us some yarn, -Farley McKeown,” said the old woman in a piteous voice. “Twenty-four -hours have passed since I saw bread or that what buys it.”</p> - -<p>McKeown turned round to his clerks. “Is there much yarn down below?” he -asked.</p> - -<p>“Plenty,” said Dony McNelis, wiping his pen on his coat-sleeve.</p> - -<p>“If they had my yarn with them and miss the tide, they’d ruin the -stuff,” thought Farley McKeown; then turning to the women he shouted in -a loud voice: “There’s no yarn for the Tweedore and Frosses women this -day. Maybe if they come to-morrow or the day after they’ll get some.”</p> - -<p>Having said these words he shut the window.<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III<br /><br /> -<small>ON DOOEY HEAD</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span><small>UTSIDE</small>, the women who had taken up their stand at dawn were still -changing their bundles of stockings from one hand to another and -sheltering them under their shawls whenever they changed them. All the -time they kept hitting their feet sharply against the gritty street, -trying to drive the cold and the numbness away. On the other side of the -pavement a policeman stood for a moment and eyed them disdainfully, then -marched on, his baton striking soberly against his leg. One of the -party, a handsome girl, stepped out from the crowd and lifting her dress -well over her ankles wrung the water from her petticoats. A young fellow -passing on a donkey-cart looked shyly at the girl and shouted: “Lift -them a bit higher, girsha; just a little bit!” Whereupon the maiden -blushed, dropped her dress as if it was red-hot and returned hurriedly -to her companions.</p> - -<p>The Tweedore and Frosses women had gone away, speaking loudly and -lamenting over their ill-luck. Many of them were eating white bread (a -new importation into Greenanore), but without butter to give it relish -or liquid to wash it down. The bread cost a penny a chunk and one penny -represented a whole day’s wages to most of the women. Norah Ryan walked -with them, but in her lagging gait could be detected great weariness, -and in her<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> eyes there were traces of tears. The poor child of twelve, -who felt her suffering very keenly, offered to share her dry crust with -Maire a Crick, who had no money, and the old woman looked greedily at -the bread for a moment but refused to accept it.</p> - -<p>The party hurried clear of the town, their bare feet pattering loudly on -the road. Suddenly they encountered the parish priest, Father Devaney, -an old, grey-haired, sleek-looking fellow, with shiny false teeth and a -pot-belly like McKeown. He pulled his rosary from his pocket and began -to pray when he observed his parishioners.</p> - -<p>“Tweedore and Frosses people,” he cried genially, turning his eyes from -the rosary cross to the women, “have ye got no yarn this good day? No. -That’s a pity, but believe me when I say that Mr. McKeown is doing his -very best for the whole lot of ye. He’s a good man, a sturdy man, a -reliable man, and there’s not his equal, barrin’ the priests themselves, -in all Ireland. Are you the daughter of James Ryan of Meenalicknalore?” -he asked, turning to Norah Ryan.</p> - -<p>“That I am, father,” answered the child.</p> - -<p>“Does he forget about the money that I’m wanting for the building of my -new house?” asked the old man in a severe tone of voice. “I want five -pounds from every family in the parish, and I’m not givin’ them one year -or two years, but a whole five years in which to pay it. They’re most of -them payin’ up now like real good Christians and Catholics, for they -want to see their own soggarth’s house a good house, a strong house and -a substantial house. But there is some of my own flock, and James Ryan -is one of them, that won’t give a penny piece to the soggarth who is -goin’ to save their souls for them. Listen, girsha! Tell James Ryan when -you get home that the first pound should be paid at Michaelmas and it’s -now long past Hallowe’en. Tell him that I pray every night<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a> for them -that’s not behind in comin’ forward to help the priest at the buildin’ -of his house, the soggarth’s house and the house of all his people. Tell -James Ryan that there’s no prayer for him as yet, but if he hurries up -with just one pound——”</p> - -<p>The priest suddenly spied the beansho staring at him, and he noticed -that there was a look of unfeigned contempt in her eyes. He observed the -bundle in her shawl, and suddenly recollected that it was the woman’s -child—the talk of the parish barely six months before. The priest -looked at the woman fixedly for a moment, then knowing that all the -party was watching him intently, he raised his hand and made the sign of -the cross on his forehead. This was as much as to say, “God save me from -this woman, for there is nothing good in her.” Old Maire a Crick crossed -herself in imitation of the soggarth and cast a look of withering -contempt at the beansho. Norah Ryan also raised her hand, but suddenly -it was borne to her that the action of Maire a Crick was very unseemly, -and she refrained from making the sign of the cross. Of course the -priest was right in what he had done, she knew; the people were -forbidden to see anything wrong in the ways of the soggarth.</p> - -<p>Suddenly the old man turned away. He walked off a short distance, his -head sunk on his breast and his hands clasped behind his back, the -rosary dangling from his fingers. Perhaps he was deep in thought, or -maybe he was saying a prayer for the beansho; the poor woman, buried -beneath her weight of sin and sorrow, had no doubt filled him with -compassion. What would he, the father of the flock, not do to make -lighter the woman’s burden? All at once he paused, turned round and -faced the women who were staring after him.</p> - -<p>“Norah Ryan!” he called, and his voice was pregnant with priestly -gravity. “If yer father doesn’t send me the<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a> pound before the end of the -next month he’ll have no luck in this world and no happiness in the -next. Tell him that I, meself, the parish priest, said these very -words.”</p> - -<p>Having thus spoken, the good man went on his way, telling his beads; -perhaps counting by their aid the number of sovereigns required for the -construction of his mansion.</p> - -<p>“That will make some people sit up if they don’t sink into their -brogues,” said Maire a Crick, glancing in turn at Norah Ryan and the -beansho. “Mother of Jesus, to have the priest talking to one like that! -Who ever heard the likes of it?”</p> - -<p>“Do you know how much the priest is goin’ to spend on a lav-ha-thury for -his new house?” asked the beansho drily.</p> - -<p>“Lav-ha-thury?” said Judy Farrel. “What’s that?”</p> - -<p>“Old Oiney Dinchy of Glenmornan said that it is a place for keeping holy -water,” said Maire a Crick.</p> - -<p>“Holy water, my eye!” said the beansho. “It’s the place where the priest -washes himself.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve heard of them washin’ themselves away in foreign parts all over -and every day,” said a woman. “But they must be far from clean in them -places. They just go into big things full of water just as pigs, God be -good to us! go into a midden. Father McKee, I wish him rest! used to -wash his hands in an old tub, and that’s all the washin’ ever he did, -and wouldn’t ye think that a tub was good enough for this man? But what -am I talking about!” exclaimed the woman, making the sign of the cross. -“Isn’t it the priest that knows what is best to do?”</p> - -<p>“He’s goin’ to spend two hundred and fifty pounds on his lav-ha-thury, -anyway,” said the beansho. “Two hundred and fifty pounds on one single -room of his house! Ye’ll not fill yer own bellies and ye’ll give him a -bathroom to wash his!”<a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a></p> - -<p>“Mercy be on us!” exclaimed Biddy Wor, staring aghast at the beansho. -“Ye’re turnin’ out to be a Prodisan, Sheila Carrol. Talkin’ of the -priest in that way! No wonder, indeed, that he puts the cross on his -forehead when he meets you.”</p> - -<p>“No wonder, indeed!” chimed a chorus of voices.</p> - -<p>“The sun, God forgive me for callin’ it a sun! will be near Dooey Head -this minute,” Maire a Crick reminded the party, who had forgotten about -the tide in the heat of the discussion. Now they hurried off, breaking -into a run from time to time, Judy Farrel leading, her little pinched -figure doubling up almost into a knot when she coughed. Last in the race -were Norah Ryan and Maire a Crick.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> darkness was falling as the women raced down the crooked road that -ran to Dooey foreshore. A few birch bushes, with trembling branches -tossing hither and thither like tangled tresses, bounded the road at -intervals. The sky was overcast with low-hanging, slatey clouds, and in -the intervening distance between foreshore and horizon no separate -object could be distinguished: everything there had blended together in -grey, formless mistiness. There was hardly a word spoken; the pattering -of bare feet, Judy Farrel’s cough and the hard, laboured breathing of -the elder women were all that could be heard.</p> - -<p>One of the party, well in advance, barefooted and carrying her shoes -hung round her neck with a piece of string, struck her toe sharply -against a rock.</p> - -<p>“The curse of the devil!” she exclaimed; then in a quieter voice: “It’s -God’s blessin’ that I haven’t my brogues on my feet, for they would be -ruined entirely.”</p> - -<p>A belated bird cried sharply and its call was carried in<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a> from the sea -... somewhere in the distance a cow lowed—the sound was prolonged in a -hundred ravines ... the bar moaned fretfully as if in a troubled sleep -... the snow ceased to fall and some stars glittered bright as diamonds -in the cold heavens.</p> - -<p>“Mother of God! It’s on the turn,” Maire a Crick shouted, and hurried as -rapidly as her legs would permit down the hill. At intervals some of the -party following her would stumble, fall, turn head over heels and rise -rapidly again. They came to the strand, raced across it, making little -noise with their feet as they ran and with their bodies as they fell. -Norah Ryan’s head shook fitfully from side to side as she tried to keep -pace with her companions.</p> - -<p>They were not aware of the proximity of the dhan until they were in the -water and splashing it all around them. When half-way across Maire a -Crick found the water at her breast; another step and it reached her -chin. Those behind could only see a black head bobbing in the waves.</p> - -<p>“Come back, Maire a Crick!” Biddy Wor shouted. “Ye’ll be drownded if ye -go one step at all further.”</p> - -<p>The old woman turned, came back slowly and solemnly, without speaking a -word.</p> - -<p>On reaching the strand she went down on her knees and raised her eyes to -heaven, looking up through the snowy flakes that were now falling out of -the darkness. Then she spoke, and her voice, rising shrill and terrible, -carried far across the dhan:</p> - -<p>“May seven curses from the lips of Jesus Christ fall seven times seven -on the head of Farley McKeown!”</p> - -<p>The waves rolled up to her feet, stretching out like black, sinuous -snakes; a long, wailing wind, that put droumy thoughts into the hearts -of those who listened to it, swept in from the sea. Behind on the shore, -large rocks, frightful and shapeless, stood out amidst stunted<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a> bushes -that sobbed in dismal unison. The women went back to the rocks, passing -through bent-grass that shook in the breeze like eels. All around the -brambles writhed like long arms clutching at their prey with horrible -claws. A tuft of withered fern flew by in the air as if escaping from -something which followed it, and again the cry of the solitary sea-bird -pierced the darkness.</p> - -<p>Between the clefts of a large rock, which in some past age had been -split by lightning, the women, worn out with their day’s journey, sat -down in a circle, their shawls drawn over their heads and their feet -tucked well up under their petticoats. The darkness almost overpowered -Norah Ryan; she shuddered and the shudder chilled her to the heart. It -was not terror that possessed her but something more unendurable than -terror; it was the agony of a soul dwarfed by the immensity of the -infinite. She was lonely, desperately lonely. In the midst of the women -she was far from them. They began to speak and their voices were the -voices of dreams.</p> - -<p>Maire a Crick, speaking in Gaelic, was telling a story, while wringing -the water from her clothes, the story of a barrow that came across the -hills of Glenmornan in the year of the famine, and on the barrow, which -rolled along of its own accord, there was a large coffin with a door at -the bottom of it. Then another of the party told of her grandfather’s -wake and the naked man who came to the house in the middle of the night -and took up a seat by the chimney corner. He never spoke a word but -smoked the pipe of tobacco that was handed to him. When the cock crew -with the dawn he got up from his seat and went out and away. Nobody knew -the man and no one ever saw him again.</p> - -<p>“We might get shelter in one of the houses up there,” said Norah Ryan, -rousing herself and pointing to the hill<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a> above, where the short-lived -rushlights flickered and shone at intervals in the scattered cabins.</p> - -<p>“We might,” said Maire a Crick, “we might indeed, but it’s not in me to -go askin’ a night’s shelter under the roof of a Ballybonar man. There -was once, years ago, a black word between the Ballybonar people and the -people of our side of the water. Since then we haven’t darkened one -another’s doorsteps, and we’re not going to do it now.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe someone on our side will send a boat across,” said the beansho.</p> - -<p>“Maybe they’ll do that if they’re not at the fishin’,” Judy Farrel -answered. “And when are they not at the fishin’? They’re always out on -the diddy of the sea and never catching a fish atall, atall!”</p> - -<p>“We’ll walk about; it will keep our feet warm.”</p> - -<p>“And maybe fall down between the rocks and break our bits of legs.”</p> - -<p>The rushlights on the hill above went out one by one and the darkness -became intense. The Ballybonar people had gone to bed. One of the women -on the rock began to snore loudly, and those who remained awake envied -her because she slept so soundly.</p> - -<p>“I suppose Farley McKeown will have a feather bed under him now,” said -Maire a Crick with a broken laugh. It seemed as if she was weeping. The -beansho, who was giving suck to her babe, turned to Norah Ryan who sat -beside her.</p> - -<p>“What are you thinking of, Norah?” she asked in Gaelic.</p> - -<p>“I’m just wondering if my mother is better,” answered the child.</p> - -<p>“I hope she is,” said the beansho. “Are you sleepy? Would you like to -sleep like the earth, like the ground under you?”</p> - -<p>“In the grave you mean?”<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a></p> - -<p>“No, no, child. But like the world at night; like the ground under you? -It’s asleep now; one can almost hear it breathing, and one would like to -sleep with it. If ever you think that the earth is asleep, Norah, be -careful. Maybe when you grow up some man will say to you: ‘I like you -better than anyone else in the world.’ That will be very nice to listen -to, Norah. Maybe you’ll walk with the man on a lonely moor or on the -strand beside the sea. It will be night, and there will be many stars in -the sky, and you’ll not say they’re cold then as you said this morning, -Norah. All at once you’ll stop and listen. You’ll not know why you -listen for everything will be so quiet. But for a minute it will come to -you that the earth is asleep and that everything is in slumber. That -will be a dangerous hour, child, for then you may commit the mortal sin -of love.”</p> - -<p>“Was that your sin, Sheila Carrol?” asked Norah Ryan, calling the woman -by her correct name for the first time.</p> - -<p>“That was my sin, Norah.”</p> - -<p>“But you said this morning——”</p> - -<p>“Never mind what I said this morning,” answered the woman in a tone of -mild reproof. “I’m only saying that the ground under us and around us is -now sleeping.”</p> - -<p>“The ground sleeping!” exclaimed Maire a Crick, who overheard the last -words of the conversation. “I never heard such silly talk coming out of -a mouth in all my life before.”</p> - -<p>“Neither have I,” said Norah Ryan, but she spoke so low that no one, not -even the beansho, heard her.</p> - -<p>Maire a Crick sang a song. It told of a youth who lived in Ireland “when -cows were kine, and pigs were swine and eagles of the air built their -nests in the beards of giants.” When the youth was born his father -planted a tree in honour of the event. The boy grew up, very proud of -this tree, and daily he watered and tended it,<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a> and one day the boy was -hung (why the song never stated) from the branches of his own tree.</p> - -<p>“There never was a man hung either in Frosses or Tweedore,” said the -woman who had just been snoring. “Never a mother’s son!”</p> - -<p>“So I have heard,” Maire a Crick remarked, pulling her feet well up -under her petticoats. “In Frosses and Tweedore there never was a tree -strong enough to bear the weight of a man, and never a man with a body -weighty enough to break his own neck.”</p> - -<p>Having said this the old woman, who came from the south of Donegal, -chuckled deep down in her throat, and showed the one remaining tooth -which she possessed in a hideous grin.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span><small>BOUT</small> the hour of midnight the heavens cleared and the moon, hardly -full, lighted up the coast of Western Donegal. On the bosom of the sea a -few dark specks moved to and fro, and at intervals the splash of oars -could be heard. When the oars were lifted out of the sea the water, -falling from them, looked like molten silver.</p> - -<p>“Norah will be warm in bed by now,” said a voice.</p> - -<p>“If she caught the tide when it was standing,” a voice clearer and -younger replied.</p> - -<p>“If she caught the tide,” repeated the first speaker in a thoughtful -tone; then after a short silence, “Does not the land look black, back -from the sea?”</p> - -<p>The youth studied the shore-line attentively, allowing his oar to trail -through the water. “Mother of God! but it looks ugly,” he replied. “I -hate it! I hate it more than I hate anything!”</p> - -<p>On shore most of the women were now asleep amongst the rocks, their -shawls drawn tightly over their heads and<a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a> their feet tucked up under -their petticoats. Maire a Crick, still awake, hummed a tune deep down in -her throat, and Judy Farrel coughed incessantly. One white, youthful -face was turned to the heavens, and the moon, glancing for a moment on -the pale cheeks of the sleeper, caused a tear falling from the closed -eyelids to sparkle like a pearl.<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV<br /><br /> -<small>RESTLESS YOUTH</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">J</span><small>AMES</small> <span class="smcap">Ryan’s</span> cabin lay within half a mile of the sea, and his croft, a -long strip of rock-bespattered, sapless land, ran down to the very -shore. But this strip of land was so narrow that the house, small though -it was, could not be built across, and instead of the cabin-front, an -end gable faced the water. In Frosses most of the land is divided into -thin strips, for it is the unwritten law that they who have no land -touching the sea may not lift any sea-weed to manure their potato -patches. In Frosses some of the crofts, measuring two miles in length, -are seldom more than eight paces in width at any point.</p> - -<p>All over the district gigantic boulders are strewn, huge rocks that -might have been flung about in play by monstrous Giants who forgot, when -their humour was at an end, to gather them up again. Between these rocks -the people till for crops, plots of land which seldom measure more than -four yards square, and every rock conceals either a potato patch or -cornfield. It was said years ago that Frosses had twenty-one blades of -grass to the square foot, but this was contradicted by a sarcastic -peasant, who said that if grass grew so plentifully with them they would -all be wealthy.</p> - -<p>Fishing was indulged in, but very little fish was ever<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a> landed: Scottish -and English trawlers netted the fish off-shore, and few were picked up -by the peasantry, whose boats and nets were of the most primitive -pattern. The nets were bad, the boats, mere curraghs, were -untrustworthy, and a great deal of the fishermen’s time was usually -spent in baling out water. At best fishing was for them an almost -profitless trade. They had no markets and no carts to send their fish to -town. For the most part the fishers used the fish themselves or traded -them in kind with their neighbours.</p> - -<p>On the morning following the women’s visit to Greenanore two men came up -from the sea towards the door of James Ryan’s cabin. One was an old man, -bearded and wrinkled, whose brows were continually contracting as is the -habit with those who live by the sea and look on the wrath of many -winds. He was dressed in a white wrapper, a woollen shirt, open at the -neck, trousers folded up to the knees, and mairteens. The other was a -youth of nineteen, dark-haired, supple of limb and barefooted. In the -two men a family likeness might be detected; they were father and son, -James Ryan and his only boy, Fergus. There were now only four in the -family; death had taken away most of the children before they were a -year old.</p> - -<p>Fergus opened the door of the cabin, to be met with the warm and -penetrating breath of the cattle inside. The cows, always curious to see -a new-comer, turned round in their beds of fresh heather and fixed their -big, soft eyes on the youth. Beside the cow nearest the door, a young -calf, spotted black and white, turned round on long, lank, awkward legs -and sniffed suspiciously; then, finding that no danger was going to -befall him, snuggled up against his mother, who commenced to lick her -offspring with a big rough tongue. Suddenly a pig ran in from the -outside, rushed between the youth’s legs and disappeared under<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a> the bed. -Its back was bleeding as if a dog had bitten it.</p> - -<p>“Is not the pig’s flesh like a human’s?” said Fergus, turning to his -father. “White; almost without hair and it bleeds just like a man’s. I -hate pigs; I wish we could live without keeping them.... Oh! here is -Norah at the fire. Have you just got up?”</p> - -<p>The child, shivering from cold, was sitting on the hassock, her hands -spread out to the peat blaze.</p> - -<p>“She has only just come in from the other side of the water,” said the -mother, who was sitting up in bed, knitting stockings. “She lay out all -night, poor creature! Twenty-seven women in all were lying out on the -snow. And she got no yarn! Thanks be to God! but it’s a bad time.”</p> - -<p>“A bad time, a hard time, a very hard time!” said the old man, sitting -down on an upturned creel and taking off his mairteens. “No yarn! and -there was not a fish in all the seas last night.”</p> - -<p>“None but the ones we didn’t catch,” said Fergus. “It is that dirty -potato-basket of a boat that is to blame.... Are you cold, Norah?”</p> - -<p>“I am only shivering; but the fire will do me good.”</p> - -<p>“She didn’t ate one bit of her breakfast yesterday,” said the mother. -“Left it all for you when you came in from the sea, she did!”</p> - -<p>Norah blushed as if she had been caught doing something wrong; then -drank from the bowl of milk which was placed on the floor beside her. -The father looked greedily at the bowl; the mother spoke.</p> - -<p>“It is nice and warm, that milk,” said the old woman. “I wish we had -more of it, but at this time of the year the milk runs thin in the cow’s -elldurs. But even if we had got enough bread, never mind milk, it would -not be so<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a> bad.... And there is not one bit for you this morning.... Do -you know what the soggarth says, Shemus?”</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> husband looked at his wife, and an expression of dread appeared on -his face. “What does he say, Mary?”</p> - -<p>“He is offering up no prayers for your soul.”</p> - -<p>“Mother of God, be good to me!”</p> - -<p>“You must pay him that pound at once, he says.”</p> - -<p>“But barring what we are saving up for the landlord’s rent, bad scran to -him! we have not one white shilling in the house.”</p> - -<p>“That does not matter to the priest, the damned old pig!” exclaimed -Fergus, who had been looking gloomily at the roof since he had spoken to -Norah.</p> - -<p>“Fergus!” the three occupants of the house exclaimed in one breath.</p> - -<p>“What’s coming over the boy at all?” the mother went on. “It must be the -books that Micky’s Jim takes over from Scotland that are bringing ruin -to the gasair.”</p> - -<p>“It is common sense that I am talking,” Fergus hotly replied. “What with -the landlord, Farley McKeown, and the priest, you are all in a nice -pickle!”</p> - -<p>“The priest, Fergus!”</p> - -<p>“Robbing you because he is a servant of the Lord; that is the priest’s -trick,” the youth exclaimed. “We are feeding here with the cows and the -pigs and we are not one bit better than the animals ourselves. I hate -the place; I hate it and everything about it.”</p> - -<p>“Sure you don’t hate your own people?” asked Norah, rising from her seat -and going timidly up to her brother. “Sure you don’t hate me, Fergus?”<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a></p> - -<p>“Hate you?” laughed the young man stroking her hair with an awkward -hand. “No one could hate you, because you are a little angel.... Now run -away and sit down at the fire and warm yourself.... They are going to -make you a nun, they say.”</p> - -<p>There was a note of scorn in his voice, and he looked defiantly at his -mother as he spoke.</p> - -<p>“What better than a nun could she be?” asked the mother.</p> - -<p>“I would rather see her a beggar on the rainy roads.”</p> - -<p>“What is coming over you atall, Fergus?” asked the old man. “Last night, -too, you were strange in your talk on the top of the sea.”</p> - -<p>“How much money have you in the house?” Fergus asked, taking no heed of -his father’s remark. “Ten shillings will be enough to take me out of the -country altogether.”</p> - -<p>“Fergus, what are you saying?” asked his mother.</p> - -<p>“I am going away from here and I am going to push my fortune.” He looked -out of the window and his eyes followed the twist of the road that ran -like a ribbon away past the door of the house.</p> - -<p>“But, Fergus dear—!”</p> - -<p>“It does not matter, maghair (mother), what you say,” remarked the -youth, interrupting his mother. “I am going away this very day. I have -had it in my head for a long while. I’ll make you rich in the years to -come. I’ll earn plenty of money.”</p> - -<p>“That’s what they all say, child,” the mother interposed, and tears came -into her eyes. “It’s more often a grave than a fortune they find in the -black foreign country.”</p> - -<p>“Could any place under the roof-tree of heaven be as black as this,” -asked the youth excitedly. “There is nothing here but rags, poverty, and -dirt; pigs under the bed, cows in the house, the rain coming through the -thatch instead<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a> of seeping from the eaves, and the winds of night raving -and roaring through wall and window. Then if by chance you make one gold -guinea, half of it goes to Farley McKeown and the priest, and the other -half of it goes to the landlord.”</p> - -<p>“But Farley McKeown doesn’t get any money from us at all,” said the -mother in a tone of reproof. “It is him that gives us money for the -knitting.”</p> - -<p>“Knitting!” exclaimed Fergus, rising to his feet and striding up and -down the cabin. “God look sideways on the knitting! How much are you -paid for your work? One shilling and threepence for a dozen pairs of -stockings that takes the two of you more than a whole week to make. You -might as well be slaves; you are slaves, slaves to the very middle of -your bones! How much does Farley McKeown get for the stockings in the -big towns away out of here? Four shillings a pair, I am after hearing. -You get a penny farthing a pair; a penny farthing! If you read some of -the books that comes home with the harvestmen you would not suffer -Farley McKeown for long.”</p> - -<p>“That is it,” said the mother, winding the thread round her -knitting-irons. “That is it! It is the books that the harvestmen take -home that puts the boy astray. It is no wonder that the priest condemns -the books.”</p> - -<p>“The priest!” said the youth in a tone of contempt. “But what is the -good of talking to the likes of you? How much money have you in the -house?”</p> - -<p>“Sure you are not going to leave us?” Norah exclaimed, gazing with large -troubled eyes at her brother.</p> - -<p>“I am,” snapped Fergus. “I am going away this evening. I’ll tramp the -road to Derry and take the big boat from there to Scotland or some other -place beyond the water. What are you crying for? Don’t be a baby, Norah! -I’ll come back again and make you a lady. I’ll<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a> earn big piles of money -and send it home at the end of every month.”</p> - -<p>James Ryan looked at his wife, and a similar thought struck both of them -at the same instant. The son had some book learning, and he might get on -well abroad and amass considerable wealth, which he would share with his -own people. The old man drew nearer to the fire and held out his bare -feet, which were blue with cold, to the flames.</p> - -<p>“If Fergus sends home money I’ll get a good strong and warm pair of -boots,” he said to himself; then asked: “How much money is there in the -teapot, Mary?”</p> - -<p>“Twelve white shillings and sevenpence,” answered the wife. “No, it is -only twelve shillings and sixpence. Norah took a penny with her to the -town yesterday.”</p> - -<p>“I have a ha’penny back with me,” said the child, drawing a coin from -her weasel-skin purse. “I only spent half of the money on bread -yesterday because I was not very hungry.”</p> - -<p>“God be merciful to us! but the child is starving herself,” said the old -woman, clutching eagerly at the coin which her daughter held towards -her. “You can have half a gold guinea, Fergus, if you are going out to -push your fortune.”</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span><small>N</small> the evening when the moon peeped over the western hills, Fergus Ryan -tied his boots round his neck, placed three bannocks in a woollen -handkerchief and went out from his father’s door. The mother wept not -when he was leaving; she had seen so many of her children go out on a -much longer journey. Norah accompanied Fergus for a short distance and -stopped where the road streaked with very faint lines of light merged -<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a>into the darkness. The moon rose clear off the hills ... lights could -be seen glowing in the distance ... a leafless birch waved its arms in -the breeze ... somewhere a cow was lowing and far away, across the -water, a Ballybonar dog howled at the stars.</p> - -<p>“I never thought that I could like the place as much as I do now,” -Fergus said in English.</p> - -<p>“It’s the way with everyone when they’re going away,” answered his -sister. “And I’m sick at heart that ye are goin’, Fergus. Is Derry far -away?”</p> - -<p>“A longish way—”</p> - -<p>“Out beyont the moon, is it?” asked the child, pointing at the hills and -the moon above them.</p> - -<p>“Maybe,” said the youth; then in a low voice: “D’ye know what they do in -other countries when they are saying ‘Good-bye’?”</p> - -<p>“Then I don’t,” answered Norah.</p> - -<p>“They do this,” said the young man, and he pressed his lips against his -sister’s cheek.</p> - -<p>“But they never do that here,” said the girl, and both blushed as if -they had been discovered doing something very wrong. “I’ll say a long -prayer for you every night, when you are away, Fergus.”</p> - -<p>The boy looked at her, rubbed one bare foot on the ground and seemed on -the point of saying something further; then without a word he turned and -walked off along the wet road. Norah kept looking after him till he was -out of sight, then, with her eyes full of tears, she went back to her -home.<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V<br /><br /> -<small>GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>OWARDS</small> the end of the following year a great event took place in -Frosses. It was reported that a registered letter addressed to “James -Ryan, Esquire, Meenalicknalore” was lying in Frosses post-office. Norah -heard the news and spoke of it to her father.</p> - -<p>“No one but your own self can get the letter,” she said. “That is what -the people at the post-office say. You have to write your name down on -white paper too, before the letter crosses the counter.”</p> - -<p>“And is it me, a man who was never at school, that has to put down my -name?” asked James Ryan in a puzzled voice.</p> - -<p>“It will be a letter from the boy himself,” said the old woman, who was -sitting up in bed and knitting. Now and again she placed her bright -irons down and coughed with such violence as to shake her whole body. -“And maybe there is money in the same letter. It is not often that we -have a letter coming to us.”</p> - -<p>“We had none since the last process for the rent and that was two years -aback,” said the husband. “Maybe I will be going into Frosses and -getting that letter myself now.”<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a></p> - -<p>“Maybe you would,” stammered his wife, still battling with her cough.</p> - -<p>James Ryan put on his mairteens and left the house. Norah watched him -depart, and her eyes followed him until he turned the corner of the -road; then she went to the bedside and sitting on a low stool commenced -to turn the heel of a long stocking.</p> - -<p>“How many days to a day now is it since Fergus took the road to Derry?” -asked the old woman. “I am sure it is near come nine months this very -minute.”</p> - -<p>“It is ten months all but sixteen days.”</p> - -<p>“Under God the day and the night, and is it that?”</p> - -<p>“That it is and every hour of it.”</p> - -<p>“He will be across the whole flat world since he left,” said the mother, -looking fixedly at an awkward, ungainly calf which had just blundered -into the house, but seeing far beyond. “He will maybe send five pounds -in gold in the letter.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe. But you are not thinking of that, mother?” said Norah.</p> - -<p>“And what would <i>you</i> be thinking of, then?” asked the old woman.</p> - -<p>“I am wondering if he is in good health and happy.”</p> - -<p>“The young are always happy, Norah. Are you not?”</p> - -<p>“Sometimes. I am happy when out in the open, listening to the birds -singing, and the wind running on the heather.”</p> - -<p>“Who ever heard of a person listening to things like those? Are you not -happy in God’s house on a Sunday?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I am happy there as well,” answered Norah, but there was a hint of -hesitation in the answer.</p> - -<p>“Everyone that is good of heart is happy in God’s house,” said the -mother. “Have you turned the heel of the stocking yet?”</p> - -<p>“I am nigh finished with the foot, mother.”<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a></p> - -<p>“My own two eyes are getting dim, and I cannot hurry like you these -days,” said the woman in the bed. “Run those hens from the house, and -the young sturk too.... I wonder what he is coming in here for now, the -rascal?”</p> - -<p>“Maybe he likes to be near the fire,” said the child, looking at the -spotted calf that was nosing at a dish on the dresser. “When Micky’s Jim -built a new byre it was not easy to keep the cattle in it, for they -always wanted to get back into the warm house again.”</p> - -<p>With these words she rose and chased the young animal out of doors, -while a few stray hens fluttered wildly about in making their exit. “The -cows like the blaze,” Norah went on as she came back and took up her -seat by the fire. “Every evening they turn round and look at it, and you -can see their big soft eyes shining through the darkness.”</p> - -<p>“It is the strange things that you be noticing, alannah, but what you -say is very true,” said the mother. “It will be a letter from Fergus, I -suppose, with five gold guineas in it,” she went on. “Maybe he will be -at the back of America by now.... If he sends five gold guineas we will -make a holy nun of you, Norah, and then you can pray day and night with -no one at all to ask you to do anything but that alone.”</p> - -<p>“I might get tired of it, mother.”</p> - -<p>“Son of Mary, listen to her! Tired of saying your prayers, you mean? -There is that sturk at the door again. Isn’t he the rascal of the -world?”</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">D</span><small>ARKNESS</small> had fallen before James Ryan returned from Frosses post-office, -which was over four miles away. He entered the cabin, breathing heavily, -the sweat streaming from his brow and coursing down his<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a> blood-threaded -cheeks. He had run most of the way back, and in his hand he carried the -letter, the first which he had received for two whole years.</p> - -<p>“Mercy be on us, but you are out of breath!” said his wife, laying down -her knitting irons, a fault of which she was seldom guilty, save when -eating or sleeping. “Put one of the rushlights in the fire, Norah, and -read the letter from foreign parts. Is it from the boy himself?”</p> - -<p>“Maybe it is,” answered the man, seating himself as usual on an upturned -creel in the centre of the cabin. “The man at the post-office, Micky -McNelis, first cousin he is to Dony McNelis that works with Farley -McKeown, says that it is from a far part, anyway. ‘You must put down -your own name,’ said Micky to me, in English. ‘I cannot write, for I -never had a pen in my hand,’ said I. ‘You have to make your mark then,’ -said he. ‘I don’t know how to do that either,’ said I. ‘I’ll write your -name and you have to put a line down this way and a line down that way -after what I write,’ said he, and, just by way of showing me, he made a -crooked cross with his pen on a piece of paper. Then I made my mark and -a good mark it was too, for Micky himself said as much, and I got the -letter there and then into my own two hands. If it is from the boy there -is not one penny piece in it.”</p> - -<p>“Why would you be saying that now?”</p> - -<p>“I could not feel anything inside of it,” said the man. “If there were -gold pieces in it I could easily find them through that piece of paper.”</p> - -<p>The rushlight was now ready; the father took it in his hand and stood -beside Norah, to whom he gave the letter. The woman leant forward in the -bed; her husband held up the light with a shaky hand; dim shadows danced -on the roof; the young sturk again entered the house and took up his -stand in the corner. Norah having opened the letter proceeded to read:<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a></p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Father and Mother and Norah</span>,</p> - -<p>“I am writing to say that I am well, hoping to find you all at home -in the same state of health. I am far away in the middle of England -now, in a place called Liverpool where I have a job as a dock -labourer—”</p></div> - -<p>“Micky’s Jim had that kind of job the year before last in Glasgow,” said -the mother.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“The work is hard enough, heaven knows, but the pay is good. I came -here from Derry and I have been working for the most part of the -time ever since. I intended to write home sooner but between one -thing and another, time passed by, but now I am sending you home -twelve pounds, and you can get gold in Frosses post-office for the -slip of paper which I enclose——”</p></div> - -<p>“Under God the day and the night!” exclaimed the woman in the bed.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“A pound of this money is for Norah, and she can buy a new dress -for it. See and don’t let her go to Greenanore for yarn any more, -or it will be the death of her, sleeping out at night on the rocks -of Dooey.</p> - -<p>“I hope my mother is well and that her cold is getting better. I -spend all my spare time reading books. It is a great, great world -once you are away from Donegal, and here, where I am, as many books -as one would want to carry can be had for a mere song——”</p></div> - -<p>“Getting things for a song!” said the man. “That is like the ballad -singers——”</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“It would be nice to hear from you, but as I am going away to -America on the day after to-morrow, I have no fixed address, and it -would be next to useless for you to write to me. I’ll send a letter -soon again, and more money when I can earn it.</p> - -<p class="r"> -“Your loving son<br /> -“<span class="smcap">Fergus</span>.”<br /> -</p></div> - -<p><a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a></p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">“T</span><small>HIS</small> is the paper which he talks about,” said Norah, handing a money -order to her mother.</p> - -<p>“A thing like that worth twelve pounds!” exclaimed the old woman, a look -of perplexity intensifying the wrinkles of her face. “I would hardly -give a white sixpence, no, nor a brown penny for the little thing. Glory -be to God! but maybe it is worth twelve golden sovereigns, for there are -many strange things that come out of foreign parts.”</p> - -<p>“Alive and well he is,” said Norah, reading the letter over again. -“Thank God for that, for I was afraid that he might be dead, seeing that -it took him so long to write home. Wouldn’t I like to see him again!”</p> - -<p>“It will be worth twelve pounds without a doubt,” said the husband, -referring to the money order, as he threw the rushlight which was -burning his fingers into the fire. “I once heard tell that a man can get -hundreds and hundreds of guineas for a piece of paper no bigger than -that!”</p> - -<p>“Mother of God!” exclaimed the old woman, making the sign of the cross -and kissing the money order rapturously.</p> - -<p>“Poor Fergus!” said Norah, laying down the letter on the window-sill and -taking up her needles. “It is a pity of him so far away from his own -home!”</p> - -<p>“Twelve gold sovereigns!” said the mother. “A big pile that without a -doubt. Hardly a house in Frosses has twelve pounds inside the threshold -of its door. Put out that animal to the fields,” she called to her -husband. “We’ll have to build a new byre and not have the cattle in the -house any longer. A funny thing indeed to have them tied up in a house -along with people who can get<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a> twelve pounds in bulk from foreign parts! -No decent body would dream of such a thing as having them tied up here -now! Norah, leave down that stocking. Let me never see you knitting -under this roof again.”</p> - -<p>“Why, mother?”</p> - -<p>“You are going to be a nun, a holy nun, Norah, and nuns never knit; they -just pray all day long and all night too. You have to set about and go -to school again. You are not to be like other people’s children any -more, knitting stockings in the ashes. You are going to be a nun—and -there never was a nun in Frosses yet!”</p> - -<p>“I would like to go to school again,” said the child, clinking her irons -nervously and following with her eyes the blue flames that rose from the -peat fire and disappeared in the chimney. “There is a map of the world -in the school, hanging on the wall, and one can see Liverpool on it and -America as well. I could look at them and think that I am seeing Fergus -away in foreign parts, so far from his own home.”</p> - -<p>“And there is a pound due to the priest this minute,” said the old man, -who had just chased the calf out into the darkness. “It would be well to -give the soggarth the money in the morning.”</p> - -<p>“And you’ll go to school again to-morrow,” repeated the mother, who was -following up some train of thought, and who, curiously enough, made no -mention of her son since the letter had been read. “You’ll go again -to-morrow and learn well. The master said that you were getting on fine -the last time you were there and that it was a sin to take you away from -the books.”</p> - -<p>Having said this, the old woman lay back in her bed with a sigh of -relief, the man closed the door of the house, and drawing near to the -fire he held out his feet to the blaze. Norah, glad to be released from -the labour of the knitting irons, looked into the flames, and many -strange<a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a> pictures came and went before her eyes. From time to time the -woman in the bed could be heard speaking.</p> - -<p>“Twelve pounds for a piece of paper!” she would exclaim. “Mother of God! -But there is strange things in foreign lands!”</p> - -<p>Suddenly Norah arose and approached the bed. “Am I a good girl, mother?” -she asked, with a slight catch in her voice.</p> - -<p>“What silliness is entering your head?” enquired the old woman. “Who -said that you were not good?”</p> - -<p>“You said that good people were happy in God’s house, but I am not -always happy there.”</p> - -<p>“Did I say that?” asked the mother, who had forgotten all about the -remark. “Maybe I did say it, maybe indeed. But run away now and don’t -bother me, for I am going to sleep.”</p> - -<p>“A little bit of paper to be worth twelve pounds!” she mumbled to -herself, after a short interval of silence. “Mother of God! but there -are many strange things in foreign parts of the world!”<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI<br /><br /> -<small>SCHOOL LIFE</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span><small>N</small> the Monday of the week following Norah Ryan went to school again. She -had been there for two years already but left off going when she became -an adept at the needles. Master Diver had control of the school; he was -a fat little man, always panting and perspiring, who frightened the -children and feared the priest. On the way to school he cut hazel rods -by the roadside, and when in a bad mood he used them on the youngsters. -After he had caned three or four children he became good tempered, when -he caned half a dozen he got tired of his task and allowed the remainder -(if any remained) to go scot free. Some of the boys who worked in their -spare time at peat saving and fishing had hands hard as horses’ hooves. -When these did something wrong their trousers were taken down and -awkward chastisement was inflicted with severe simplicity in full view -of a breathless school.</p> - -<p>The school consisted of a single apartment, at one end of which, on a -slightly elevated platform near the fire, the master’s desk and chair -were placed. Several maps, two blackboards, a modulator, which no one, -not even the master himself, understood, and a thermometer, long -deprived of its quicksilver, hung on the walls. In one corner were the -pegs on which the boys’ caps were hung;<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a> on a large roof-beam which -spanned the width of the room the girls’ shawls were piled in a large -heap. The room boasted of two wide open fireplaces, but only one of -these was ever lighted; the other was used for storing the turf carried -to school daily by the scholars. The room was swept twice weekly; then a -grey dust rose off the floor and the master and children were seized -with prolonged fits of sneezing. Outside and above the door was a large -plate with the inscription,</p> - -<p class="c"> -<span class="smcap">Glenmornan National School. 1872.</span><br /> -</p> - -<p class="nind">Over the plate and under the eaves of the building a sparrow built its -nest yearly, and it was even reported that a bat took up its daily -residence in the same quarter.</p> - -<p>From his seat beside the fire in the schoolroom the master watched his -pupils through half-closed eyes, save when now and again he dropped into -a sound sleep and snored loudly. Asleep he perspired more freely than -when awake. He was very bald, and sometimes a tame robin that had been -in the schoolhouse for many years fluttered down and rested on the -skinny head which shone brilliantly in the firelight. There the robin -preened its feathers. Now and then a mouse nibbled under the boards of -the floor, and the children stopped their noisy chatter for a moment to -listen to the movements of the little animal.</p> - -<p>Prayers were said morning and evening. The children went down on their -knees, the master prayed standing like a priest at the altar. The -prayers of the morning were repeated in English, those of the evening in -Gaelic.</p> - -<p>Norah Ryan took her place in the third standard. In the class the boys -stood at top, the girls at bottom, and those of each sex were ranged in -order of merit. Norah, an apt pupil, easily took her place at the head -of the girls,<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a> and the most ignorant of the boys, a youth named Dermod -Flynn, was placed beside her. Although this lad got caned on an average -three times a day, he never cried when he was beaten; still, Norah Ryan -felt mutely compassionate for him when she heard the sharp hazel rod -strike like a whiplash against his hand. His usual punishment consisted -of four slaps of the rod, but always he held out his hand for a fifth; -this, no doubt, was done to show the master that he did not fear him. -Dermod could not fix his mind on any one subject; there was usually a -far-away look in his eyes, which were continually turning towards the -window and the country outside. On the calf of his left leg a large red -scar showed where he had been bitten by a dog, and it was known that he -would become mad one day. When a man is bitten by an angry dog he is -sure to become mad at some time or another. So they say in Frosses.</p> - -<p>The third class was usually ranged for lessons in a semi-circle facing -the map of the world, which, with the exception of the map of Ireland, -was the largest in the school. On the corners of the map were pictures -of various men and animals with titles underneath; which, going the -round of the two hemispheres, could be read as follows: Dromedary; A -Russian Moujik; Wild Boar; A Chinaman; Leopard; An Indian; Lion; A Fiji -Islander; etc., etc.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span><small>NE</small> day the master asked Dermod Flynn if he knew what race of people -lived in Liverpool. As usual Dermod did not know.</p> - -<p>“Dockers and Irishmen,” Norah Ryan, whose mind reverted to the letter -which had been received from Fergus, whispered under her breath.<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a></p> - -<p>“Rockets and Irishmen,” Dermod blurted out.</p> - -<p>No one laughed: a rocket had never been seen in Glenmornan, and it would -have surprised none of the children if Dermod were correct; it would -have surprised none of them if he were wrong. The master reached for the -hazel rod.</p> - -<p>“Hold out your hand, Dermod Flynn,” he commanded and delivered four -blows on the boy’s palm. Flynn held out his hand for a fifth slap: the -master took no notice.</p> - -<p>“Now, Norah Ryan, hold out your hand,” said the master. “Promptin’ is -worse than tellin’ lies.”</p> - -<p>Norah received two slaps, much lighter than those delivered to the boy. -The master knew that she was going to be a nun one day, and he respected -her accordingly, but not to such an extent that he could refrain from -using the rod of correction.</p> - -<p>Dermod Flynn turned and stared at Norah. A red blush mantled her cheeks, -and she looked at him shyly for a moment; then her lashes dropped -quickly, for she felt that he was looking into her very soul. He -appeared self-possessed, impervious to the pain of the master’s -chastisement. After a while Norah looked at him again, but he was gazing -vacantly out of the window at a brook tumbling from the rocky hills that -fringed the further side of the playground.</p> - -<p>When school was dismissed and the scholars were on their way home, -Dermod spoke to Norah.</p> - -<p>“Why did you help me in the class to-day?” he asked.</p> - -<p>She did not answer but turned away and stared at the stream falling from -the dark rocks.</p> - -<p>“It’s like white smoke against a black cloud,” he said following her -gaze.</p> - -<p>“What is?”</p> - -<p>“The stream falling from the rocks.”</p> - -<p>On the day following Dermod got into trouble again.<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a> His class was asked -to write an essay on fire, and Dermod sat biting his pen until the -allotted time was nearly finished. Then he scribbled down a few lines.</p> - -<p>“A house without fire is like a man without a stomach; a chimney without -smoke is like a man without breath, for——”</p> - -<p>That was all. Dermod pondered over the word “stomach” for a while and -felt that it made the whole sentence an unseemly one. He was stroking -out the word when the master, awakening from his sleep, grabbed the -essay and read it. He read it a second time, then took down a hazel rod -from the nail on which it hung. The ignorance of the boy who wrote such -a sentence was most profound. The master caned Dermod.</p> - -<p>Norah Ryan made rapid progress at her work, and when she went home in -the evening she sat down on the hassock and learned her lessons by the -light of the peat fire. She considered old Master Diver to be a very -learned man, but somehow she could not get herself to like him. “Why -does he beat Dermod Flynn so often?” she asked herself time and again, -and whenever she thought of school she thought of Dermod Flynn.</p> - -<p>Her mother, who had improved in health, now that there was food to eat, -brought a looking-glass from Greenanore one day. She paid fourpence -halfpenny for it in “McKeown’s Great Emporium,” the new business which -had just been started by the yarn merchant. Norah dressed her hair in -front of this glass, and one day when engaged in the task, she said: “I -wish I could see Dermod Flynn now!” Perhaps she really meant to say: “I -wish Dermod Flynn could see me now!” In any case she got so red in the -face that her mother asked her what was wrong.</p> - -<p>Shortly afterwards Dermod Flynn’s school troubles came to an end. His -class was standing as usual, facing<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a> the map of the world, and Master -Diver asked Dermod to point out Corsica. The boy did not know where -Corsica was; he stared at the map, holding the idle pointer in his hand.</p> - -<p>“Point out Corsica!” the master repeated, and seized the youth by the -ear, which he pulled vigorously. The blood mounted to the boy’s cheeks, -and raising the pointer suddenly he hit the master sharply across the -face.</p> - -<p>“You’ve killed him, Dermod Flynn!” Norah Ryan gasped involuntarily. The -old fellow put his hands over his face and sank down limply on the form. -Blood trickled through his fingers ... a fly settled on his bald head -... the scholars stared aghast at their fallen master. Dermod gazed at -the old man for a moment, then seizing his cap he rushed out of the -schoolroom. Most of the boys followed the example, and when the master, -who only suffered from a slight flesh wound, regained his feet and -looked round, the school was almost deserted.</p> - -<p>Dermod Flynn did not return again, and after his departure Norah found -that she did not like the school so much as formerly.<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII<br /><br /> -<small>PLUCKING BOG-BINE</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> May of 1903 came round, and on every twelfth day of May the young -boys and girls of Donegal start for the hiring fair of Strabane. The -rumour went that Dermod Flynn was going now, but no one knew for -certain; the Flynns being a close-mouthed people gave no secrets away. -On the evening preceding the twelfth, Norah heard of Dermod’s intended -departure and that night she was long in falling asleep. Her bed was -made on the floor beside the fire; a grey woollen blanket served a -double debt to pay, and was used as a blanket and sheet. But the -sleeping place was not cold; the heat of the fire and the breath of the -kine kept it warm.</p> - -<p>The first bird was twittering on the thatch and the first tint of dawn -was tingeing the sky when Norah awoke, sat up in bed and threw part of -the blanket aside. At the further end of the house where it was still -dark cattle were stamping, and bright eyes could be seen glowing like -coals. The child rose, went to the window, pulled up the blind and -looked out on the sea. She stood there for a moment rapt in reverie, her -pure white bosom showing above her low-cut cotton chemise and her long -tresses hanging down loosely over her shoulders. She was now fourteen.<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a></p> - -<p>Her short reverie came to an end; she crossed herself many times and -proceeded to dress, taking unusual care with her hair, weaving it into -two long plaits, and polishing her boots carefully. These, the second -pair of her life, were studded with nails which she liked to hear -rasping on the ground as she walked. At night she noticed that the nails -were bright and shiny; in the mornings they were always brown with rust. -She recollected, not without a certain amount of satisfaction, that she -was the only girl wearing shoes at Frosses school. But she could well -afford it; Fergus had sent twenty pounds to his parents and three pounds -to herself since he left home.</p> - -<p>Her father and mother were asleep in the bed; the former snoring loudly, -the latter coughing drowsily from time to time. The cat, which had been -in the house since Norah could remember, was curled atop of the blanket -and fast asleep.</p> - -<p>A movement occurred in the bed as Norah finished her toilet; the cat -stirred itself, stretched its front legs, spreading out its claws, -yawned and fell asleep again.</p> - -<p>“Son of Mary! but you are up early, Norah!” exclaimed her mother, -sitting up in bed; then seeing the cat she gave the blankets a vigorous -shake and cried: “Get out, you little devil! You lie in bed as if you -were a person and no less!”</p> - -<p>“I am going to pull bog-bine on the hills of Glenmornan for your -sickness, mother.”</p> - -<p>“But would it not be time enough for you to go there come noon?”</p> - -<p>“It is as well to go now, mother.”</p> - -<p>“Then it is, alannah, if you have the liking for it,” said the old -woman. “See and turn the cattle into the holm below the Holy Rocks -before you go away.”</p> - -<p>“I will do that, mother.”<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a></p> - -<p>“And put the blind up on the window again, for the light is getting into -my eyes.”</p> - -<p>Norah untied the cattle from their stakes and opened the door. The old -brindled cow went out first, lazily lashing her legs with her long tail, -and smelt the door-post as she passed soberly into the open. The second -cow, a fawn-grey beast, was followed by a restless, awkward calf that -mischievously nudged the hindquarters of the animal in front with its -nose. The Ryans possessed three cattle only, and the byre which the old -woman had wanted erected was now in process of construction.</p> - -<p>When the young calf got into the field he jumped exultantly into the air -and rushed madly off for the distance of a hundred yards; then, planting -his forefeet squarely in the earth, as suddenly stopped and turned round -to look at the two cows. Surprised that they had not followed him, he -scampered back to where they were cropping noisily at the short grass, -and with his head dunted the brindled cow on the belly. The old animal -turned round, her mouth full of grass, and gave a reproving nudge with -her warm, damp nose which sent the calf scampering off again.</p> - -<p>The houses of Meenalicknalore were arranged in a row on the top of a -brae that swept down to the sea, shoving its toes into the water. A curl -of smoke rose from some of the houses; others gave no hint of human -activity. “A chimney without smoke is like a man without breath,” quoted -Norah. “I wonder how Dermod Flynn thinks of things like that; and to-day -he is goin’ away all alone by himself across the mountains.”</p> - -<p>She came to the Three Rocks; three large masses of limestone, one long -and perpendicular, the other two squat and globular, which the peasantry -supposed to represent the Holy Trinity. Here Norah said her prayers, one -“Our Father” and three “Hail Mary’s” in front of<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a> each of the two -smaller stones, and the Apostles’ Creed in front of the large rock in -the centre. When her prayers were finished she drove the cattle into a -holm, put a bush in the gap and resumed her journey.</p> - -<p>The sun had just risen ... a wind cool and moist blew in from the bosom -of the sea ... little tufts of thistledown trembled through the air, -dropped to the ground, rose again and vanished in the distance ... wrens -chirped in the juniper ... frogs chuckled in the meadows ... a rabbit -with eyes alert, ears aback and tail acock ran along the roadway and -disappeared under a clump of furze ... clouds floating across the sky -like large, lazy, wingless birds slowly assumed a delicate rosy tint -until they looked like mother-of-pearl inside a giant shell.</p> - -<p>Norah, very excited and very happy, stood for a moment to look into a -clear well by the roadside. On her face was the expectant look of a -sweet kitten that waits for the ball to be thrown to it; her two plaits -of hair hung over her shoulders, one delicate strand that had fallen -away fluttering in the breeze. She looked approvingly into the calm -water at the laughing face that smiled up to her.</p> - -<p>“How good to be out here, to be alive, to be young,” she seemed to say -to herself. “Everything is so fair, so beautiful, so wonderful!”</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span><small>BOUT</small> six o’clock Norah entered Glenmornan. Here she met three boys and -two girls bound for the rabble market of Strabane. One of the boys was -whistling a tune, the other two chattered noisily; the girls, who were -silent, carried each a pair of hob-nailed boots hung over their -shoulders.<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a></p> - -<p>“Good luck to your journey,” said Norah Ryan, by way of salutation.</p> - -<p>“And to yours,” they answered.</p> - -<p>“Are there lots of ones a-goin’ this mornin’?” she asked in English.</p> - -<p>“Lots,” answered one of the girls, making the sign of the cross on her -brow. “Two gasairs of Oiney Dinchy’s, one of Cormac of the Hill’s ones, -seven or more from the townland of Dooran, and more besides.”</p> - -<p>“Many goin’ from Glenmornan?”</p> - -<p>“Lots,” said the boy who had been whistling.</p> - -<p>Norah waited for him to proceed, but finding that he remained silent, -she enquired as to who was going.</p> - -<p>“Condy Dan, Hudy Neddy, Columb Kennedy, Unah Roarty and”—the boy paused -for a moment to scratch his head—“and Dermod Flynn, the gasair that -struck Master Diver with the pointer.”</p> - -<p>“Well, good luck to yer journey,” said Norah, shaking the hand of each -of them in turn. “May God be with ye all till ye come back!”</p> - -<p>“And with yerself for ever.”</p> - -<p>The crooked road twisted round copse and knoll, now bordering the river, -now rising well up on the shoulder of the hill, and along this road -Norah hurried, her hands hanging idly by her side and her plaits when -caught by an errant breeze fluttering over her shoulders. Half-way along -the Glenmornan road she met Dermod Flynn.</p> - -<p>“Where are ye for this mornin’, Dermod?” she asked. She knew where he -was going, and after speaking felt that she should not have asked him -that question.</p> - -<p>“Beyond the mountains,” answered the youth with a smile which showed his -white teeth. In one hand he carried a bundle, in the other an ash-plant -with a heavy knob at the end. The young fellows of Glenmornan had got -into a habit of carrying sticks in imitation of the cattle<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a> drovers who -came once every month to the fair of Greenanore.</p> - -<p>“Ye’ll not come back for a long while, will ye?” Norah asked.</p> - -<p>“I’m never goin’ to come back again,” Dermod answered. At this Norah -laughed, but, strangely enough, she felt ready to cry. All that she -intended to say to him was forgotten; she held out her hand, stammered a -confused good-bye and hurried away.</p> - -<p>“His eyes are on me now,” she said several times to herself as she -walked away, and every time she spoke a blush mounted to her cheeks. She -wanted to look back, but did not do so until she came to the first bend -of the road. There she turned round, but Dermod Flynn had gone from -sight and a great loneliness entered the girl’s heart. A steer with -wide, curious eyes watched her from a field beside the road, the water -sang a song, all its own, as it dropped from the hills, and the Glen -River, viewed from the point where Norah stood, looked like a streak of -silver on a cloth of green. But the girl saw and heard none of these -things, her eyes were fixed on the crooked road which ran on through -holt and hollow as far as the village of Greenanore, and miles and miles -beyond.</p> - -<p>She stood there for a long time lost in reverie. Dermod Flynn was gone -now, and he would never come back again. So he had told her. Suddenly -she recollected why she had come out on the journey. “To pluck bog-bine -it was,” she murmured. “I am after forgetting that!”</p> - -<p>She went across the river by the ford and climbed the hill. From the top -of the knoll she could see the train steam out from the station of -Greenanore. In it were the children bound for the rabble market of -Strabane. Norah stared and stared at the train, which crawled like a -black caterpillar across the brown moor, leaving a trail of white smoke -behind it.<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a></p> - -<p>“I’m after forgettin’ that I came out to pluck bog-bine,” she repeated -when the train had disappeared from sight, and taking off her boots, she -picked her way across the soft and spongy moor.<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII<br /><br /> -<small>THE TRAGEDY</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span><small>FTEN</small> a youth leaves Donegal and goes out into the world, does well for -a time, writes frequently home to his own people, sends them a sum of -money in every letter (which shows that he is not a spendthrift), asking -them for a little gift in return, a scapular blessed by the priest, or a -bottle of water from the holy well (which shows that he has not -forgotten the faith in which he was born); but in the end he ceases to -write, drops out of the ken of his people and disappears. The father -mourns the son for a while, regrets that the usual money-order is not -forthcoming, weeps little, for too much sentiment is foreign to the -hardened sensibilities of the poor; the mother tells her beads and does -not fail to say one extra decade for the boy or to give a hard-earned -guinea to the priest for masses for the gasair’s soul. Time rapidly -dries their tears of regret, their sorrow disappears and the more -pressing problems of their lives take up their whole interests again. In -later years they may learn that their boy died of fever in a hospital, -or was killed by a broken derrick-jib, or done to death by a railway -train. “Them foreign parts were always bad,” they may say. “Black luck -be with the big boat, for it’s few it takes back of the many it takes -away!”</p> - -<p>A year had passed by since James Ryan last heard from Fergus his son. No -word came of the youth, and<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a> none of the Frosses people, great -travellers though the young of Frosses were, had ever come across him in -any corner of the world.</p> - -<p>“We are missing the blue pieces of paper,” Mary Ryan said to her husband -one evening in the late autumn, fully three years after Fergus’s -departure. She now spent her days sitting at the fire, and though her -health was not the best it had greatly improved within recent years. -“They were the papers!” she exclaimed. “They could buy meal in the town -of Greenanore and pay the landlord his rent. Maybe the gasair is dead!”</p> - -<p>“Maybe he is,” the husband answered. He was a man of few words and fewer -ideas. Life to him, as to the animals of the fields, was naturally -simple. He married, became the father of many children, all unnecessary -to an overcrowded district, and most of them were flicked out by death -before they were a year old. Once every eighteen months James Ryan’s -wife became suddenly irritable and querulous and asked her husband to -leave the house for a while. The cattle were allowed to remain inside, -the husband went out and walked about in the vicinity of his home for -two or three hours. From time to time he would go up to the door and -call out: “Are you all right, Mary?” through the keyhole. “I am all -right, Shemus,” she would answer, and the man would resume his walk. -When the wife allowed him to come in he always found that his family had -increased in number.</p> - -<p>One day a child was born to him, and its third breath killed it. It was -the seventh, and the year was a bad one. Potatoes lay rotting in the -fields, and the peat being wet refused to burn. Somehow James Ryan felt -a great relief when the child was buried. Twelve children in all were -born to him, and ten of these died before they reached the age of three. -“The hunger took them, I suppose,” he said, and never wept over any of -his offspring,<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a> and even in time forgot the names of most of those who -were dead. The third who came to him was the boy Fergus; Norah was the -youngest of all.</p> - -<p>“Maybe, indeed, he is dead,” he repeated to his wife. “I suppose there -is nothing for it but to put out the curragh to the fishing again.”</p> - -<p>“And never catch anything,” said his wife, as if blaming him for the -ill-luck. “It is always the way.... If Fergus would send a few gold -guineas now it would be a great help.”</p> - -<p>“It would be a great help.”</p> - -<p>“We could keep Norah at school for another year.”</p> - -<p>“We could.”</p> - -<p>“And then send her to the convent like a lady.”</p> - -<p>“Just.”</p> - -<p>“When are you going to put the curragh out again?”</p> - -<p>“Maybe this very night,” answered the husband. “It is now Michaelmas a -week past. There were blue lights seen out beyond the bar last night, -and a sea-gull dropped from the sky and fell dead on the rocks of Dooey. -The same happened ten years ago, and at that time there was a big catch -out by Arranmore.”</p> - -<p>“Then you had better go out to-night, for there is not much money in the -tea-pot this minute.”</p> - -<p>“The byre cost a big penny,” said James Ryan, and he spoke as if -regretting something.</p> - -<p>“It did that, and the house does not look half as well with the cattle -gone from it.” So saying the woman turned over some live turf on the -pile of potatoes that was toasting beside the fire, and rising emptied -part of the contents of a jug of milk into a bowl. “It is a wonder that -Norah is not in,” she remarked. “She should be back from school over an -hour ago.”<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a></p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span><small>T</small> that moment Norah entered, placed her cotton satchel and books on the -window sill, and sat down to her meal. She was a winsome girl, neat, -delicate and good-looking. She had grown taller; her tresses were -glossier, her clear grey eyes, out of which the radiance of her pure -soul seemed to shine, were dreamy and thoughtful. She was remarkable for -a pure and exquisite beauty, not alone of body, but of mind. She was -dressed in peasant garb, but her clothes, though patched and shabby, -showed the lines of her well-formed figure to advantage. Her feet were -small, an unusual thing amongst country children who run about -bare-footed, and her dainty little hands matched her feet to perfection. -Her accomplishments were the knowledge of a few Irish songs and country -dances, and her intellectual gifts could be summed up in the words, -simple innocence.</p> - -<p>“Are you getting on well with your lessons, Norah?” asked the father.</p> - -<p>Every day for the last two years, on her return from school, he asked a -similar question and took no heed of the answer, which was always the -same.</p> - -<p>“I am getting on very well, father.”</p> - -<p>“He’s going out to the fishing to-night,” said the mother, handing a -bowl of milk to Norah and pointing her finger at her husband.</p> - -<p>“Any letter from Fergus?” asked the girl.</p> - -<p>“Never a word,” said the mother. “Maybe one will be here to-morrow.”</p> - -<p>“To-morrow never comes,” said James Ryan. He had heard somebody use this -phrase years ago and he repeated it almost hourly ever since. “It is off -on the curragh that I am going now.”<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a></p> - -<p>He rose and went out. The dusk had fallen and a heaven of brilliant -stars glittered overhead. A light gust of wind surged up angrily for a -moment and swept along the ground, crooning amidst rock and boulder. -Outside James Ryan stood for a moment and looked up at the sky, his -thoughts running on the conversation which had just taken place inside. -“To-morrow never comes,” he repeated and hurried towards the sea.</p> - -<p>Mary Ryan lit the paraffin lamp which hung from the great beam that -stretched across the middle of the house. The rushlight was now used no -longer; the oil lamp had taken its place in most of the houses in -Frosses. Norah finished her meal and turned to her books. For a long -while there was silence in the cabin, but outside the wind was rising, -whirling round the corners and sweeping in under the door.</p> - -<p>“Tell me a story, mother,” Norah said, putting her books aside and -curling up like a pretty ball on the earthen floor in front of the fire.</p> - -<p>“All right, I will tell you a story, silly baby that you are!” said the -old woman, sitting down on the hassock by the hearth. “Will it be about -the wee red-headed man with the flock of goats before him, and the flock -of goats behind him, and the salmon tied to the laces of his brogues for -supper?”</p> - -<p>“Not that one, a maghair, I know it myself.”</p> - -<p>“Will it be about Kitty the Ashy pet who said ‘Let you be combing there, -mother, and I’ll be combing here,’ and who went up the Bay of Baltic, -carrying the Rock of Cattegat on her shoulders?”</p> - -<p>“I know that one, mother.”</p> - -<p>“And the Bonnie Bull of Norway you know as well. Then it will be about -the cat that would not dress its whiskers if it wasn’t in front of the -biggest looking-glass<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a> in all the world. The biggest looking-glass in -all the wide world is the broad ocean in a calm.”</p> - -<p>“Not that one, mother.”</p> - -<p>“You are hard to please this very night. I will tell you the story of -the little green-coated boy who wandered on the rainy roads.... There’s -the wind rising. Mercy of God be on your father if the sea is out of -order!”</p> - -<p>Mary Ryan began the story which she knew by heart, having heard it so -often from the lips of her own mother. Here, it may be remarked, most of -the folk stories of Donegal are of Norwegian or Danish origin and have -in many cases been so well preserved that the Scandinavian names of -people and places are retained in the stories until the present day.</p> - -<p>“Once upon a time when cows were kine and when eagles of the air built -their nests in the beards of Giants, a little green-coated boy with a -stick in his hand and a bundle of bannocks over his shoulder went out on -the rainy roads to push his fortune——”</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p>“I’m going to marry a prince when I get very old, mother,” said Norah, -interrupting the story-teller. “Prince Charming, for that’s what the -girl did in the fairy stories when she grew up and got old at twenty or -twenty-one. She was very poor at first and did nothing grand, but -stopped at home, sweeping the floor and washing dishes. Then one night -an old woman came down the chimney and told the girl to go to a dance, -and the girl didn’t leave the dance in time and she lost one of her -slippers and—Oh! it was a great story, mother. I read it in a book that -Fergus had.”</p> - -<p>“You were reading those books, too!”<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a></p> - -<p>“Just only that one, mother, and Fergus didn’t like it at all. He said -it was very silly!”</p> - -<p>“So it was, alannah, when it put thoughts like that into your head. -Marry Prince Charming, and you going to be a holy nun! Nuns never marry -like that.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t they? Well, I’ll not marry a Prince Charming. I’ll marry one of -the White Horsemen who are under the mountain of Aileach.”</p> - -<p>“But nuns never marry anybody.”</p> - -<p>“They don’t?” exclaimed Norah in a puzzled voice. Then with childish -irrelevance: “But tell me the story about the White Horsemen of Aileach, -mother. That’s the best story of all.”</p> - -<p>“Long, long ago, when the red-haired strangers came to Ireland, they put -nearly everybody to the sword; the old and young, the fit and feeble, -and mind you, Ireland was in worse than a bad way,” the mother began, -drifting easily into her narrative. “Ireland was a great place in those -days with castles and kings. Kings, Norah! There were five of them; now -there isn’t even one in the four corners of the country. But the -red-haired strangers came like a storm from the sea and there was no -standing before them. Red were their swords, red as their hair, but not -with rust but with the blood of men, women, and children. And the -chieftains of Ireland and the men of Ireland could make no stand against -the enemy atall. ‘What am I to do?’ cried the Ardrigh, the top king of -the whole country, speaking from the door of his own castle. ‘There will -soon be no Ireland belonging to me, it will all go to the red-haired -strangers.’ Then up spoke an old withered stick of a man, that nobody -knew, and who had been listening to the words of the King.</p> - -<p>“ ‘Have you asked the Chieftain of the White Horsemen for help?’<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a></p> - -<p>“ ‘I never met him, decent stranger,’ answered the King. ‘I know him -not.’</p> - -<p>“ ‘Go to the sea when it strikes in storm on the coast of Tir Conail,’ -said the old man to the King, ‘and call out to Maanan MacLir for aid and -he’ll send to your help his ten score and ten white horsemen. You’ll see -the white horses far out, rearing on the top of the waves, every steed -pawing the ocean and all mad for the fight before them.’</p> - -<p>“Well, to cut a long story short, the King did as he was told and called -to the White Horsemen to come and help him, and they came, ten score of -them and ten, with their shields shining like polished silver and lances -bright as frosty stars. Down from the North they rode, driving the foe -on in front of them, and never was seen such a rout, neither in the days -that went before nor the days that came after. The White Horsemen cut -their way right through mountains in their haste to get to the other -side; for nothing could stand against their lances. Nobody could go as -quickly as them, not even the red-haired strangers who were in such a -hurry to get out of their way.</p> - -<p>“And when victory was theirs, the White Horsemen came back here to Tir -Conail again and stood on the verge of the ocean while Maanan MacLir -headed his horse out on the waves. But lo, and behold! the steed could -no longer gallop across the water. The poor animal sank into the sea and -the chieftain was nearly drowned. At that moment a voice, nobody knew -where it came from, called to Maanan MacLir:</p> - -<p>“ ‘Long enough has the sea called for the rest and quiet that was not -given to it by the white horses of MacLir. Never more will the sea bend -under them; now it will break apart and let them through!’</p> - -<p>“When they heard these words the White Horsemen<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a> turned away from the -sea and went galloping to the foot of the Mountain of Aileach. When they -arrived there the mountain raised itself upon one side just like the lid -of a kettle and Maanan MacLir and his White Horsemen disappeared under -it. Since that day they have never been seen again.”</p> - -<p>“But the mountain didn’t close on top of them, did it?” asked Norah.</p> - -<p>“Of course it did. Isn’t it closed to this very day?”</p> - -<p>“And will it be a true story?”</p> - -<p>“True, child!” exclaimed the mother. “Sure the mountain is there to this -very hour. And besides, Saint Columbkille talks about it in his -prophecies.”</p> - -<p>“Then the White Horsemen will come out again?”</p> - -<p>“They’ll come out when the great war comes,” said the mother. “And that -will be when there are roads round every mountain like the frills round -the cap of an old woman. It will start, the great war, when the nights -lengthen and the year grows brown, between the seasons of scythe and -sickle; murder and slaughter, madder than cattle in the heat of summer, -will run through the land, and the young men will be killed and the -middle-aged men and the old. The very crutches of the cripples will be -taken out to arm the fighters, and the bed-ridden will be turned three -times three in their beds to see if they are fit to go into the field of -battle. Death will take them all, for that is how it is to be; that way -and no other. And when they’re all gone it will be the turn of the White -Horsemen, who have been waiting for the great war ever since they chased -the red-haired strangers from the country. They’ll come out from under -Aileach when the day arrives, ten score and ten of them with silver -shields and spears, bright as stars on a frosty night. They’ll fight the -foe and win and victory will come to<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a> Ireland. These are the words of -the great saint, Columbkille.”</p> - -<p>“Are the White Horsemen very tall, mother?” asked Norah, her eyes alight -with enthusiastic interest.</p> - -<p>“Tall is not the word!”</p> - -<p>“High as a hill?”</p> - -<p>“Higher!”</p> - -<p>“As Sliab a Tuagh?”</p> - -<p>“It’s as nothing compared to one of the men of Maanan MacLir.”</p> - -<p>“Then I’ll marry one of the White Horsemen,” said Norah, decision in her -clear voice. “I’ll live in a castle, polish his lance and shield, -and—Who will that be at the door?”</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">N</span><small>ORAH</small> paused. Someone was moving outside as if fumbling for the latch; -then a tall, heavily-bearded man pushed the door of the cabin inwards -and entered, bringing with him a terrific gust of wind that almost shook -the house to its foundations. On his face was a scared look, and his -clothes were dripping wet, although it was not raining.</p> - -<p>“Was it himself?” cried the old woman, alluding to her husband and -speaking to the man who entered. It was evident from the tone in which -she spoke that she anticipated something terrible.</p> - -<p>“It was himself,” said the man in a low, hoarse voice. “He’s coming on -the flat of two oars. God bless us! But it is a black heart that the sea -has.”</p> - -<p>With these words the visitor went out again, and the excited voices of -men could be heard floating on the wind.</p> - -<p>“It’s your father, Norah,” said the old woman. “He<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a> went down with the -curragh, I’m thinking; down through the black water. Mother of God! but -it’s the sea that has the black heart! There they are coming with him. -Open the door wider, Norah!”</p> - -<p>The girl, who had risen from her seat, pulled the door inwards and -placed a stone against the sill to keep it open. She felt as if a -thousand pins were pricking her legs; her head was heavy, her fingers -felt enormous and when they pressed against the door it seemed to Norah -as if they did not belong to her at all. Outside it was very dark, the -heavens held no stars and it looked as if the howling gale had whirled -them away. In the darkness a torch swayed in the wind, and behind the -torch black forms of men and white, pallid faces could be discerned. -Norah’s mind turned to the stories which her mother had been telling -her. She knew it was wrong to think of them at that moment but she felt -an inordinate desire to laugh at something; what she wanted to laugh at -she did not know; why she wanted to laugh she could not fathom.</p> - -<p>“Are they coming, Norah?” asked the old woman, rising from her seat and -hobbling with difficulty towards the door. “Mother of Christ! but the -hand of God is heavy on me this night of nights! Children of my own and -man of my own, all, all going away from me! I’ll see the last of them go -down into the grave before me, for with my hard cough and the long -sickness I’ll outlive them all: that is the will of God. Ten sons and -daughters of my body; every one of them gone, and one away in black -foreign parts.... Are they coming, Norah?”</p> - -<p>The woman reached the door and leant against the jamb for support. The -torch was flaring outside and very near.</p> - -<p>“Watch that you don’t set the thatch on fire!” a voice cried.</p> - -<p>Two men entered the house, the water streaming from<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a> their clothes and -each holding a burdened oar in his hands. Across the oars a sail was -bound tightly, and cold in death on the sail lay James Ryan, his grey -beard sticking out stiffly, his eyes open, his head shaking from side to -side, his bare feet blue with the cold. The oars, which brushed sharply -against the old woman in passing, were laid on the floor and the dead -man was placed on the bed.</p> - -<p>“I’m sweatin’ like a pig!” said one of the bearers, and he rubbed his -wrinkled brow violently with the back of his hand.</p> - -<p>“Watch the thatch!” someone outside shouted. The torch was extinguished -and a crowd of men entered the cabin. An old red-haired fisherman lifted -the oars; the sail was rolled into a bundle and carried out again. Pools -of water formed on the floor and tracks of wet feet showed all over it. -The old woman hobbled back to her bed and gazed long and earnestly at -her husband; some of the men took off their hats; one was smoking, -another dressed a bleeding foot and told how he hit it against a sharp -rock when carrying the dead man up from the sea; several of the -neighbouring women were already in the house. Maire a Crick was on her -knees by the bedside.</p> - -<p>“I am used to it now,” said the old woman, as she sorted the blankets on -the bed with her withered hands. “Ten sons and daughters, and another -away and maybe never hearing from him again.... Himself said when he was -going out that the morrow never comes.”</p> - -<p>She sat down on the edge of the bed, ran her fingers over the wet -clothes of her husband, opened his vest, put her hand on his heart, -shook her head sadly and buttoned the coat again.</p> - -<p>“Just when he was putting out the wind caught him, and he dropped like a -stone over the side of the curragh,” the red-haired fisherman was -saying. “But the<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a> boat was no good anyway. It is one of the Congested -Districts Board’s boats that he should have.”</p> - -<p>“Where would he get the money to buy one?” asked Maire a Crick, turning -round from the prayer which she was saying for the dead man.</p> - -<p>“The money can be paid in instalments,” answered the red fisherman. He -spoke the Gaelic, as nearly everybody in Frosses did, but the words -“instalments” and “Congested Districts Board” were said in English. “Ten -pounds the new boats cost, and there is five years allowed for paying -the money.”</p> - -<p>“The Congested Districts Board is going to be a great help,” someone -remarked.</p> - -<p>“Is the curragh safe?” asked Mary Ryan, turning round. She was still -sitting beside the bed, turning over the clothes with lean, shaky -fingers.</p> - -<p>“It is at the bottom,” said a neighbour, Eamon Doherty by name. “It was -rotten anyhow, and it hadn’t been in wet water for close on two -years.... Now, I wonder what made Shemus go out on it?”</p> - -<p>“Nothing atall, atall left,” said the old woman in a feeble voice. “If I -only had the curragh even.... And himself dead after all the times that -the sea has bent under him! Never to see him again, never! Isn’t it hard -to think that a thing like that could be?”</p> - -<p>Whereupon, saying this she began to cry, at first quietly, but -afterwards, as if getting warmed to the task, more loudly, until her -sobs could be heard a hundred yards away from the house.</p> - -<p>“If I only had the curragh left!” she repeated time and again.</p> - -<p>Norah approached the bed timidly. She had been weeping silently by the -door ever since the corpse had been carried in. Death was here in the -house; it had already taken possession of her father. And it was with<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a> -her also. Not to-night nor to-morrow, but at the end of forty years or -of fifty, and was it not all the same? And what was this death? She did -not know; she only thought it cruel and strange. Her own helplessness in -face of such a crisis almost overpowered her. For death there was no -help, from it there was no escape. It was all powerful and terrible. -To-morrow and to-morrow might come and go, but her father would lie -still and unheeding. He would not return, he could not return. This fact -hammered at her mind, and the cruelty of her own thoughts tortured her. -She tried to think of something apart from the tragedy, but ever her -mind reverted to the one and same dreadful subject. Of a great fact she -was certain; one that would never be contradicted. Her father was dead; -thousands of years might pass and one truth would still remain -unquestioned. Her father was dead. “To think of it!” she said in a low -voice. “Dead for ever!”</p> - -<p>She went down on her knees by the bedside but could not pray. God was -cruel; He had no mercy. She sobbed no longer, but with wide, tearless -eyes she gazed at the face of her father. It had now become yellow, the -lips blue, the nose was pinched and the eyes sunken. The water from his -clothes was dripping underneath the bed, and she could hear the -drip-drip of it falling on the floor.</p> - -<p>Everything in the house had suddenly taken on a different aspect. The -bed appeared strange to her; so did the fire, the low droning voices of -the neighbours, and the play of light and shadow on the walls. The old -cat sitting on top of the dresser, gazing down at her, had a curious -look in its wide-open eyes; the animal seemed to have changed in some -queer way. Outside the wind was beating against the house and wailing -over the chimney. Never in her life before had she heard such a -melancholy sob in the wind.<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX<br /><br /> -<small>THE WAKE</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span><small>EVERAL</small> more neighbours, men, women, and children, were now coming in. -With eyes fixed straight ahead they approached the corpse, went down on -their knees on the wet floor by the bedside and said their prayers, -crossing themselves many times. Those who carried the dead body up from -the sea drew near to the fire and dried their sodden garments in the -midst of a cloud of vapour that almost hid them from view. Eamon Doherty -remarked that Ireland would have Home Rule presently, and a loud -discussion mingled with many jokes was soon in progress.</p> - -<p>“The Irish will never agree,” said old Oiney Dinchy, a one-eyed ancient -who had just risen from his knees by the bedside. “That is the worst of -the Irish; they never agree. Look at them now in the House of Commons; -one member is always fighting against another member, and it was ever -the same, for contrairiness is in their blood to the very last drop of -it.”</p> - -<p>“There is always bound to be two parties,” said Master Diver with -dogmatic assurance. “In England and America there are always two -parties, sometimes more.”</p> - -<p>“They’ll never get on, then,” said Eamon Doherty. “There are no two -parties in the holy Church, and that’s why it gets on so well.”<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a></p> - -<p>The door opened and Sheila Carrol, the beansho, entered, her child, now -a chubby little boy of three, toddling at her heels. Without looking -round she went down on her knees by the bedside, and a couple of women -who were praying crossed themselves and rose hurriedly. A few of the -younger men winked knowingly and turned their thumbs towards the -new-comer. Old Mary Ryan muttered something under her breath and turned -a look of severe disapproval on the kneeling woman, then on the little -boy who had run forward to the fire, where he was holding out his hands -to the blaze.</p> - -<p>“Who’ll be the ones that will go to Greenanore and get tea, bread, -snuff, and tobacco for the wake?” asked Mary Ryan.</p> - -<p>“I’ll go if Eamon Doherty comes along with me,” said old Oiney Dinchy, -getting to his feet and putting a live peat to the bowl of his pipe.</p> - -<p>“The two of you always get drunk if you go to Greenanore together,” said -the old woman. “I’d as soon send the——” she pointed with her thumb -over her shoulder at the beansho but did not mention her name, “to -Greenanore, as send you two.”</p> - -<p>“It is not everyone that would be treated that way if they offered to -help a person,” Eamon Doherty remarked in a loud voice to Oiney Dinchy.</p> - -<p>“I’ll go if Willie the Duck comes with me,” said a long, lank, shaggy -youth, rising from one corner of the room and stretching his arms.</p> - -<p>“You’re the man for the job, Micky’s Jim,” answered Mary Ryan, coming -from the bedside and tottering through the press of neighbours to the -dresser where the Delft tea-pot stood. She raised the lid, dipped her -hand into the tea-pot and drew out a fistful of money.</p> - -<p>“Four shillings for tea,” she began to calculate; “eight-pence for -sugar; five shillings for loaves of bread; four<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> shillings and sixpence -for tobacco, and sixpence for snuff, and—How much potheen did you get -for your father’s wake, Eamon Doherty?”</p> - -<p>“Four gallons and no less,” Eamon answered in a surly tone of voice.</p> - -<p>“Two gallons of potheen, Micky’s Jim, and get it as cheap as you can,” -said the old woman, turning to the long-limbed youth. “From what I hear -Martin Eveleen sells good potheen. Get it from him, for it was Martin, I -wish him luck! that helped Norah when she took the fargortha on the road -to Greenanore three winters agone.”</p> - -<p>The money was handed to Micky’s Jim, and he left the house followed by -Willie the Duck, a small man, dark and swarthy, with a hump on his left -shoulder, and a voice, when he spoke, that reminded one of the quacking -of ducks.</p> - -<p>“Thirty-four shillings in all,” mumbled Mary Ryan as she took her way -back to the fireside. “It costs a lot to bury a body, and there will -never be left one at all to bury me, never a one at all. If only the -curragh was left me it would be something.”</p> - -<p>Meanwhile Norah had slipped out, and went from house to house borrowing -candlesticks (Meenalicknalore townland consisted of thirty families and -there were only two candlesticks amongst them), baskets of peat, holy -water, a lamp, extra chairs, stools, and many other things required for -the wake.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span><small>T</small> midnight the cabin was cleared of everybody but the washers of the -dead, Eamon Doherty and Master Diver. Oiney Dinchy was very angry -because Mary<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a> Ryan did not ask him to give a hand at the washing of her -husband.</p> - -<p>“It wasn’t as if Shemus and me weren’t good friends,” said Oiney. “And -besides, I have washed more dead men in a year of my life than all -washed by Eamon and Master Diver put together.... And to think that I -wasn’t allowed to help at the washin’ to-night!”</p> - -<p>The men and women who had left the cabin went down on their knees at the -doorstep and recited the Rosary. The night being very dark the young men -drew near the girls and tickled them on the bare feet while they prayed. -When admittance was again possible the dead man lay in the bed, his body -covered with a white sheet and a large black crucifix resting on his -breast. His clothes were already burned in the fire, it being a common -custom in Frosses to consign the clothes of the dead to the flames on -the first night of the wake.</p> - -<p>About two o’clock in the morning provisions came from Greenanore. The -house was now crowded, and several games such as “The Priest of the -Parish,” “Catch the Ten,” and “Put your fingers in the Crow’s Nest” were -in progress. An old man who sat in the corner was telling a story of the -famine, and a few mischievous boys were amusing themselves by throwing -pieces of peat at his hat.</p> - -<p>While tea was being made, the rosary was again started. Micky’s Jim, a -trifle the worse for liquor, went down on his knees on a chair and gave -out the prayers. The mischievous boys turned their attentions from the -old man to Jim, who was presently bombarded by a fire of turf. One went -past his ears; one hit him on the back, another on the head, a third on -the brow. Jim got angry.</p> - -<p>“Pray away yourselves and be damned to you!” he roared at the kneeling -house and, jumping off the chair, he sat down in a corner from which he -had a view of the<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a> whole party. Prayers came to an abrupt conclusion; -the chair was taken by the beansho, who placed her child between its -legs, and the little boy, who had shown a wonderful propensity for -running to the bedside and pulling the corpse by the beard, was held a -fast prisoner. Four or five women moved about hurriedly preparing tea; -whisky was served without skimp or stint, but pipes were found to be -scarce; one had to do for three persons, each pulling at it in turn.</p> - -<p>The old man in the corner took up the famine story at a point where the -prayers had interrupted the recital. It told of a corpse that rose from -the bed of death, sat down at the table, lifted a bowl of tea, drank it -and went back to bed again. “And the man was dead all the time,” said -the story-teller.</p> - -<p>Willie the Duck, speaking in a quavering voice, began to ask riddles: -“What bears but never blossoms?” he enquired.</p> - -<p>“The hangman’s rope,” was the answer.</p> - -<p>“What tree never comes to fruit?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“The gallows-tree,” was the answer.</p> - -<p>“This is the best guess of the night,” said Willie, taking a pinch of -snuff and sneezing violently. “No one will be able to answer it.... In -the morning four legs; at noon two legs; in the evening three legs and -at night four legs; and what would that be?”</p> - -<p>“It’s a man,” said Eamon Doherty, looking round with a triumphant -glance. “In his young days a man walks on his hands and knees, when he -grows up he walks on two legs; when he gets older he walks on three -legs, two and a stick; and if he lives long enough he’ll walk on -crutches, God be good to us! and that’s four legs!”</p> - -<p>“You’re a man with a head, Eamon,” said Willie the Duck. “And how did -you guess it atall?”</p> - -<p>“I heard the same guess often and I knew the answer<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a> every time,” Eamon -replied, and a smile of satisfaction lit up his face.</p> - -<p>About four o’clock in the morning most of the men and a few of the -ancient females were drunk. Mary Ryan had fallen asleep by the fire, her -head touching the white ashes of her husband’s clothes. Norah placed a -pillow under her mother’s head and took up a seat near her, gazing in -turn at the silent figure which lay in the bed and the blue flames -chasing one another up the black chimney.</p> - -<p>Two lamps, one at each end of the house, spluttered dismally; the wind -outside battered loudly against the door and wailed over the chimney. -Oiney Dinchy was asleep and snoring loudly, and two youngsters blackened -his face with soot. The beansho slept, and her child, long since -released from the prison of the chair, was blubbering fitfully. On the -damp earth of the mid-floor a well-made young woman slumbered, the naked -calves of her finely formed legs showing. Micky’s Jim slapped the legs -with his hand; the girl awoke, put down her dress until it covered her -toes, made a face at the tormentor and went to sleep again. Beside -Norah, old Master Diver, now remarkably rotund, was asleep, his bald -head hanging to one side and a spittle slobbering from his lips.</p> - -<p>Norah looked round at the sleepers, saw the stiff legs stretched on the -floor, the long, awkward arms hanging loosely over the backs of the -chairs, the bowls and the upturned whisky glasses on the table; heard -the loud snoring, the rustle of petticoats as a woman changed her -position on a stool, the crackle of falling peat on the hearth, the -whimpering of the beansho’s child, and the sound made by the lips of a -sucking babe pulling at its mother’s breast.</p> - -<p>The strange fear, that which had taken possession of<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a> her three years -before on the rocks of Dooey, seized her again. To her all things seemed -to lack finish as they lacked design. A vague sense of repulsion -overcame the girl as she gazed at the sleepers huddled on form and -floor. She shuddered as if in a fever and approached the bed; there the -awful stillness of the dead fascinated her. She was looking at the dead, -but somehow Death had now lost its terror: it was the living who caused -her fear. She knelt down and prayed.<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X<br /><br /> -<small>COFFIN AND COIN</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">F</span><small>OR</small> two days and nights the neighbours came in, prayed by the bedside, -drank bowls of tea, smoked long white clay pipes and departed, only to -return later and renew the same performance. A coffin and coffin-bearer, -the latter shaped like a ladder, the sides of which were cushioned to -ease the shoulders of the men who carried it, were procured. On the -rungs of the coffin-bearer a number of notches, three hundred and -fifty-two in all, told of the bodies carried on it to the grave. The -bearer had been in service for many years and had been used by most of -the families in Frosses. The man who made it was long dead; number -seventy-seven represented his notch on the rungs.</p> - -<p>On the morning of the third day Oiney Dinchy and Micky’s Jim lifted the -dead man from the bed and placed him in the coffin. Before the lid was -screwed down, Mary Ryan knelt over the coffin, gripping the side near -her with thin, long fingers, which showed white at the joints, and -kissing her husband she burst into a loud outcry of grief. Norah, more -reserved in her sorrow, knelt on the floor, said a short prayer and then -kissed the face of the corpse as her mother had done.</p> - -<p>The lid was fastened, but here an interruption occurred. The wife wanted -to look at her husband for “just one other minute.” With a gesture of -impatience<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a> old Oiney Dinchy, who was discussing the best means of -catching flukes and tying the coffin, lifted the lid again and stood -silently by, his hat drawn down well over his eyes. Mary Ryan gave vent -to another outburst of grief; the coffin was again closed and lifted on -the wooden bearer. An idle child was busily engaged in counting the -notches.</p> - -<p>“Seventy-seven; that’s for the man who made it,” someone was saying.</p> - -<p>“Listen, Micky’s Jim,” whispered Mary Ryan as the youth passed her, -going towards the door with a basket of pipes and tobacco.</p> - -<p>“Well, Mary, what is it?” Jim asked.</p> - -<p>“Was this a good year beyond the water?”</p> - -<p>Jim went yearly to the potato-digging in Scotland, taking with him a -squad of men and women from his own country, and over these he was -master while they were at work.</p> - -<p>“It was not so very bad,” said Jim cautiously. He was afraid that the -old woman might ask the loan of money from him.</p> - -<p>“Next year I have a mind to send Norah.”</p> - -<p>“And not to make a nun of her, after all?”</p> - -<p>Norah was piling peat on the fire, lifting them from the floor and -dropping them into the flames. As she bent down Jim noticed every -movement of her body and paid very little attention to the words of the -old woman. Norah, having finished her task, stood upright; Jim waited -eagerly for a repetition of her former movement, but seeing that she was -weeping he turned his attention to the task of getting the coffin -through the doorway.</p> - -<p>Norah would be a light girl for heavy work on the Scottish farms, Jim -thought, as he stooped down and lifted a rung of the bearer. Could he -take her with him? That was a ticklish question. She was clever with -the<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a> needles, he knew, but she had not done any heavy manual work for -the last two years. Learning lessons was to Jim an idle task. But the -movement of her body, and especially of her legs when bending over the -fire, appealed to Jim. The grace of her carriage, the poise of her head, -the soft hair that fell over her shoulders, all these found favour in -the eyes of the healthy young man.</p> - -<p>“My cripes, I’ll take her with me next year!” he said under his breath. -He spoke in English and had learned many strange oaths abroad.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span><small>UTSIDE</small> a large crowd of people were waiting; the women dressed in red -flannel petticoats and woollen shawls, the men in white wrappers and -corduroy trousers. The coffin bearer was raised on high; four men placed -their shoulders under it; a bottle of holy water was sprinkled over -bearers and burden indiscriminately; the men and women crossed -themselves many times, and the mournful procession started.</p> - -<p>Mary Ryan stood at the door and watched it wending its way across the -dreary, uneven fields, past the Three Rocks, now getting lost in some -hollow, again rising to the shoulders of a hillock, the coffin swaying -unevenly on the shoulders of the bearers, the red petticoats of the -women in the rear shaking in the breeze. The widow, almost too weak to -move, was with difficulty restrained from going to the churchyard. -Norah, having arranged the hassock in the corner for her mother, had -followed the procession, and now the old woman thought that she could -detect her child a quarter of a mile away, following in the rear of the -party. Micky’s Jim, who had not gone away yet, was engaged in sorting a -rope on the<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a> thatch which had been blown askew by the wind of the -previous nights.</p> - -<p>“I’ll overtake the funeral, Mary,” he said when he completed the work. -“I was just making the thatch strong against the breeze and I have tied -a broken rope.”</p> - -<p>“Mother of God be good to you, Jim, but it is yourself that has the -kindly heart!” said Mary in a tremulous whisper. “Could you take Norah -with you beyond the water next year?”</p> - -<p>Jim called to mind the movements of the girl’s body when she stooped to -lift peat for the fire, and the remembrance filled him with pleasure. -“When next summer comes round, I’ll see, Mary Ryan,” he answered. “If -there is a place to spare in the squad I’ll let you know and your Norah -will have the very first chance of it.”</p> - -<p>“Mother of God bless you, Jim, for the kindness is in you!” said the old -woman. “It is me that is the lone body this very minute, with never a -penny in my house and not even the old curragh left to me to make a -penny by.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m off, Mary,” said Jim. “The coffin is going out of sight and -they’ll be needing new blood under it.” He hurried across the fields, -his long legs covering an enormous spread of earth at every stride. Over -the brae he hurried, and at the turn of the road halted for a moment and -looked back at Mary Ryan’s cabin. The woman still stood at the door, one -hand shading her eyes, looking towards the Frosses churchyard, which lay -more than three miles away. “Thinkin’ that she could get anything for an -old curragh!” he muttered contemptuously, as he resumed his stride. -“She’s an old fool; but Norah! Ah! she’s a soncy lass, and she was good -to look at when making that fire!”<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a></p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> graveyard, surrounded by a stone wall, broken down in several -places, served as a grazing plot for bullocks, donkeys, and sheep, as -well as for the burial place of the dead. A long walk, lined with -stunted hazel bushes, ran half-way through the yard, and at the end a -low stone vault, hardly higher than a man’s head, stood under the shadow -of an overhanging sycamore.</p> - -<p>The funeral procession was delayed on the journey, and Father Devaney, -round-faced and red-cheeked, stamped up and down while waiting its -arrival. He had come all the way from Greenanore and was in a hurry to -get back again. The morning was cold and caused him to shiver a little, -and when he shivered he clapped his hands vigorously, the palm of one -against the back of the other.</p> - -<p>His large mansion, complete now and habitable, had not been fully paid -for yet, and most of his parishioners were a pound or two in arrears; -when this money came to hand matters would be much better. Old Devaney -had developed a particularly fine taste in wine and cigars and found -these very expensive; and at present he called to mind how James Ryan -was two pounds in arrears with the mansion tax. The old priest knew that -this money would never come to hand; the widow was ill, no word had been -heard of Fergus for years, and Norah Ryan was a light slip of a girl who -would probably never earn a penny. Devaney knew all the affairs of his -flock, and he stamped up and down the graveyard, a little angry with the -dead man who, being so long in coming to his last home, had kept him -waiting for thirty minutes.</p> - -<p>The funeral came in sight, creeping up over the brow of the hill that -rose near at hand, the bearers straining<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a> under their burden as they -hurried across the uneven ground, with the coffin rising and falling on -their shoulders like a bark in a storm at sea. The gate of the graveyard -was already open; the procession filed through, Father Devaney stepping -out in front, his surplice streaming in the wind. The good man thought -of the warm dinner waiting for him at home, and being in a hurry to get -done with the burial service he walked so quickly that the bearers could -hardly keep up with him. On the floor of the little vault in the centre -of the graveyard the coffin was set down and the basket of snuff, pipes, -and tobacco was handed round. All the men took pipes, filled them with -rank plug and lit them; the older women lit pipes also, and everybody, -with the exception of the priest and Norah Ryan, took snuff.</p> - -<p>“Hurry up!” said Father Devaney. “Ye can smoke after ye do yer duty. It -would be well if ye were puttin’ yer hands in yer pockets now and -gettin’ yer offerin’s ready.”</p> - -<p>Immediately a stream of silver descended on the coffin. All the mourners -paid rapidly, but in turn, and the priest called out their names as they -paid. A sum of ten pounds seventeen shillings was collected, and this -the priest carefully wrapped up in a woollen muffler and put into his -pocket.</p> - -<p>“Now hurry up, boys, and get a move on ye; and open the grave!” he -shouted, making no effort to hide his impatience now that the money was -safely in his keeping. He felt full of the importance of a man who knows -that everybody around him trembles under his eyes. Three or four young -fellows were digging the grave and joking loudly as they worked; a crowd -of men stood round them, puffing white clouds of smoke up into the air. -Many of the women were kneeling beside graves that held all that -remained of one or another near and dear to them.<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> Norah Ryan stood -alone with the priest, her dark shawl drawn over her white forehead, and -a few stray tresses, that had fallen over her face, shaking in the -breeze.</p> - -<p>“It is a black day this for you, Norah, a black day,” said the priest, -speaking in Gaelic. Two tears coursed down the girl’s cheeks, and she -fixed a pair of sorrowful grey eyes on the man when he spoke.</p> - -<p>“Don’t cry, girsha beag (little girl),” said the priest. “It is all for -the best, all for the best, because it is the will of God.”</p> - -<p>He looked sharply at the girl, who, feeling uncomfortable in his -presence, longed to be away from the man’s side. She wondered why she -had not gone off to the other end of the graveyard with Sheila Carrol, -whom she could now see kneeling before a black wooden cross that was -fast falling into decay. But it would be wrong to go away from the side -of her father’s coffin, she thought.</p> - -<p>“Any word from Fergus of late?” the priest was asking.</p> - -<p>“No; not the smallest word.”</p> - -<p>That Mary Ryan owed him two pounds, and that there was very little -possibility of ever receiving the money, forcibly occurred to the priest -at that moment. “Ye’ll not be in a good way at home now?” he said aloud.</p> - -<p>“There’s hardly a white shilling in the house,” answered the girl.</p> - -<p>“Is that the way of it?” exclaimed the priest, then seemed on the point -of giving expression to something more forcible, but with an effort he -restrained himself. “Well, it cannot be helped, I suppose, but there are -two pounds owing for the building of my new house.”<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a></p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">“T</span><small>HE</small> grave is ready,” said Micky’s Jim, approaching the priest and -saluting. The youth was perspiring profusely; his shirt open at the neck -exposed his hairy chest, on which beads of sweat were glistening -brightly.</p> - -<p>“In with the coffin then,” said the priest, taking a book from his -pocket and approaching the open grave. A pile of red earth, out of which -several white bones protruded, lay on the brink, and long earthworms -crawled across it. The coffin was lowered into the grave with a rope. -Norah wept loudly; old Oiney Dinchy remarked that the bones belonged to -her grandparents whom she did not remember.</p> - -<p>“Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return,” the -priest chanted in a loud, droning voice. Norah, kneeling on the wet -ground, her head bent down over her bosom, so that her hair hung over -her shoulders, saw nothing but the black coffin which was speedily -disappearing under the red clay, and heard nothing but the thud of the -earth as it struck the coffin.</p> - -<p>The priest took his departure; the grave was filled up and the crowd -began to disperse.</p> - -<p>“Come away home now,” said Sheila Carrol to Norah, who was still -kneeling on the wet ground. The girl rose without a word, brushed her -dress with a woollen handkerchief and accompanied the beansho from the -churchyard.</p> - -<p>“Don’t cry, Norah,” said Sheila, observing that tears were still falling -down the cheeks of her companion. “Everyone must die and go away just -the same as if they had never been at all, for that is the will of God. -How is yer mother this morning?”</p> - -<p>“Much the same as she was always,” said Norah. “She<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a> cannot get rid of -her cough, and she has shiverin’ fits of late.... Hasn’t the sea the -black heart?”</p> - -<p>“Black enough, indeed, my child,” said the beansho. “Your mother will -feel it a big lot?”</p> - -<p>“Not so much,” said the girl. “She’ll soon be with him, she’s thinkin’.”</p> - -<p>“At the wake I heard her say that she would be the last of the family to -die. What put that into her head?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know what put it into her head, but if I were to die on the wet -road this very minute I wouldn’t care one haet.” On Norah’s face there -was a look of infinite sadness, and the pathos of her words cut Sheila -to the heart.</p> - -<p>“Don’t speak like that, Norah Ryan,” she exclaimed. “Death is black and -bitter, but there are things much worse than death, things far, far -worse.”</p> - -<p>They had now reached a stile, and far in front the soft caishin (path) -wound on by rock and rath across the broad expanse of moor. Several -people, walking one after another, were in front; the soft ooze was -squirting under their feet and splashing against their ankles. In the -midst of the heather a young bullock lay chewing the cud, and looked -upon the passers-by with that stupid, involved look peculiar to the ox; -a moor-cock, agitated and voluble, rose into the air and chattered as it -swept across the brown of the moor.</p> - -<p>“I’m goin’ to leave Ireland come Candlemas,” said the beansho, pulling -her feet wearily out of the mire.</p> - -<p>“And where would ye be goin’ to then, Sheila Carrol?”</p> - -<p>“Beyont the water.”</p> - -<p>“Mercy be on us, and are ye goin’ surely?”</p> - -<p>“True as death, I’m goin’,” said Sheila Carrol with rising voice. “I’m -sick of this place—not the place itself but the people that’s in it, -them with their bitin’ tongues and cuttin’ talk, them that won’t let -those that do them no<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a> harm a-be. Nothin’ bad enough that they wouldn’t -put past me, the same Frosses people. For me it’s always the hard word -that they have; even the priest himself when he meets me on the high -road crosses himself as if he met the red-hot devil out of hell. But did -he refuse my shillin’ to-day?... Even at the wakes the very people point -their thumbs at me when I go down on my own two knees to say a prayer -for the dead.... But what am I talkin’ about! Why should I be tellin’ my -own sorrows to one that has heavy troubles of her own to bear.... I’m -goin’ beyont the water come next Candlemas, anyway, Norah Ryan!”<a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI<br /><br /> -<small>THE TRAIN FROM GREENANORE</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span><small>HEN</small> one is leaving home every familiar object seems to take on a -different aspect and becomes almost strange and foreign. The streets, -houses, and landscape which you have gazed on for years become in some -way very remote, like objects seen in a dream, but under this guise -every familiar landmark becomes dearer than ever it has been before. So -Norah Ryan felt as she was leaving home in the June of 1905 bound for -the potato fields of Scotland.</p> - -<p>“Is this the road to Greenanore, the road that our feet took when goin’ -to the town for the stockin’ yarn?” she asked herself several times. “It -is changed somehow; it doesn’t seem to be the same place, but for all -that I like it better than ever. Why this is I do not know; I seem to be -in a dream of some kind.”</p> - -<p>Her thoughts were confused and her mind ran on several things at the -same time; her mother’s words at leave-taking, the prayer that the child -might do well, the quick words of tearless farewell spoken at the -doorstep; and as she thought of these things she wondered why her mother -did not weep when her only child was leaving her.</p> - -<p>The girl was now walking alone to the village of Greenanore. There she -would meet all the members of the party, and every step of the journey -brought a thousand<a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a> bygone memories vividly to her mind. Fergus she -thought of, his good-bye at the cross-roads, the dog whining in -Ballybonar, the lowing cow, the soft song of the sea. Would she ever see -Fergus again? Where had he been all these years? Looking into the -distance she could see the mountains that hemmed Glenmornan, and light -clouds, white and fleecy as Candlemas sheep, resting on the tops of -them. Further down, on the foothills, the smoke of peat-fires rose into -the air, telling of the turf-savers who laboured on the brown bogs at -the stacks and rikkles. Norah thought of Dermod Flynn; indeed she called -him to mind daily when gazing towards the hills of Glenmornan, -recollecting with a certain feeling of pride the boy’s demeanour at -school and his utter indifference towards personal chastisement. The -dreamy eyes of Dermod and his manner of looking through the school -window at nothing in particular fascinated her; and the very remembrance -of the youth standing beside her facing the map of the world always -caused a pleasant thrill to run through her body. Now, as she looked at -the hills of Glenmornan, the incidents of the morning on which she went -to pull bog-bine there came back to her mind, and she wondered if Dermod -Flynn thought the hills so much changed on the day when he was setting -out for the rabble of Strabane.</p> - -<p>A large iron bridge, lately built by the Congested Districts Board, -spanned the bay between Frosses and Dooey. Norah crossed over this to -the other side, where the black rocks, sharp and pointed, spread over -the white sand. It was here that the women slept out on the mid-winter -night many years ago; and now Norah had only a very dim remembrance of -the event.</p> - -<p>Up to the rise of the hill she hurried, and from the townland of -Ballybonar looked back at Frosses: at the little strips of land running -down to the sea, at the white<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a> lime-washed cabins dotted all over the -parish, at Frosses graveyard and the lone sycamore tree that grew there, -showing like a black stain against the sky. Seeing it, she thought of -her father and said an “Our Father” and “Hail Mary” for the repose of -his soul. Then her eye roved over Frosses again.</p> - -<p>“Maybe after this I’ll never set my two eyes on the place,” she said, -then added, “just like Fergus!”</p> - -<p>The thought that she might never see the place again filled her with a -certain feeling of importance which up to now had been altogether -foreign to her.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span><small>T</small> the station she met the other members of the potato squad, fifteen in -all. Some were sitting on their boxes, others on the bundles bound in -cotton handkerchiefs which contained all their clothes and toilet -requisites. The latter consisted of combs and hand-mirrors possessed by -the women, and razors, the property of the men. Micky’s Jim was pacing -up and down the platform, his hands deep in his trousers’ pockets and a -heavy-bowled wooden pipe in his mouth. From time to time he pulled the -pipe from between his teeth, accompanying the action with a knowing -shrug of his shoulders, and spat into the four-foot way.</p> - -<p>“Is this yerself, Norah?” he exclaimed, casting a patronising glance at -the girl as she entered the railway station. “Ye are almost late for the -train. Did ye walk the whole way?... Ah! here she comes!”</p> - -<p>The train came in sight, puffing round the curve; the women rose from -their seats, clutched hastily at their bundles and formed into a row on -the verge of the platform; the men, most of whom were smoking, took -their<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a> pipes from their mouths, hit the bowls sharply against their -palms, thus emptying them of white ash; then, with a feigned look of -unconcern on their faces, they picked up their belongings with a leisure -which implied that they were men well used to such happenings. They were -posing a little; knowing that those who came to see them off would tell -for days in Frosses how indifferently Mick or Ned took the train leading -to the land beyond the water. “Just went on the train with no more -concern on their faces than if they were going to a neighbour’s wake!” -the Frosses people would say.</p> - -<p>The train puffed into the station, the driver descended from his post, -yawned, stretched his arms, and surveyed the crowd with a look of -superior disdain. The fireman, with an oil-can in his hands, raced along -the footplate and disappeared behind the engine, only to come back -almost immediately, puffing and wiping the sweat from his face with a -piece of torn and dirty rag.</p> - -<p>“All aboard!” Micky’s Jim shouted in an excited voice, forgetting pose -for a moment. “Hurry up now or the train will be away, leavin’ the -biggest half of ye standin’ here. A train isn’t like Oiney Dinchy’s -cuddy cart; it hasn’t to stop seven times in order to get right started. -Hurry up! Go in sideways, Willie the Duck; ye cannot go through a door -frontways carrying a bundle under yer oxter. Yer stupid ways would drive -a sensible man to pot! Hurry up and come on now! Get a move on ye, every -one of the whole lot of ye!”</p> - -<p>Presently all, with the exception of the speaker, were in their -compartments and looking for seats. Micky’s Jim remained on the -platform, waiting for the train to start, when he could show by boarding -it as it steamed out of the station that he had learned a thing or two -beyond the water in his time; a thing or two not known to all the -Frosses people.<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a></p> - -<p>A ticket collector examined the tickets, chatting heartily as he did so. -When he found that Norah had not procured hers he ran off and came back -with one, smiling happily as if glad to be of assistance to the girl. A -lady and gentleman, tourists no doubt, paced up and down the platform, -eyeing everybody with the tourists’ rude look of enquiry; a stray dog -sniffed at Micky’s Jim’s trousers and got kicked for its curiosity; the -engine driver yawned again, made the sign of the cross on his open mouth -and mounted to his place; the whistle sounded, and with Micky’s Jim -standing on the foot-board the train steamed out of the station.</p> - -<p>Norah, who had never been on a train before, took up her seat near the -window, and rubbed the pane with her shawl in order to get a better view -of the country, which seemed to be flying past with remarkable speed. -The telegraph wires were sinking and rising; the poles like big hands -gripped them up, dropped them, but only to lift them up again as threads -are lifted on the fingers of a knitter.</p> - -<p>There were eleven people in the compartment, four women and seven men. -One of the latter, Eamon Doherty, was eating a piece of dry bread made -from Indian meal; the rest of the men were smoking black clay pipes, so -short of shank that the bowls almost touched the noses of the smokers. -But Jim’s pipe was different from any of these; it was a wooden one, -“real briar root” he said, and was awfully proud of it. It had cost -three shillings and sixpence in a town beyond the water, he now told the -party, not indeed for the first time; but none of the listeners believed -him. Two of the women said their prayers; one wept because she was -leaving Ireland, and Norah Ryan spent her time looking out of the -window.<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a></p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">“W</span><small>HO’LL</small> take a drink?” asked Micky’s Jim, pulling a half-bottle of -whisky from his pocket and drawing out the cork with his fingers. “Good -stuff this is, and I’m as dry as the rafters of hell.... Will ye have a -wee drop, Willie the Duck?”</p> - -<p>“No, sure,” answered Willie, who was sitting beside the weeping woman, -his one leg across the other, and his hands clasped over his stomach. “I -would take it if I hadn’t the pledge against drink, indeed I would. Aye, -sure!”</p> - -<p>“Aye sure, be hanged!” Jim blurted out. “Ye’ve got to take it, for it’s -die-dog-or-eat-the-gallows this time. Are ye goin’ to take it?”</p> - -<p>“No, sure——”</p> - -<p>“Why d’ye always say ‘Aye, sure’ and ‘No, sure’ when talking to a -person?” asked Jim, replacing the cork in the bottle, which he now tried -to balance on the point of his finger. “Is it a habit that ye’ve got -into, Willie the Duck?”</p> - -<p>“Aye, sure,” answered Willie, edging away from Micky’s Jim, who was -balancing the bottle successfully within an inch of the roof. “Ye’ll let -that bottle fall on me head.”</p> - -<p>“Aye, sure,” shouted Micky’s Jim and shook the bottle with perilous -carelessness, holding out the free hand in case it should fall. “It -wouldn’t crack a wooden head anyhow.”</p> - -<p>“That’s Brockagh station that we’re comin’ into now, as the man said,” -remarked one of the women who had been praying. The woman was Maire a -Glan, who had been going beyond the water to work for the last four or -five years. Things were not going well at home; her<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a> husband lay ill -with paralysis, the children from a monetary point of view were useless -as yet—the oldest boy, thin and weakly, a cripple from birth, went -about on crutches, the younger ones were eternally crying for bread. -Maire a Glan placed the rosary round her neck and took a piece of oaten -bread from the bundle at her feet.</p> - -<p>“Will ye have a wee bit to eat, Norah Ryan?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“My thanks to ye, Maire a Glan, but I’m not hungry,” answered Norah, -rubbing the window where her breath had dimmed it.</p> - -<p>“I thought that ye might be, seeing that yer eye is not wet on leavin’ -home,” said the woman, breaking bread and putting a bit of it in her -mouth. “There, the train is stopping!” she went on, “and I have two -sisters married within the stretch of a mile from this place.”</p> - -<p>“Aye, sure,” said Willie the Duck with his usual quack. “I know both, -and once I had a notion of one of them, meself.”</p> - -<p>“Lookin’ for one of God’s stars to light yer pipe with, as the man -said,” remarked the woman contemptuously, fixing her eyes on the poor -fellow’s hump. “Ye have a burden enough on yer shoulders and not to be -thinkin’ at all of a wife.”</p> - -<p>“Them that carries the burden should be the first to complain of it,” -said Willie the Duck, edging still further away from Micky’s Jim, who -was now standing up and balancing the whisky bottle on the point of his -nose. The women tittered, the men drew their pipes from their mouths and -gave vent to loud guffaws. The train started out from Brockagh station, -a porter ran after it, shut a door, and again Norah Ryan watched the -fields run past and the telegraph wires rise and fall.</p> - -<p>“I’ll bet that not one of ye knows who’s comin’ to join<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a> us at Derry,” -said Micky’s Jim, tiring of his play and putting the bottle back in his -pocket, after having taken a sup of its contents.</p> - -<p>“Who?” asked several voices.</p> - -<p>“Dermod Flynn from Glenmornan.”</p> - -<p>“I haven’t seen that gasair for the last two years or more,” said -Murtagh Gallagher, a young man of twenty-five, who came from the -townland of Meenahalla in the parish of Frosses. “If I mind right, he -was sort of soft in the head.”</p> - -<p>A faint blush rose to Norah Ryan’s cheek, and though she still looked -out of the window she now failed to see the objects flying past. The -conversation had suddenly become very interesting for her.</p> - -<p>“He has been working with a farmer beyont the mountains this long -while,” said Micky’s Jim. “But I’m keepin’ a place for him in the squad, -and ye’ll see him on the Glasgow boat this very night. Ye have said that -he was soft in his head, Murtagh Gallagher. Well, that remark applies to -me.”</p> - -<p>Jim spat on his hands, rose to his feet, shoved his fist under Murtagh’s -nose and cried: “Smell that! There’s the smell of dead men off that -fist! Dermod Flynn soft in the head, indeed! I’ll soft ye, ye—ye -flat-nosed flea-catcher ye!”</p> - -<p>“I was only making fun,” said Murtagh.</p> - -<p>“Make it to his face then!”</p> - -<p>“D’ye mind how Dermod Flynn knocked Master Diver down with his fist in -the very school?” asked Judy Farrel, who was also one of the party.</p> - -<p>“Aye, sure,” said Willie the Duck. “But it wasn’t with his fist but with -a stick that he struck Master Diver, and mind ye he made the blood to -flow!”</p> - -<p>“<i>I’ll</i> soon make blood to flow!” said Micky’s Jim, still holding his -fist under Murtagh Gallagher’s nose.<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a></p> - -<p>“I was only in fun,” Gallagher repeated. “Ye’re as hasty as a briar, -Jim, for one cannot open his lips but ye want to blacken his eyes.”</p> - -<p>“Now sit down, Micky’s Jim,” said Maire a Glan. “It’s not nice to see -two people, both of them from Donegal, fighting when they’re away from -home.”</p> - -<p>“Fightin’!” exclaimed Jim, dropping into his seat and pulling out his -pipe. “I see no fightin’.... I wish to God that someone would fight.... -Sort of soft in the head, indeed!... I never could stand a man from -Meenahalla, anyway.”</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> train sped on. House, field, and roadway whirled by, and Norah, -almost bewildered, ceased to wonder where this road ran to, who lived in -that house, what was the name of this village and whether that large -building with the spire on top of it was a church (Bad luck to it!) or -chapel (God bless it!).</p> - -<p>“I’ll see him again,” she thought, her mind reverting to Dermod Flynn. -“I wonder how he’ll look now; if his hair is still as curly as when he -was at Frosses school.... Two years away from his own home and the home -of all his people! Such a long while, and now he’ll know everything -about the whole world.” Mixed with these lip-spoken words was the -remembrance of her mother all alone in the old cabin at Frosses, and a -vague feeling of regret filled her mind.</p> - -<p>“Are you getting homesick, Norah?” Maire a Glan enquired, speaking in -Gaelic, which came more easily than English to her tongue. “It’s not the -dry eye that always tells of the lightest heart, I know myself.”</p> - -<p>“Old Oiney Dinchy has a fine daughter,” Eamon Doherty was saying.<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a></p> - -<p>“She’s as stuck-up as Dooey Head,” piped Judy Farrel in a weak, thin -voice.</p> - -<p>“Micky’s Jim has a notion of her, I hear,” remarked Willie the Duck. -“But what girl hasn’t Jim a notion of?”</p> - -<p>Jim cleaned out the bowl of his pipe with a rusty nail and fell asleep -while engaged on the task. The conversation went on.</p> - -<p>“Old Farley McKeown is goin’ to get married to an English lady.”</p> - -<p>“A young soncy wench she is, they say!”</p> - -<p>“Think of that, for old Farley! A wrinkled old stick of seventy! Ah! the -shameless old thing!”</p> - -<p>“It’ll be a cold bed for the girl that is alongside of him. She’ll need -a lot of blankets, as the man said.”</p> - -<p>“Aye, sure, and she will that.”</p> - -<p>“But he’s the man that has the money to pay for them.”</p> - -<p>Norah, deep in a dreamy mood, listened idly to snatches of song, the -laughter, and the voices that seemed to be speaking at a very remote -distance; but after a while, sinking into the quiet isolation of her own -thoughts, the outside world became non-existent to the young girl. She -was thinking of Dermod; why he persisted in coming up before her mind’s -eye she could not explain, but the dream of meeting with him on the -streets of Derry exerted a restful influence over her and she fell into -a light slumber.</p> - -<p>“It’s the soncy girl she looks with the sleep on her.”</p> - -<p>Almost imperceptibly Norah opened her eyes. The transition was so quiet -that she was hardly aware that she had slept, and those who looked on -were hardly aware that she had wakened. It was Maire a Glan who had been -speaking. The train now stood at a station and Micky’s Jim was walking -up and down the platform, his pipe in his mouth and his hands deep in -his trousers’ pockets. Facing the window was a bookstall and a -white-faced<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a> girl handing to some man a newspaper and a book with a red -cover, Norah recollected that Fergus often read books with red covers -just like the one that was handed over the counter of the bookstall. -That it was possible to have a shop containing nothing but books and -papers came as a surprise to Norah Ryan. Over the bookstall in white -letters was the station’s name—<span class="smcap">Strabane</span>. Of this town Norah had often -heard. It was to the hiring market of Strabane that Dermod Flynn had -gone two years ago. Other two trains stood at the station, one on each -side, and both full of passengers.</p> - -<p>“Where are all those people going, Maire a Glan?” asked Norah.</p> - -<p>“Everywhere, as the man said,” answered the old woman, who was telling -her rosary and taking no notice of anything but the black beads passing -through her fingers.</p> - -<p>A boy walked up and down in front of the carriage, selling oranges at -fourpence a dozen. Micky’s Jim bought sixpence worth and handed them -through the window, telling all inside to eat as many as they liked; he -would pay. Maire a Glan left her beads aside until the feast was -finished. The engine whistled; Micky’s Jim boarded the moving train and -again the fields were running past and the telegraph wires rising and -falling.</p> - -<p>“ ‘Twon’t be long till we are on the streets of Derry now,” said Micky’s -Jim, drawing another half-bottle of whisky from his pocket and digging -out the cork with a clasp-knife.</p> - -<p>“ ‘Twon’t be very long, no, sure,” said Willie the Duck, edging away from -Micky’s Jim.<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII<br /><br /> -<small>DERRY</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HEY</small> stepped on the dry and dusty Derry streets, the whole fifteen of -them, with their bundles over their shoulders or dangling from their -arms. Norah Ryan, homesickness heavy on her heart, had eyes for -everything; and everything on which she looked was so strange and -foreign: the car that came along the streets, moving so quickly and -never a horse drawing it; the shops where hair was taken off for a few -pence and put on again for a few shillings; shops with watches and gold -rings in the windows; shops where they sold nothing but books and -papers; and the high clocks, facing four ways at once and looking all -over the town and the country beyond.</p> - -<p>The long streets, without end almost, the houses without number, the -large mills at the water-side, where row after row of windows rose one -above another, until it made the eye dim and the head dizzy to look up -at them, the noise, the babble of voices, the hurrying of men, the -women, their dresses, filled Norah with a weary longing for her own -fireside so far away by the shores of the sea that washed round Donegal.</p> - -<p>A bell tolled; Micky’s Jim turned round and looked at Norah, who -immediately blessed herself and commenced to say the Angelus.<a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a> “That’s -not the bell above the chapel of Greenanore, that’s the town clock,” -laughed one of the women.</p> - -<p>“There’s no God in this town,” said Micky’s Jim.</p> - -<p>“No God!” Norah exclaimed, stopping in the midst of her prayer and half -inclined to believe what Micky’s Jim was saying.</p> - -<p>“None at all,” said Micky’s Jim. “God’s choice about the company He -keeps and never comes near Derry.”</p> - -<p>The party went to the Donegal House, a cheap little restaurant near the -quay. The place was crowded. In addition to the potato squad there were -several harvestmen from various districts in Donegal, and these were -going over to Scotland now, intending to earn a few pounds at the -turnip-thinning and haymaking before the real harvest came on. Most of -the harvesters were intoxicated and raised a terrible hubbub in the -restaurant while taking their food.</p> - -<p>Micky’s Jim, who was very drunk, sat on one chair in the dingy -dining-room, placed his feet on another chair, and with his back pressed -against the limewashed wall sank into a deep slumber. The rest of the -party sat round a rude table, much hacked with knives, and had tea, -bread, and rancid butter for their meal. A slatternly servant, a native -of Donegal, served all customers; the mistress of the house, a tall, -thin woman, with a long nose sharp as a knife and eyes cruel enough to -match the nose, cooked the food. The tea was made in a large pot, -continually on the boil. When a bowl of tea (there were no cups) was -lifted out a similar amount of water was put in to replace it and a -three fingerful of tea was added. The man of the house, a stout little -fellow with a red nose, took up his position behind the bar and sold -whisky with lightning rapidity. Now and again he gave a glass of whisky -free of cost to some of the harvesters who weren’t drinking very -heavily. Those who got free<a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a> drinks usually bought several glasses of -liquor afterwards and became the most drunken men in the house.</p> - -<p>After a long sleep Micky’s Jim awoke and called for a bowl of tea. -Followed all the way by the shrill voice of her mistress, who was always -scolding somebody, the servant girl carried the tea to Jim, and the -youth drank a mouthful of it while rubbing one hand vigorously across -his eyes in order to drive the sleep away from them.</p> - -<p>“This tay is as long drawn as the face of yer mistress,” grumbled Jim, -and the servant giggled. “I’m forgettin’ all about Dermod Flynn too,” -Jim continued, turning to Norah Ryan, who sat on the chair next him. “I -must go out and look for him. He was to meet me at the quay, and I’m -sure that he’ll be on the wait for me there now.”</p> - -<p>“Poor Dermod!” said Norah in answer to Jim. “Maybe he’ll get lost out on -the lone streets, seein’ that he is all be himself.”</p> - -<p>“Him to get lost!” exclaimed Jim. “Catch Dermod Flynn doin’ anything as -foolish as that! He’s the cute rogue is Dermod!”</p> - -<p>The tables and chairs in the eating-room were now cleared away and -someone suggested getting up a dance. The harvestmen ceased swearing and -began thumping their hobnailed boots on the floor; Willie the Duck -played on a fiddle, which he had procured years before for a few -shillings in a Glasgow rag-market, and in the space of a minute all the -women, including old Maire a Glan, who looked sixty if a day, ranged on -the floor preparatory to dancing a six-hand reel. On seeing this, the -red-nosed landlord jumped over the counter and commenced to swear at the -musician.</p> - -<p>“The curse of Moses be on ye!” he roared. “There’ll be no dancin’ here. -Thumpin’ on the floor, ye gallivantin’ fools! If ye want dancin’ go out -to the quay and<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a> dance. Dance into the Foyle or into hell if ye like, -but don’t dance here! Come now, stop it at once!”</p> - -<p>“It’s such a roarin’ tune,” said Maire a Glan, interrupting him.</p> - -<p>“It is that,” answered the man, “but it needs a lighter foot than yours -to do it justice, decent woman. There was a time when me meself could -caper to that; aye, indeed.... But what am I talkin’ about? There’ll be -no dancin’ here.”</p> - -<p>“Just one wee short one?” said a girl. Willie the Duck played with -redoubled enthusiasm.</p> - -<p>“No, nor half a one,” said the proprietor, tapping absently on the floor -with his foot. “God’s curse on ye all! D’ye want to bring down the house -over me head?... ‘The Movin’ Bogs of Allen’ that’s playin’, isn’t it? A -good tune it, surely. But stop it! stop it!” roared the red-nosed man, -cutting a caper, half a step and half a kick in front of the fiddler. “I -don’t want your damned dancin’, I can’t stand it. God have mercy on me! -Sure I’m wantin’ to foot it meself!”</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">B</span><small>UT</small> the dancing was in full swing now, despite the vehemence of the -proprietor. He looked round helplessly, and finding that his wife was -already dancing with old Eamon Doherty he seized hold of the servant -girl and whirled her into the midst of the party with a loud whoop that -surprised himself even as much as it surprised the Donegal dancers.</p> - -<p>Micky’s Jim was dancing with Norah Ryan and pressing her tightly to his -body. The youth’s breath smelt of whisky and his movements were violent -and irregular.<a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a></p> - -<p>“Ye’re hurtin’ me, Jim,” said the girl, and he lifted her in his arms -and carried her to a seat.</p> - -<p>“Now are ye better?” he asked, not at all unkindly. “Will I get ye a -glass of cordial?”</p> - -<p>“Don’t bother about cordial,” said the girl; “but go out and look for -Dermod Flynn. Ye said that ye’d go out a good while ago.”</p> - -<p>“Why are ye so anxious about him, girsha?” asked Jim. “One would think -that he was a brother of yours. Maybe indeed——”</p> - -<p>He paused, looked round, then without another word he rose, went out -into the street’ and took his way to the wharf, and there, when he could -not find Dermod Flynn after a few minutes’ search, he sat down on a -capstan, lit his pipe and puffed huge clouds of smoke up into the air.</p> - -<p>“Now I wonder why that Norah Ryan is so anxious about Dermod Flynn?” he -muttered. “Man! it’s hard to know, for these women are all alike.... By -Cripes, she’s a fine built bit of a lassie. So is old Oiney Dinchy’s -daughter ... Frosses and Glenmornan for women and fighters!... And the -best fighters don’t always get the best women. Now, that Norah Ryan will -have nothin’ at all to do with me as far as I can see; it’s Dermod Flynn -that she wants.... I’ll have to look round for another wench, and girsha -Oiney Dinchy (Oiney Dinchy’s daughter) is a soncy slip of a cutty.”</p> - -<p>When Dermod Flynn came along Jim had to look at him very closely before -realising that this was the youth whom he had known in Glenmornan two -summers before. Dermod stood sturdily on his legs; his shoulders were -broad, his back straight, and his well-formed chest betokened great -strength even now at the age of fourteen. A bundle dangled on his arm; -one knee was out through his trousers, and he carried a hazel stick in -his hand.<a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a></p> - -<p>“Patrick’s Dermod!” exclaimed Jim, a glance of glad recognition coming -into his eyes when he had stared for a moment at Flynn. “By Cripes! -ye’ve grown to be a big healthy bucko since last I saw ye.”</p> - -<p>Dermod flushed with pleasure. Jim began to ply him with questions about -his work in Tyrone, his masters, whether they were good or bad, -and—above all—if he had ever had a fight since he left home.</p> - -<p>Dermod assured him that he had had many a hard, gruelling fight; knocked -down a man twice his size with one blow of his fist and blackened the -eyes of a youth who was head and shoulders taller than himself.</p> - -<p>“And who have ye with ye, Jim?” he asked. “Any of the Glenmornan -people?”</p> - -<p>“Lots,” answered Jim. “Willie the Duck, Eamon Doherty, Judy Farrel, -Maire a Glan, Norah Ryan—but she’s not from Glenmornan, she’s a Frosses -girsha.”</p> - -<p>He looked sharply at Dermod as he spoke.</p> - -<p>“She was at Glenmornan school with me,” said Flynn. “Where is she now?”</p> - -<p>“There’s a dance goin’ on in the Donegal House; that’s where we had our -bit and sup, and she’s shaking her feet on the floor there.”</p> - -<p>“Can we go there and see the dancers?”</p> - -<p>“There’s not much time now,” said Jim. “And there’s the boat, that big -one nearest us, that we’re goin’ on this very night. She’s a rotten tub -and we’ll be very sick goin’ round the Mulls of Cantyre.”</p> - -<p>“Will we?”</p> - -<p>“What I mean is that ye and all the rest of the men and women will be -sick. I was never sea-sick in my life.”</p> - -<p>“When is it going away?”</p> - -<p>“In about half an hour from now.”</p> - -<p>“How long will it take us to get across?” asked Dermod. “Ten hours?”<a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a></p> - -<p>“God look on yer wit!” exclaimed Jim. “If there’s a fog on the Clyde it -will maybe take three days—maybe more. Ye can never know what a boat’s -goin’ to do. Ye can no more trust it than ye can trust a woman.”<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII<br /><br /> -<small>A WILD NIGHT</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> dance came to an end, and, worn out with their exertions, the women -picked up their shawls and wrapped them round their shoulders. Then -getting their bundles they went towards the wharf, Willie the Duck -leading, his fiddle under his arm and his bundle tied over his shoulders -with a string. Coming to the quay they passed through a gloomy -grain-shed, where heating bags of wheat sent a steam out into the air. -Suddenly, gazing through the rising vapour, Norah saw horses up in the -sky and she could hear them neighing loudly. For a moment she paused in -terror and wondered how such a thing could be, then recollected that in -a town, where there was no God, anything might be possible. Once out in -the open Maire a Glan pointed to the fall-and-tackle, hardly -distinguishable at a distance, which was lifting the animals off the -pier and lowering them down to the main deck of the boat. The horses -were turning round awkwardly and snorting wildly, terrified by the sound -of the sea.</p> - -<p>Bags of grain were being lifted on long chains; dark derricks shoved out -lean arms that waved to and fro as if inviting somebody to come near; -cattle lowing and slipping were being hammered by the drovers’ -blackthorns into the hold; a tall man with face fierce and<a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a> swarthy, -eyes bright as fire, and mouth like a raw, red scar, was roaring out -orders in a shrill voice, and suddenly in the midst of all this Norah -saw Micky’s Jim leaning against the funnel of the boat, his hands deep -in his trousers’ pockets and the eternal pipe in his mouth, apparently -heedless of all that was going on around him.</p> - -<p>Beside Jim stood one whom Norah knew, but one who had changed a great -deal since she had seen him last. As she went up the gang-plank, -stepping timidly, cowering under the great derrick that wheeled above, -she felt that a pair of eyes were fixed upon her, piercing into her very -soul. She turned her gaze towards the deck and found Dermod Flynn -looking straight at her as she made her way aboard. In an instant her -eye had taken the whole picture of the youth, his clothes, the coat, -much the worse for wear, his trousers, thin at knee and frilly at the -shoe-mouth, his cap torn at rim and crown, the stray locks of hair -straggling down his forehead, the bundle lying at his feet, and the -hazel stick which he held in his hand, probably even yet in imitation of -the cattle drovers who went along Glenmornan road on the way to the fair -of Greenanore. These things Norah noticed with a girl’s quick intuitive -perception, but what struck her most forcibly was Dermod’s look of -expectation as he watched her come up the gang-plank towards him.</p> - -<p>“Dermod Flynn, I hardly knew ye at all,” she said, putting out her hand -and smiling slightly. “Ye’ve got very big these last two years.”</p> - -<p>“So did you, Norah,” Dermod answered, looking curiously at the small -white hand which he gripped in his own. “You are almost as tall as I am -myself.”</p> - -<p>“Why wouldn’t I be as tall as you are?” Norah replied, although Dermod -had unknowingly squeezed her hand in a hard, tense grip. “Am I not a -year and a half older?”</p> - -<p>When her hand was released her skin showed white<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> where Dermod’s fingers -had gripped her, but she did not feel angry. On the contrary the girl -was glad because he was so strong.</p> - -<p>“Come over here!” cried Maire a Glan, who was sitting on her bundle -beside the rail, smoking a black clay pipe and spitting on the deck.</p> - -<p>The noise was deafening; the rowting of the cattle in the pens became -louder; a man on the deck gave a sharp order; the gangway was pulled off -with a resounding clash, the funnel began to rise and fall; Norah saw -the pier move; a few women were weeping; some of the passengers waved -handkerchiefs (none of them too clean) to the people on the quay; rails -were bound together, hatches battened down; sailors hurried to and fro; -a loud hoot could be heard overhead near the top of the funnel and the -big vessel shuffled out to the open sea.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> boat was crowded with harvestmen from Frosses, potato-diggers from -Glenmornan and Tweedore; cattle drovers from Coleraine and Londonderry, -second-hand clothes-dealers, bricklayers’ labourers, farm hands, young -men and old, women and children; all sorts and conditions of people.</p> - -<p>“There are lots of folk gathered together on this piece of floatin’ -wood,” said Maire a Glan, crossing herself, a habit of hers, when -speaking of anything out of the ordinary. “The big boat is a wonderful -thing; beds with warm blankets and white sheets to sleep in, tables to -sit down at and have tea in real cups and saucers, just the same as -Father Devaney has at Greenanore, and him not out at all in the middle -of the ocean on a piece of floatin’ wood!”<a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a></p> - -<p>“And will <i>we</i> get a bed to sleep in?” asked Norah Ryan.</p> - -<p>“Why should <i>we</i> be gettin’ a grand bed? We’re only the poor people, and -the poor people have no right to these things on a big boat like this -one,” said the old woman, putting her black clay pipe into the pocket of -her apron. “There are no grand beds for people like us; they’re only for -the gentry.”</p> - -<p>“Wouldn’t a bed look nice on a Frosses curragh?” said Micky’s Jim, -sitting down on the bundle belonging to Willie the Duck and pulling the -cork from a bottle of whisky which he had procured in Derry. “Will ye -have a drop, Maire a Glan?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“I’ll not be havin’ any,” said the old woman, who nevertheless put out -her hand, caught the bottle and raised it to her lips. “It’s a nice drop -this,” she said, when she had swallowed several mouthfuls, “but I’m not -goin’ to drink any of it. I’m only just tastin’ it.”</p> - -<p>“If it was my bottle I’d be content if ye only just smelt it,” said -Eamon Doherty, with a dry laugh.</p> - -<p>“Dermod Flynn had one great fight in Tyrone,” said Micky’s Jim after -draining some of the liquor. “Gave his master one in the guts and -knocked him as sick as a dog.”</p> - -<p>“Get away!”</p> - -<p>“So he was sayin’. Dermod Flynn, come here and give an account of -yerself.”</p> - -<p>The young fellow, who was watching the waves slide past the side of the -vessel, came forward when Micky’s Jim called him.</p> - -<p>“Give an account of yerself, Dermod Flynn,” Jim cried. “Did ye not knock -down yer boss with one in the guts? That was the thing to do; that’s -what a Glenmornan man should do. I mind once when I was coal humpin’ on -the Greenock Docks——”</p> - -<p>And without waiting for an answer to his question, Jim<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a> narrated the -story of a fight which had once taken place between himself and a -Glasgow sailor.</p> - -<p>The sun, red as a live coal, was sinking towards the west, the murmur, -powerful and gentle, of a trembling wind could be heard overhead; a -white, ghostly mist stole down from the shore on either side and spread -far out over the waters. The waves lapped against the side of the vessel -with short, sudden splashes, and the sound of the labouring screw could -be heard pulsing loudly through the air. A black trail of smoke spread -out behind; a flight of following gulls, making little apparent effort, -easily kept pace with the vessel.</p> - -<p>“They will follow us to Scotland,” said Maire a Glan, pointing at the -birds with a long claw-like finger.</p> - -<p>Most of the men were drunk; a few lying stretched on the deck were -already asleep, and the rest were singing and quarrelling. Micky’s Jim -stopped in the middle of an interesting story, a new one, but also about -a fight, and joined in a song; old Maire a Glan helped him with the -chorus.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p>A man, full of drink and fight, paraded along the deck, his stride -uncertain and unsteady, a look born of the dark blood of mischief -showing in his eyes. He had already been fighting; in his hand he -carried an open clasp-knife; one eyebrow had been gashed and the strip -of torn flesh hung down even as far as his high cheekbones. He was -dressed in a dirty pea-jacket and moleskin trousers; a brown leather -belt with a huge, shiny buckle was tied round his waist, and the neck of -a half-empty whisky bottle could be seen peeping over the rim of his -coat pocket. His shoulders were broad and massive, his neck short and -wrinkled and the torn shirt showed his<a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a> deep chest, alive with muscles -and terribly hairy, more like an animal’s than a man’s. His hands, which -seemed to have never been washed, were knotted and gnarled like the -branches of an old and stunted bush.</p> - -<p>“This is young O’Donnel from the County Donegal, and young O’Donnel -doesn’t give a damn for any man on this boat!” he roared, speaking of -himself in the third person, and brandishing the knife carelessly around -him. “I can fight like a two year old bullock, and a blow from young -O’Donnel is like a kick from a young colt that’s new to the grass. I’m a -Rosses man and I don’t care a damn for any soul on this bloody boat—not -one damn! So there ye are!”</p> - -<p>Suddenly observing Dermod Flynn staring at him, he slouched forward and -struck the boy heavily across the face with a full swing of his left -fist. Dermod dropped quietly to the deck; Micky’s Jim, who was -suggesting to Willie the Duck that the fiddle should be flung into the -sea, threw down the instrument which he held and, jumping on the top of -O’Donnel, with a sudden movement of his hand sent the knife flying into -the sea.</p> - -<p>“Ye long drink of water, I’ll do for ye!” shouted Jim, and with feet and -fists he hammered O’Donnel into insensibility.</p> - -<p>Dermod Flynn regained his feet with a swollen cheek and a long red gash -stretching along his face from ear to chin. He was helped to a seat by -one of the party; Norah Ryan procured some water and bathed his face, -rubbing her fingers tenderly over the sore.</p> - -<p>“It was a shame to hit ye, Dermod,” she said. “One would think that a -big man like that wouldn’t hit a small boy like yourself!”</p> - -<p>Dermod flushed and his eyes lit up as if he was going to say something -cutting, but Norah checked the words<a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a> by pressing her hand across his -brow and looking at him with eyes of womanly understanding.</p> - -<p>“I know what ye are goin’ to say, Dermod,” she said. “Ye’re goin’ to -tell me that ye are a man: and no one can deny that. Ye were a man when -ye were at school and hit the master. Sure I know meself what ye had in -yer head to say.”</p> - -<p>Dermod resented the words of consolation and felt like rising and -walking away from the girl, if her fair fingers had not been pressing so -softly and tenderly against his cheek. He shrugged his shoulders and -resigned himself to the ministrations of Norah.</p> - -<p>“By God, I wasn’t long with him!” cried Micky’s Jim, kicking idly at -Willie the Duck’s fiddle which still lay on the deck. “I just gave him -one in the jaw and three on the guts. Ah! that was the way to do it! It -takes a Glenmornan kiddie to use his mits in this bloomin’ hole. -Glenmornan, and every inch of it, forever! Whoo! There’s no man on this -boat could take a rise out of me; not one mother’s son! Fight! I could -fight any damned mug aboard this bleedin’ vessel. Look at my fist; smell -it! There’s the smell of dead men off it!”</p> - -<p>Micky’s Jim, now doubly drunk with liquor and excitement, paced up and -down the deck, challenging all aboard to fight, to put up their “fives” -to him. Presently the quarrel became general.</p> - -<p>All along the deck and down in the steerage cabin a terrible uproar -broke forth; men fastened on to one another’s throats, kicking, tearing, -and cursing loudly. The darkness had fallen; the buoys, floating past, -bobbed up and down in the water, their little bright lights twinkling -merrily. The pale ghost of a moon stole into the heavens and a million -stars kept it company. But those aboard the Derry boat took little heed -of the moon or stars. Over coils of ropes, loose chains, boxes and -bundles,<a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a> sleeping women and crying babies, they staggered, fought and -fell, trampling everything with which they came in contact.</p> - -<p>A man went headlong down the steerage stair and a second followed, -thrown from above. Beside the door a bleeding face, out of which gleamed -a pair of lustrous eyes, glowered sinister for a moment, a fist hit -sharply against the eyebrows, the eyes closed; a knife shone, glancing -brightly against the woodwork, the man with the bloodstained face -groaned and fell; a woman crouching at the bottom of the stairs was -trampled upon, she shrieked and the shriek changed into a volley of -curses, which in turn died away into a low, murmurous plaint of tearful -pity. Men sought one another’s faces grunting and gasping, long lean -arms stretched out everywhere and fists shot through the smoke-laden -atmosphere of the steerage ... splotches of blood showed darkly on the -deck ... somewhere from below came the tinkle of glasses and the loud -chorus of an Irish folk-song.</p> - -<p>The fighters, overcome by their mad exertion, collapsed three or four in -a heap and slept where they had fallen. Outside on the open deck Micky’s -Jim lay prostrate, his head on the lap of Maire a Glan, who was also -asleep, her two remaining upper teeth, tobacco-stained and yellow, -showing in the moonlight. All over the deck men and women lay curled up -like dogs. Near the rail a woman’s bare arm showed for a moment over a -bundle of rags, then twined snakelike round the neck of a sleeping -child. On a bench astern Norah Ryan sat, her shawl drawn tightly over -her head and her eyes fixed on the moon-silvered sea that stretched out -behind. A great loneliness had overcome her; a loneliness which she did -not understand. It seemed as if something had snapped within her, as if -every fabric of her life had been torn to shreds. The stars overhead -looked so cold, everything seemed so desolate.<a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a> A chill wind swept -against her face, and she could hear the water soughing along the -vessel’s side and crying wearily. Snores, groans, and sleepy voices came -through the open doors and resounded in the passage at the head of the -steerage stairs. Human bodies were heaped together in compact masses -everywhere. The fighting had come to an end—though now and then, as a -flame flickers up for a second over a dying fire, a man would totter -from a drunken sleep and challenge everybody on board to fight him. But -even when speaking loudest he would drop to the deck with a thud and -fall asleep again.</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">L</span><small>ISTENING</small> to the engine pulsing heavily and the propeller hitting the -water with an intermittent buzz Norah Ryan fell asleep. On opening her -eyes again she could see the moon further up the sky and the stars -twinkling colder than ever. Dermod Flynn, his face swollen horribly, was -beside her, looking at her, and she was pleased to see him.</p> - -<p>“Sit down beside me, Dermod,” she said. “It will be warmer for two.”</p> - -<p>He sat down, his eyes sparkling with pleasure; the girl nestled close to -his side in the darkness, and one timid little hand stole softly into -his.</p> - -<p>“Ye nearly squeezed the hand off me when I met ye this evenin’,” she -said, but there was no reproof in her voice, and he understood that she -was not angry with his strong handshake, even though it had given her -pain.</p> - -<p>“Did I?”</p> - -<p>“Ye did.... Isn’t it cold?”</p> - -<p>“Cold as the breath of a stepmother,” said Dermod. “There was great -fighting!”<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a></p> - -<p>“Why do men always fight?” asked Norah.</p> - -<p>“Because it’s—it’s their way.”</p> - -<p>“Why is that?”</p> - -<p>“You’ll not understand; you’re only a girl.”</p> - -<p>“Will I never understand?” asked Norah.</p> - -<p>“Never,” Dermod answered. “And we’re goin’ to be sick too,” he went on -with boyish irrelevance. “That’s when we’re passin’ round the Mull of -Cantyre. So Micky’s Jim said. And we’re goin’ to see Paddy’s Milestone, -that’s if we aren’t asleep.”</p> - -<p>“Where’s Paddy’s Milestone?”</p> - -<p>“It’s a big rock out in the middle of the sea, half-way between Ireland -and Scotland,” said Dermod.</p> - -<p>“Oh, is that it?... What kind of time had ye in Tyrone?”</p> - -<p>“Not so bad, but Scotland will be a better place.... Is old Master Diver -livin’ away?”</p> - -<p>“Dead, God rest his soul. He was only ill for three days. And poor Maire -a Crick is gone as well.”</p> - -<p>“She was as old as the Glenmornan hills. And old Oiney Dinchy?”</p> - -<p>“He got one of his eyes knocked out with the horns of a cow. That was -because the priest put the seven curses on him; but that was before ye -went away.”</p> - -<p>“Is Fergus writin’ home now?”</p> - -<p>“We haven’t heard hilt nor hair of him for a long while,” said Norah -sadly. “Maybe it is that he is dead.” “Don’t say that!” Dermod -exclaimed, fixing a pair of sad eyes on the girl.</p> - -<p>“Well, it is a wonder that we’re not hearin’ from him,” Norah went on, -“a great wonder entirely.... Your face is very.... Is it sore now?”</p> - -<p>The conversation died away; the boy and girl pressed closer for warmth -and presently both were asleep. When they awoke the pale dawn was -breaking. A drunken man<a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a> lay asleep at their feet, his face turned -upwards, one arm stretched out at full length and the other curled over -his breast. Beside him on the deck was an empty whisky bottle and the -bowl of a broken clay pipe.</p> - -<p>“Have ye seen Scotland yet?” asked the girl, rubbing her fingers over -her eyelids.</p> - -<p>“That’s it, I think,” Dermod answered, pointing at the coastline which -showed like a well-defined cloud against the sky-line miles away.</p> - -<p>“Have we passed Paddy’s Milestone?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know. I was sleepin’.”</p> - -<p>“Isn’t it like Ireland?” remarked Norah after she had gazed for a while -in silence at the coastline. “I would like to be goin’ back again, -Dermod,” she said.</p> - -<p>“I’m goin’ to make a great fortune in Scotland, Norah,” said the youth, -releasing the girl’s hand which he had held all night. “And I’m goin’ to -make ye a lady.”</p> - -<p>“Why would ye be goin’ to do the likes of that?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know,” Dermod confessed, and the boy and girl laughed -together.<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV<br /><br /> -<small>“BEYOND THE WATER”</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p>A heavy fall of rain came with the dawn, and the Clyde was a dreary -smudge of grey when the boat made fast alongside Greenock Quay and -discharged its passengers. Again the derricks began to creak -complainingly on their pivots; a mob of excited cattle streamed up the -narrow gangways, followed by swearing drovers, who prodded the dewlaps -and hindquarters of the animals with their short, heavy blackthorn -sticks.</p> - -<p>A tall, thin man, somewhat over middle age, with bushy beard, small -penetrating eyes and wrinkles between the eyebrows, met the squad as -they disembarked. He bade good-morning to Micky’s Jim just as if he had -seen him the night before, and in a loud, hurried voice gave him several -orders as to what he had to do during the summer season at the digging. -The tall, thin man was the potato-merchant.</p> - -<p>“How many have ye with ye from Ireland?” he asked Micky’s Jim.</p> - -<p>Although knowing the number of men it contained, Jim, with an air of -importance, began to count the members of the squad, carefully -enumerating each person by name.</p> - -<p>“Get your squad to work as soon as you can,” said the merchant, his -Adam’s apple bobbing in and out with every<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a> movement of his throat. He -gave Jim no time to finish the count. “I see you’re three or four short -of last year—four, isn’t it? There’s some people waitin’ for a start -over there, so you’d better take a few of them with you.”</p> - -<p>Opposite the squad a dozen or more men and women stood, looking on -eagerly, all of them shivering with the cold and the water dripping from -their rags. These Jim approached with a very self-conscious swagger and -entered into conversation with the women, who began to speak volubly.</p> - -<p>“What’s wrong with them?” asked Dermod Flynn, and Maire a Glan, to whom -he addressed the question, drew a snuff-box from her pocket and took a -pinch.</p> - -<p>“They’re lookin’ for a job, as the man said,” she answered and her teeth -chattered as she spoke.</p> - -<p>“When do we start our work?” asked Norah Ryan.</p> - -<p>“Work!” laughed Judy Farrel, and her laugh ended in a fit of coughing. -“Work, indeed!” she stammered on regaining breath. “Ye’ll soon have -plenty of that and no fear!”</p> - -<p>“Come now,” Micky’s Jim shouted as he came back to his own squad -followed by two men and two women who detached themselves from the crowd -that was looking for work. “We must go down to the Isle of Bute to-day -and get some potatoes dug in a hurry. Take yer bundles in yer hands and -make a start for the station.”</p> - -<p>“It’s Gourock Ellen that’s in it,” said Maire a Glan, when the strange -women came forward. “Gourock Ellen and Annie, as the man said.”</p> - -<p>Gourock Ellen was a tall, angular woman, who might at one period of her -life have been very handsome, but who now, owing to the results of a -hard and loose life, bore all the indelible marks of dissolute and -careless living. Her face was hard, pock-marked, and stamped with a look -of impudent defiance; she smiled with ill-concealed contempt<a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a> at Maire a -Glan and looked with mock curiosity at the warty hand which the old -woman held out to her.</p> - -<p>“There’s a lot of new faces in the squad,” she said, glancing in turn at -Norah Ryan and Dermod Flynn. “Not bad lookin’, the two of them, and -they’ll sleep in the yin bed yet, I’ll go bail! And you, have you the -fiddle with you?”</p> - -<p>“Aye, sure, and I have,” said Willie the Duck, to whom she addressed -this question. “I don’t go far without it.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t,” answered the woman, and her tones implied that she would -have added, “you fool!” if she thought it worth while.</p> - -<p>Her companion, who hardly spoke a word, was somewhat older, swarthy of -appearance and very ragged. Her toes peeped out through the torn uppers -of her hobnailed boots, and when she lifted her dress to wring the water -from the hem it could be seen that she wore no stockings and that her -dark, thin legs were threaded with varicose veins above the calves.</p> - -<p>“D’ye see them?” Micky’s Jim whispered in Dermod’s ear. “They cannot -make a livin’ on the streets and they have to come and work with us.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t like the look of them,” Dermod whispered, rubbing his hand over -the sore on his face.</p> - -<p>“By God! that was a great dunt that O’Donnel gave ye,” said Jim. -“They’re great women, them, without a doubt,” he added. “It’s a long -while since Gourock Ellen broke her pitcher.”</p> - -<p>“How? What do you mean?”</p> - -<p>“Ye’re green, Dermod, green as a cabbage,” said Jim, chuckling. “Them -women—but I’ll tell ye all about it some other time. Willie the Duck is -a great friend of them same women. He knows what they are, as well as -anyone, don’t ye, Willie?”</p> - -<p>“Aye, sure,” said Willie, who did not know what Jim<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a> was speaking about, -but wished to be agreeable to everybody.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p>A short run on a fast train from Upper Greenock to Wemyss Bay was -followed by an hour’s journey on a boat crowded with passengers bound -for Rothesay. It was now the last day of June, and those who had rented -coast houses for the following month were flocking down from Glasgow and -other Clydeside industrial centres. In the midst of the crowd of gaily -dressed trippers all the members of the squad felt sensitive and shy and -stood huddled awkwardly together on deck; all but Micky’s Jim and the -strange men and women, who paraded up and down the deck, careless of the -eyes that were fixed upon them. Old Maire a Glan was praying, her rosary -hidden under her shawl; Dermod Flynn was looking over the rail into the -water, his main interest in turning away being to keep the naked knee -that peeped through his torn trousers hidden from the sight of the -elegantly dressed trippers. Norah envied the young girls who chattered -noisily to and fro, envied them their fine hats and brave dresses, their -elegant shoes and the wonderful sparkling things that decorated their -necks and wrists. What a splendid vision for the girl’s eyes! the hot -sun overhead in a sky of blue, the water glancing brightly as the boat -cut through it; the fair women, the well-dressed men, the band playing -on deck, the glitter, the charm and the happiness! The girl could hardly -realise that such beauty existed, though once she had seen a picture of -a scene something like this in one of the books which Fergus used to -read at home. Poor girl! the water was still running down her stockings, -her clothes were ragged and dirty, and the boy, her youthful lover, was -hiding his naked knee by turning to the rail!<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a></p> - -<p>Opposite the crowd in which Norah stood, a group of five -persons—father, mother and their children, a son and two -daughters—were sitting on camp-stools. The man, bubble-bellied and -short, had taken off his hat, and in the sunlight beads of sweat -glittered on his bald head like crystals in a white limestone facing. -His wife, a plump, good-looking woman, who seemed full of a haughty -self-esteem, gazed critically through a lorgnette on the unkempt workers -and sniffed contemptuously as if something had displeased her when her -examinations came to an end. The three little things regarded them -wonderingly for a moment and afterwards began to ply first the father -and then the mother with questions about the strange folk who were -aboard the boat. But the parents, finding that the children were -speaking too loudly, bade them be silent, and the little ones, getting -no answer to their questions, began to puzzle over this and wonder who -and what were the queer, ragged people sitting opposite.</p> - -<p>The girls, taking into account the contemptuous stare which their mother -fixed on the members of the squad, came to the conclusion that the -beings who were dressed so differently from themselves were really other -species of men and women altogether and were far inferior to those who -wore starched collars and gold ornaments.</p> - -<p>The boy, an undersized little fellow with sharp, twinkling eyes, looked -at his father when putting his questions, but the old man pulled a -paper—<i>The Christian Guide</i>—from his pocket and, burying himself in -it, took no notice of the youngster’s queries.</p> - -<p>The boy solved the question for himself in the curious incomplete way -which is peculiar to a child.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know who they are,” he said, “but I’d like to play with -them—that old lady who’s moving something under her shawl and speakin’ -to herself, with the nice<a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a> young lady, with the man with the hump and -the fiddle; with every one of them.”</p> - -<p>Gourock Ellen was speaking to Micky’s Jim.</p> - -<p>“Have ye ever slept under a bridge with the wind chillin’ ye to the -bone?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“No. Why?”</p> - -<p>“That’s where I slept last night,” said Ellen fiercely. “Isn’t that a -pretty dress that that woman has, Jim?”</p> - -<p>“And Annie?” Jim asked, putting a match to the eternal pipe.</p> - -<p>“She slept along wi’ me,” Ellen replied. “Blood is warm even when it -runs thin.”</p> - -<p>“If ye had the price of that lady’s dress, ye’d not have to sleep out -for a week of Sundays,” said Jim, pointing to the woman with the -lorgnette. “See her brats too! Look how they’re glowerin’ at Norah -Ryan!”</p> - -<p>“The children are very pretty,” said the woman, and a slight touch of -regret softened her harsh voice. Perhaps for the moment she longed for -the children which might have been hers if all had gone well. “Norah -Ryan is a very soncy wench, isn’t she, Jim?” she went on. “What is the -bald man readin’?”</p> - -<p>“<i>Christian Guide</i>,” said Jim, who spent a whole year at school and who -could read a little.</p> - -<p>“I ken him well,” said Ellen, assuming a knowing look and winking -slightly. “It was years ago, he was young—and ye ken yerself.”</p> - -<p>“Phew!” Jim whistled, taking the pipe from his mouth and lowering the -left eyelid. “He was one of them sort?... <i>Christian Guide</i>, indeed!... -A decent man, now, I suppose, and would hardly pass a word with ye!”</p> - -<p>“I’m not as good lookin’ as I was.”</p> - -<p>“If ye told old baldhead’s wife what ye told me what would she say?”<a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a></p> - -<p>“Oh! I wadna dae that, Jim. He always paid on the nail.”</p> - -<p>“<i>Christian Guide</i>,” sniggered Jim, hurrying to the rail and spitting -into the water.</p> - -<p>“There are some great dresses on those people,” said Maire a Glan, -nipping Dermod Flynn on the thigh with her finger and thumb. “See that -woman sittin’ there with the bald-headed man. Her dress is a good one. -All the money that ye earned for two whole years in Tyrone would hardly -put flounces on it; wouldn’t flounce it, as the man said.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe not,” said Dermod, turning round slightly, but still standing in -such a way that his bare knee was concealed from everybody on board.</p> - -<p>“It’s a great dress, a grand dress and a dress for a queen,” Maire a -Glan went on. “Look at the difference between it and the dress that -Gourock Ellen is wearin’!”</p> - -<p>“Just so,” said Dermod, peeping at the exposed kneecap. “Could ye give -me a needle and thread this night, Maire a Glan?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“I could, indeed, Dermod,” said the old woman. “That wife of the -bald-headed man is a fine soncy-lookin’ stump of a woman.”</p> - -<p>“Is she better-lookin’ than Gourock Ellen?” asked Dermod with a laugh.</p> - -<p>“Ye are droll, Dermod,” said Maire a Glan, nipping the boy’s thigh -again. “D’ye know where Gourock Ellen slept last night? Under a cold -bridge with the winds of heaven whistlin’ through the eye of it.”</p> - -<p>“Could she not have gone into some house?”</p> - -<p>“House, child? Ye are not in Ireland here!”</p> - -<p>“When a poor man comes to our house at night, he always gets a bed till -the mornin’,” said Norah Ryan, who was listening to the conversation. -“And a bit and sup as well!”<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a></p> - -<p>“It’s only God and the poor who help the poor,” said the old woman. “And -here’s the rain comin’ again, as the man said. It will be a bad day this -to plough on our knees through the wet fields, bad luck be with them!”</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p>A farmer with a bulbous nose and red whiskers met the squad on Rothesay -pier. He wore a black jacket which, being too narrow round the -shoulders, had split open half way down the back, a corduroy waistcoat, -very tight trousers, patched at the knees and caked brown with clotted -earth. This man was seated on the sideboard of a large waggon, removing -the dirt from his clothes with a heavy, double-bladed clasp-knife.</p> - -<p>“Good-day,” said Micky’s Jim, coming off the boat and stepping up to the -man on the waggon.</p> - -<p>“Good-day,” answered the man without lifting his head or looking at the -speaker.</p> - -<p>“Will ye take the waggon nearer the boat, or will we carry up the -bundles to here?” asked Jim, blowing a puff of white smoke into the air.</p> - -<p>“Carry them up, of course,” said the farmer, still busy with his -clasp-knife.</p> - -<p>Jim set his squad to work, and soon the waggon was loaded with bundles -of clothes, frying-pans, tea-caddies, tins, bowls, and other articles -necessary for the workers during the coming months. In addition to the -stores taken from Ireland by the potato-diggers the merchant supplied -them with blankets, an open stove, and a pot for boiling potatoes. It -was now raining heavily; the drops splashed loudly on the streets, ran -down the faces and soaked through the clothes of the workers. The rain -struck heavily against the waggon; a hot steam rose from<a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a> the withers of -the cart-horse; the pier was almost deserted and everything looked -lonesome and gloomy.</p> - -<p>So far the farmer had taken very little notice of anybody; but now, -having observed Norah Ryan, he shouted: “Ye have a fine leg, lassie!” -and afterwards, while the cart was being loaded, he kept repeating this -phrase and chuckling deep down in his throat. Whenever he made the -remark he looked at the girl, and Norah felt uncomfortable and blushed -every time he spoke.</p> - -<p>Dermod Flynn, who had taken a sudden dislike to the man with the bulbous -nose, now felt sorry for Norah and angry with the man. At last, unable -to restrain his passion any longer, he stepped up to the side of the -waggon and looked straight in the face of the farmer, who was packing -the blankets in one corner of the vehicle, and shouted: “Here, Red Nose, -don’t try and make fun of yer betters!” The farmer straightened himself -up, rested his thumb on his jaw and pulled a long black finger through -his beard.</p> - -<p>“All right,” he said at last, and did not speak another word to anybody -else that day.</p> - -<p>Dermod, who had looked for an outburst, felt frightened when the farmer -became silent.</p> - -<p>“Jim, what’s wrong with that man?” he asked his ganger when the cart -started on its journey home with the farmer sitting in front, waving his -whip vigorously, but refraining from hitting the horse.</p> - -<p>“He’s mad,” said Jim in a whisper.</p> - -<p>“Mad?”</p> - -<p>“As a March hare, as an Epiphany cock, as a —— He’s very mad, and was in -the madhouse last year when we were digging on the farm. It takes very -little to set him off. Maybe he’s goin’ mad now; one never knows.”</p> - -<p>“It was very good of you to stand up for me,” said Norah to Dermod about -an hour later, when the party<a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a> came in sight of the farmhouse. “Ye have -the kind heart, and that farmer isn’t a nice man. I don’t like the looks -of him!”</p> - -<p>“He’s mad——”</p> - -<p>“Mother of God!”</p> - -<p>“—— as an Epiphany cock! He was in the madhouse last year.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe he’ll do ye some harm one day!”</p> - -<p>“Will he?” asked Dermod, squaring his shoulders and instinctively -tightening his fists. Somehow he felt wonderfully elated since he had -spoken to the farmer on the waggon.<a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV<br /><br /> -<small>DRUDGERY</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">N</span><small>EW</small> potatoes were urgently needed and the potato merchant told Jim to -get as many as possible dug on the first afternoon. No sooner had the -squad come to the farmhouse than they were shown out to the fields where -the green shaws, heavy with rain, lay in matted clusters across the -drills. Every step taken relieved the green vegetable matter of an -enormous amount of water, which splashed all over the workers as they -stumbled along to their toil.</p> - -<p>Work started. The men threw out the potatoes with short three-pronged -graips; the women girt bags round their waists, went down on their knees -and followed the diggers, picking up the potatoes which they threw out. -Two basin-shaped wicker baskets without handles were supplied to each -woman; one basket for the good potatoes and the other for “brock,” -pig-food.</p> - -<p>“It’s the devil’s job, as the man said,” old Maire a Glan remarked as -she furrowed her way through the slushy earth. “What d’ye think of it, -Judy Farrel?” But Judy, struggling with a potato stem, did not deign to -answer.</p> - -<p>Maire was a hard worker; and it was her boast that she never had had a -day’s illness in her life. The story had got abroad that she never -missed a stitch in a stocking while giving birth to twins, and the woman -never contradicted<a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a> the story. She gathered after Eamon Doherty’s -“graip”; old Eamon with a head rising to a point almost and a very short -temper.</p> - -<p>Biddy Wor, the mother of seven children, “all gone now to all the seven -ends of the world,” as she often pathetically remarked, gathered the -potatoes that Murtagh Gallagher threw out. Biddy’s hair was as white as -snow, except on her chin, where a dozen or more black hairs stood out as -stiffly as if they were starched.</p> - -<p>Owen Kelly, another of the diggers, was very miserly and was eternally -complaining of a pain in the back. Micky’s Jim assured him that a wife -was the best cure in the world for a sore back. But Owen, skinflint that -he was, considered a wife very costly property and preferred to live -without one. He dug for Judy Farrel, the stunted little creature with -the cough. She was a very quiet little woman, Judy, had very little to -say and, when speaking, spoke as if her mouth was full of something. -When pulling the heavy baskets, weighted with the wet clay, she moaned -constantly like a child in pain.</p> - -<p>Two sisters worked in the squad, Dora and Bridget Doherty, cheery girls, -who spoke a lot, laughed easily, and who were similar in appearance and -very ugly. Dora worked with Connel Dinchy, son of Oiney Dinchy, an -eel-stomached youth over six foot in height and barely measuring -thirty-four inches round the chest. He was a quiet, inoffensive fellow, -who laughed down in his throat, and every fortnight he sent all his -wages home to his parents. Bridget Doherty gathered potatoes for one of -the strange men. Both girls were blood relations of Murtagh Gallagher. -The other strange man worked in conjunction with Gourock Ellen; Norah -Ryan gathered for Willie the Duck; and Ellen’s companion, who was known -as Annie—simply Annie—crawled in the clay after Thady Scanlon, a first -cousin of Micky’s Jim. When the baskets<a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a> were full, Dermod Flynn emptied -the potatoes into large barrels supplied for the purpose.</p> - -<p>The women worked hard, trying to keep themselves warm. Norah Ryan became -weary very soon. The rain formed into a little pond in the hollow of her -dress where it covered the calves of her legs. Seeing that the rest of -the women were rising from time to time and shaking the water off their -clothes, she followed their example, and when standing, a slight -dizziness caused her to reel unsteadily and she almost overbalanced and -fell. She went down on her knees hurriedly, as she did not want Micky’s -Jim to see her tottering. If this was noticed he might think her unfit -for the job. For the rest of the afternoon she crawled steadily, fearing -to rise, and wondered how Gourock Ellen, who was giving voice to a loose -and humorous song, could sing on such a day. What troubled Norah most -were the sharp pebbles that came in contact with her knees as she -dragged herself along. They seemed to pierce through rags and flesh at -each movement, and at times she could hardly refrain from crying aloud -on account of the pain. Before night, and when she knew that her knees -were bleeding, she had become almost indifferent to bodily discomforts.</p> - -<p>All the time she was filled with an insatiable longing for home. The -farm looked out on the Clyde—the river was a grey blur seen through the -driving rain, and a boat passing by attracted her attention.</p> - -<p>“Is it an Irish boat?” she asked Willie the Duck, who was whistling -softly to himself.</p> - -<p>“Aye, sure,” answered Willie without raising his head.</p> - -<p>“I wish that I was goin’ home in it,” she said plaintively.</p> - -<p>“Ireland’s much better than this dirty country,” said Maire a Glan, -speaking loud enough for the Scotchwoman Annie to hear her.<a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a></p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span><small>HEN</small> six o’clock came round Jim pulled out his watch, looked at it -severely for a moment and shouted: “Down graips and run home to yer warm -supper!”</p> - -<p>“Home!” repeated Maire a Glan, rising awkwardly to her knees. “Mother of -Jesus; it is a home! An old byre and no less, as the man said. Shame be -on ye, Micky’s Jim!”</p> - -<p>“We have no grub and no siller,” said Gourock Ellen, rising briskly and -loosing the claycoated sack from around her waist. “I’m up to my thighs -in clabber,” she added.</p> - -<p>“We’ll not let ye starve as long as there’s a bit at all goin’,” said -Micky’s Jim.</p> - -<p>“We’d be pigs if we ate all ourselves when other people have nothin’,” -remarked Maire a Glan.</p> - -<p>When the squad went back to the farm a ploughman, a flat-footed, surly -fellow with a hare-lip, showed them their quarters in the steading. -“First I’ll show ye where ye’re to roost,” said the man, and led the way -into an evil-smelling byre, the roof of which was covered with cobwebs, -the floor with dung. A young fellow, with a cigarette in his mouth, was -throwing the manure through a trap-door into a vault underneath. On both -sides of the sink, which ran up the middle, was a row of stalls, each -stall containing two iron stanchions to which chains used for tying -cattle were fastened.</p> - -<p>“No need to tie any of ye to the chains, is there?” asked the man with -the hare-lip, laughing loudly. “When ye go to bed at night, close the -trap-door,” he continued. “It will keep the smell of the midden away -from you!”</p> - -<p>“Aye, sure,” said Willie the Duck.<a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a></p> - -<p>“Oh! ye’re here again, are ye?” asked the ploughman. “Have ye got the -music murderer with ye? This way to see where yer eatin’ room is,” said -the man, without waiting to hear Willie the Duck’s answer to his -question.</p> - -<p>The byre was built on the shoulder of a hillock; the midden was situated -in a grotto hollowed underneath. Behind the dung-hill, in the grotto, -the three-legged stove was standing, and already a fire which old Eamon -Doherty had kindled was sparkling merrily.</p> - -<p>“Watch yersel’!” shouted the ploughman to Dermod Flynn, who was crossing -the dung-hill on the way towards the fire. “That young rascal above will -throw down a graipful of dung on yer head if ye’re not careful.”</p> - -<p>Maire a Glan filled the pot with clean white potatoes and placed them -over the blaze. The ploughman sat down on an upended box and lit his -pipe; Micky’s Jim took the squad back to the byre, which was now fairly -clean, and proceeded to make bunks for the night. Four or five level -boxes were placed on the floor of each stall, a pile of hay was -scattered about on top, and over this was spread two or three bags sewn -together in the form of a sheet; sacks filled with straw served as -pillows, a single blanket was given to each person, and two of the party -had to sleep in each stall.</p> - -<p>“Who’s goin’ to sleep with me?” asked Micky’s Jim.</p> - -<p>“I will,” said Murtagh Gallagher.</p> - -<p>“Ye snore like a pig!”</p> - -<p>“What about me?” asked Owen Kelly.</p> - -<p>“Ye kick like a colt.”</p> - -<p>“Will I do?” asked Willie the Duck.</p> - -<p>“Ye do!” cried Micky’s Jim, “ye that was chased out of the graveyard -with a squad of worms. None of ye will sleep with me; Dermod Flynn is -the man I want. Help me to make the bed, Dermod Flynn,” he said to the -youth who was standing beside him.<a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a></p> - -<p>“It’s a fine place, this,” said Gourock Ellen as she spread a pile of -hay over the boxes in the stalls. “A gey guid place!”</p> - -<p>“D’ye know who slept in that stall last night?” asked Jim.</p> - -<p>“A heifer like mysel’ maybe,” said Ellen. “And indeed it had a muckle -better place than I had under the bridge.”</p> - -<p>“The potatoes are nearly ready,” shouted Maire a Glan, sticking her -wrinkled head round the corner of the door.</p> - -<p>There was a hurried rush down to the midden. Boxes were upended to serve -as seats, the maid-servant at the farm came out in brattie,<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> -shorgun,<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a> and brogues, and sold milk at a penny a pint to the diggers. -All, with the exception of Annie, Ellen, and Owen Kelly, bought a -pennyworth; Micky’s Jim bought a pennyworth for Ellen, Maire a Glan -shared her milk with Annie, and Owen Kelly bought only a halfpennyworth, -half of which he kept for his breakfast on the following morning.</p> - -<p>The potatoes were not ready yet; the water bubbled and spluttered in the -pot and shot out in little short spurts on every side. Ellen complained -of her legs; they had been horribly gashed during the day and were now -terribly sore. She lifted up her clothes as far as her thighs and rubbed -a wet cloth over the wounds. Micky’s Jim tittered; Dermod Flynn blushed, -turned away his head and looked at Norah Ryan. Ellen noticed this and, -smiling sarcastically, began to hum:</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“When I was a wee thing and lived wi’ my granny,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Oh! it’s many a caution my granny gied me;<br /></span> -<span class="i1">She said: ‘Now, be wise and beware of the boys,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">And don’t let yer petticoats over yer knee!’ ”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a></p> - -<p class="nind">As she finished the song, Ellen winked at Micky’s Jim and Jim winked -back. Then she hit her thigh with her hand and shouted: “Not a bad leg -that for an old one, is it?”</p> - -<p>The potatoes were now emptied into a wicker basket, the water running -through the bottom into the midden. The men and women sat round the -basket, their little tins of milk in their hands, and proceeded to eat -their supper. The potato was held in the left hand, and stripped of its -jacket with the nail of the right thumb. Gourock Ellen used a knife when -peeling, Willie the Duck ate potato, pelt and all.</p> - -<p>While they were sitting an old, wrinkled, and crooked man came across -the top of the dung-hill, sinking into it almost up to his knees and -approached the fire. His clothes were held on by strings, he wore a pair -of boots differing one from the other in size, shape, and colour. Indeed -they were almost without shape, and the old man’s toes, pink, with black -nails, showed through the uppers.</p> - -<p>Gourock Ellen handed him three large potatoes from the basket.</p> - -<p>“God bless ye, for it’s yerself that has the kindly heart, decent -woman,” said the old fellow in a feeble voice, and he began to eat his -potatoes hurriedly like a dog. Dermod handed him part of a tin of milk -and blushed at the profuse thanks of the stranger.</p> - -<p>“It’s a fine warm place that ye are inside of this night,” said the old -fellow when he had finished his meal.</p> - -<p>“It’s a rotten place,” said Dermod Flynn.</p> - -<p>“It’s better nor lyin’ under a hedge,” answered the old man.</p> - -<p>“Or under a bridge,” Gourock Ellen remarked, lifting her dress again; -then, as if some modest thought had struck her, dropping it suddenly.</p> - -<p>“Why do ye lie under a hedge?” Dermod asked, and<a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a> the old man thereupon -gave a rambling account of his misfortunes, which included a sore back -and inability to labour along with sound men. He had come from Mayo -years ago and had worked at many a hard job since then, both in England -and Scotland. Now that he was a homeless old man nobody at all wanted -him.</p> - -<p>When the party went up to the byre he stretched out his old thin limbs -by the fire and fell into the easy slumber of old age. Suddenly he awoke -with a start to find the fire still burning brightly and a beautiful -girl with long hair flung over her shoulders looking at him. It was -Norah Ryan; the old man thought for a moment that he was looking at an -angel.</p> - -<p>“God be good to me!” he cried, crossing himself; “but who is yerself?” -Then as recollection brought him a face seen at the fire, he exclaimed: -“Arrah, sure it’s yerself that is the colleen I was after seein’ sittin’ -here a minute ago. Now, isn’t it a good cheery fire?”</p> - -<p>“Have ye any home to go to?” asked Norah.</p> - -<p>“Never a home,” said the old man, resting one elbow in the ashes. “There -is nothin’ but the rainy roads and the hardships for a man like me.”</p> - -<p>“But could ye not get inside of some house for the night?”</p> - -<p>“God look on yer wit!” said the old fellow, laughing feebly. “Ye’re just -new over, I’ll warrant, and ye haven’t come to learn that they have -forgotten all about kindness in this country. They do not want the man -with no roof-tree over his head here. They’re all black and bitter -Protestants.”</p> - -<p>“So I heard say.”</p> - -<p>“Ye’ll be one of the right sort, I’ll go bail.”</p> - -<p>“I’m a Catholic.”</p> - -<p>“Ah! that’s it! The Catholics are the best, and <a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a>I’m one meself just as -ye are, girsha. Have ye a penny to spare for one of yer own kind?”</p> - -<p>“Are ye goin’ back to Ireland again?” asked Norah, drawing the -weasel-skin purse from the pocket of her steaming dress.</p> - -<p>“If only I had the price of the boat, I’d go in a minute,” said the man, -fixing greedy eyes on the purse which Norah held in her hand. “But I’m -very poor, and mind ye I’m one of yer own sort. Maybe ye have a sixpence -to spare,” he said.</p> - -<p>Norah possessed a two-shilling piece, all the money she had in the -world, and she needed it badly herself. But the desire to help the old -man overmastered her, and she handed him the florin. Followed by the -garrulous thanks of her penniless countryman she hurried back to the -byre, feeling in some curious way ashamed of her kindness.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p>A candle fixed on the top of a stanchion threw a dim light over the -byre, and long black shadows danced on roof and wall. A strong, -unhealthy odour pervaded the whole building; the tap at one end was -running, and as the screw had been broken the water could not be turned -off. Micky’s Jim sat in a cattle-trough sewing bags together with a -packing needle; these were to be used as a quilt. Dermod Flynn, who was -undressing, slipped beneath the blankets with his trousers still on as -Norah Ryan came in, but Willie the Duck, stripped to the pelt, stood for -a moment laughing stupidly, the guttering candle lighting up his narrow, -hairy face and sunken chest.</p> - -<p>Old Owen Kelly was already in bed.<a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a></p> - -<p>“This place is a lot better than where we slept last year,” he called to -Micky’s Jim.</p> - -<p>“Where did ye sleep last year?” asked Dermod Flynn.</p> - -<p>“In the pig-sty,” said Jim. “We were almost eaten alive by the blue -lice.”</p> - -<p>The women undressed in the shadow at the far end of the stalls, and from -time to time Micky’s Jim peeped round the corner. When the women looked -up he would shout out: “I see something,” and whistle lightly between -the thumb and middle finger of his right hand. The Irishwomen undressed -under the blankets, the two strange women, careless and indifferent to -the jibes of Micky’s Jim, stripped off to their chemises in full view of -the occupants of the byre. Annie and Gourock Ellen had quarrelled about -something; they were not going to sleep together that night.</p> - -<p>“Ye have to sleep with me, lass,” said Gourock Ellen to Norah.</p> - -<p>“All right,” said the young girl quietly, seeing no reason why she -should not sleep with a strange woman. As she spoke she went down on her -knees to say her prayers.</p> - -<p>“Say one prayer for me, just a short one,” said Ellen in a low tone.</p> - -<p>“All right, decent woman,” answered the girl.</p> - -<p>“I’ll put the light out now,” shouted Micky’s Jim after a short -interval. “The women will not be ashamed to go on takin’ off their -clothes now.”</p> - -<p>The light went out, but Jim suddenly relit the candle, and the guttering -blaze again flared weakly through the gloom. There was a hurried -movement of naked flesh in the women’s quarters and a precipitate -scampering under the blankets.</p> - -<p>“That was a mortal sin, Micky’s Jim,” Norah Ryan said in a low voice, -and in her tones there was a suspicion of tears.<a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI<br /><br /> -<small>LITTLE LOVES</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>O</small> Norah Ryan the days passed by, at first remorselessly slow, burdened -with longings and regrets, clogged with cares and sorrows which pressed -heavily on her young heart. Each passing day was very much like that -which had gone before, all had their homesickness and longings. She -wanted so much to be back in her own home, picking cockles from the -Frosses strand or driving the cattle into the shallow water when the -heat of summer put the wild madness into their dry hooves.</p> - -<p>All day long she trailed in the fields, her knees sore, and the sharp, -flinty pebbles cutting them to the bone; and at night when she undressed -she found her petticoats and stockings covered with blood. Gourock Ellen -showed a great interest in the girl, bathed Norah’s knees often, and -when near a druggist’s bought liniments and ointments which she applied -to the wounds. Usually the sores, though they healed a little during the -night, broke afresh when work started again in the morning, and six -weeks went by before the girl hardened sufficiently to resist the rough -pressure of the stones which she had to crawl over when at her work in -the fields. Her hands also troubled her for a while; they became hacked -and swollen and pained her intensely when she washed them at close of<a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a> -evening. Gradually these physical discomforts passed away, and with them -went many of the girl’s regrets and much of her homesickness. True, she -wished to be back with her mother again, and that wish, unable to be -gratified, caused her many poignant heartaches which she bravely -concealed from her companions. Every Sunday afternoon she sat down and -wrote a long letter home, telling her mother of the wonderful land -across the water and the curious things which were to be seen there. Her -mother, not being able to read or write, answered very seldom, and her -letters were all penned by the new master of Glenmornan schoolhouse.</p> - -<p>The members of the squad lived a very stirring life, changing almost -weekly from one farm to another, travelling on fast trains and wonderful -steamers. But in the midst of all this excitement Maire a Glan never -forgot to tell her beads, Owen Kelly to save up his money, Micky’s Jim -to swear about nothing in particular, and Norah never forgot to speak -about home when any of the Frosses people were in the mood to listen. -Dermod Flynn, ever eager to hear about all that had passed in his two -years’ absence, was a ready talker on matters that concerned the people -of Glenmornan and Frosses. But in other respects he was still the same -dreamy youth who had spent the greater part of his time at school in -gazing out of the window. Even now he would sometimes forget his work -for a long while to gaze at a worm which he picked up from the ground -and held between his finger and thumb. Whenever Micky’s Jim saw this he -would assert that Flynn was rapidly going mad. Norah herself often -wished that Dermod would not take such an interest in things which, when -all was said and done, were useless and made the boy the laughing-stock -of the whole squad. But she always felt sorry for him when the rest of -the party laughed at his oddities. Why should she care if everybody in -the<a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a> country laughed at a fool who took a great interest in common -worms? she often asked herself. But never was the girl able to find a -satisfactory answer to this question.</p> - -<p>Dermod had a curious habit of going out into the fields and lying down -on the green sod when the evening was a good one and when the day’s work -was done. Norah noticed this and often wondered what he did and thought -of when by himself. The youth fascinated the girl in some strange way; -this fascination she could not explain and dared not combat. She even -felt afraid of him; he thronged into her mind, banished all other -thoughts and reigned supreme in her imagination. Sometimes, indeed, she -wished that he were gone from the squad altogether; he made her so -uncomfortable. He said such strange things, too. Once he remarked that -there was no God, and Norah knew instinctively that he meant what he -said; not like Micky’s Jim, who often said that there was no Creator, -merely with the object of startling those to whom he was speaking. If -Dermod did things like other people, if he played cards, passed jests, -she would not fear him so much. Even now, when he spoke to her of home, -there was a strange intensity in his voice that often unnerved her.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span><small>NE</small> evening in September Dermod Flynn stole away from the fire as was -his custom and sat down in a field near the sea, where he was speedily -buried in the quiet isolation of his own thoughts. Norah Ryan followed -him; why, she did not know. Something seemed to compel her to go after -the youth: a certain wild pleasure surged through her, she felt as if -she could run and sing out to the light airs that fanned her cheeks as -she moved along. Presently, looking through a row of hazel<a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a> bushes that -hemmed the farmhouse, she espied him, lying on the green grass, -seemingly lost to everything and gazing upwards into the blue heavens -where the first early star was flickering faintly through the soft loom -of the evening. Below him the Clyde widened out to the sea and a few -black boats were heaving slowly on the tide. As if under the spell of a -power which she could not resist, Norah Ryan parted the boughs of the -hazel copse and stood before Dermod Flynn.</p> - -<p>“Is it here, Dermod, that ye are, lookin’ at the sea?” she asked -involuntarily.</p> - -<p>“I was lookin’ at the star above me,” he replied.</p> - -<p>Norah wore a soft grey tweed dress that became her well. She had bought -it in Greenock a week before, and when Dermod looked at the dress with a -critical eye she wondered why she had put it on. But his look turned to -one of admiration when his eye fell on the sweet face of the young girl, -the eyes gentle and wistful, the white neck and the pure brow half -hidden by the brown ruffled tresses. Something leapt into the heart of -the young man, a thought which he could not put into words flashed -through his mind, held him tense for a moment and then flitted away.</p> - -<p>“Why do you keep watchin’ me?” Norah enquired.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know,” Dermod answered, lowering his eyes. “D’ye mind the night -on the Derry boat?” he asked. “All that night when you were asleep I had -your hand in mine.”</p> - -<p>“I mind it very well,” she said, and a slight blush stole into her -cheeks. They clasped hands, the girl’s fingers stole over Dermod’s and -their eyes met. For a moment it seemed as if one or the other was going -to speak, but no voice broke the stillness. The fear had now gone from -Norah’s heart; it seemed quite natural to her that she should be there -clasping the hand of that ragged youth<a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a> who always attracted and -fascinated her. That she should desire to sit beside him, to press his -hands so very tightly, did not appear strange to her and above all did -not appear wrong. Dermod saw in her eyes a childlike admiration, a look -half a child’s and half a woman’s. A vague longing, something which he -could not comprehend and which caused him a momentary pang of fear, rose -in his heart. What he had to be afraid of he did not know, as he knelt -there in spirit before the most holy sanctuary in the world, the -sanctuary of chaste and beautiful womanhood.</p> - -<p>Many evenings they met together in the same way; they became more -intimate, more friendly, and Norah found that her fear of Dermod was -gradually passing away. When evenings were wet they sat in the byre or -cart-shed, where the fire burned brightly, and talked about Glenmornan -and the people at home. One day Micky’s Jim said that he himself had -once a notion of Norah Ryan. When Dermod heard this he flushed hotly. -Norah’s cheeks got very red and Jim laughed loudly.</p> - -<p>“I have no time for them sort of capers now,” said Jim. “Ye can have her -all to yerself, Dermod, and people like yerselves will be always doin’ -the silly thing, indeed ye will!”<a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII<br /><br /> -<small>A GAME OF CARDS</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">M</span><small>ICKY</small>’s Jim was telling the story of a fight in which he had taken part -and how he knocked down a man twice as heavy as himself with one on the -jaw. Owen Kelly, Gourock Ellen, Dermod, and Norah were the listeners. -The squad had just changed quarters from a farm on which they had been -engaged to the one on which they were now, and it was here that they -were going to end the season. The farm belonged to a surly old man named -Morrison, a short-tempered fellow, always at variance with the squad, -whom he did not like.</p> - -<p>Jim was telling the story in the cart-shed. A blazing fire lit up the -place, shadows danced along the roof, outside a slight rain was falling -and the wind blew mournfully in from the hayricks that stood up like -shrouded ghosts in the gloomy stack yard. Presently a man entered, a -red-haired fellow with a limp in one leg and a heavy stick in his hand. -He was a stranger to Norah and Dermod, but the rest of the squad knew -him well and were pleased to see the man with the limp. Owen Kelly, -however, grunted something on seeing the stranger, and a look, certainly -not of pleasure, passed across his face.</p> - -<p>“How are ye, Ginger Dubbin?” Micky’s Jim shouted to the visitor. “By -this and by that ye look well on it.”<a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a></p> - -<p>“The bad are always well fed,” said Owen Kelly in a low voice.</p> - -<p>“Have ye the devil’s prayer-book with ye, Ginger?” asked Micky’s Jim.</p> - -<p>“Here it is,” said the man, drawing a pack of cards from his pocket and -running his hands along the edge of it.</p> - -<p>“We’ll have a bit of the Gospel of Chance,” said Murtagh Gallagher.</p> - -<p>“It’s no game for Christians,” remarked Owen Kelly, picking his teeth -with a splinter of wood.</p> - -<p>“D’ye know why Owen Kelly doesn’t like Ginger Dubbin?” Gourock Ellen -asked Dermod Flynn in a whisper. “No? Then I’ll tell ye, but never let -dab about it. Four years ago Ginger, drunken old scamp that he is, came -here and played cards with Owen, and Owen won at first, three shillin’s -in all. Then he began to lose and lost half a crown of the money that he -had won. ‘My God!’ said old Owen, and he was nearly greetin’; ‘My God! -that I have ever lived to see this day!’ He has never played since that. -D’ye play, Dermod?”</p> - -<p>“I used to play for buttons in Ireland.”</p> - -<p>“It’s a bad thing they are, the cards,” said Norah Ryan.</p> - -<p>“Turn it up or I’ll gie ye a dunt in the lug!” Micky’s Jim was shouting -to Willie the Duck, who was helping to turn the body of a disused cart -upside down.</p> - -<p>“Aye, sure,” said Willie the Duck, but as he spoke he fell prostrate on -his face, causing all who were watching him to burst into loud peals of -laughter.</p> - -<p>When the cart was laid down a game of banker commenced and most of the -squad joined in the game. Dermod Flynn watched the players for a little -space; then he rose to his feet.</p> - -<p>“Where are ye goin’?” Norah asked.<a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a></p> - -<p>“To look at the card-players.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t, Dermod!”</p> - -<p>“Why?”</p> - -<p>“Maybe ye’ll learn to play.”</p> - -<p>“And if I do?” There was a note of defiance in the boy’s voice, and it -was evident that Norah’s remarks had displeased him.</p> - -<p>“Well, do as you like,” said the girl in an injured tone. “But mind that -it’s a sin to play cards.”</p> - -<p>Dermod stretched himself, laughed and approached the table. Norah felt a -sudden fear overcome her: she wanted him back, and she was angry with -the cards—little squares of cardboard—that could lure Dermod away from -her side.</p> - -<p>He bent over the shoulder of Micky’s Jim, who was smoking and shouting -loudly. All the players, with the exception of Ginger Dubbin, were very -excited: Ginger hummed tunes with equal gusto whether winning or losing. -Most of the players used pence, but a few pieces of silver glittered on -the table, and Micky’s Jim had changed a sovereign. Dermod had never -gambled, although he had often played cards before; then the stakes were -merely buttons, that was not gambling; no one feels very vexed at having -lost a button. Something thrilled Dermod through as he looked at the -coins on the board; the two pieces of silver attracted him strongly. He -had one hand deep in his trousers’ pocket closing tightly over the money -in his possession. How exciting it would be to put something on that -card; he was certain that it would win! Dubbin turned up the card which -Dermod’s imagination pictured to be a good one, and showed an ace, the -winning card. If only he had staked a penny on it, Dermod thought! He -sat down beside Micky’s Jim and gazed across the board.<a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a></p> - -<p>“Another cut—for me,” he said, and his voice was a trifle husky. “I’m -going to play.”</p> - -<p>He put down a penny and won.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> farmer’s son came into the shed. He was a strongly built, handsome -lad of twenty-one, and was employed as a bank clerk in Paisley. It was -now Saturday. He always returned home on week-ends and spent Sunday on -his father’s farm. Eamon Doherty was very pleased to see young Morrison, -who was a great friend of his, and sometimes, when the squad went home -at the end of the year, Eamon stopped with Morrison senior and worked -over the winter on the farm.</p> - -<p>The squad interested young Morrison. “These strange, half-savage people -have a certain fascination for me,” he told his friends in town—young -men and women with great ideals and full of schemes and high purposes -for the reformation of the human race. Morrison belonged to a club, -famous for its erudite members, one of whom discovered a grammatical -error in a translation of Karl Marx’s <i>Kapital</i> and another who had -written a volume of verses, <i>Songs of the Day</i>. Young Morrison himself -was a thinker, a moralist, earnest and profound in his own estimation. -Coming into contact with the potato diggers on week-ends, he often -wondered why these people were treated like cattle wherever they took up -their temporary abode. Here, on his father’s farm, kindly old men, -lithe, active youths and pure and comely girls were housed like beasts -of burden. The young man often felt so sorry for them that he almost -wept for his own tenderness.</p> - -<p>Before entering the shed on this evening he had looked in at them from -the cover of the darkness outside. He<a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a> noticed the fire shining on their -faces, saw old Maire a Glan telling her beads, the card-players bent -over the cart, the young women knitting, and the two harridans, Gourock -Ellen and Annie, holding out their hacked hands to the blaze.</p> - -<p>The gamblers were so interested in their game that they took very little -notice of the young man when he entered the shed; even Eamon Doherty who -was playing had scant leisure to greet the new-comer. Morrison sat down -on an up-ended box beside Gourock Ellen, who was stretching out her -lean, claw-like fingers to the fire.</p> - -<p>“Good-evening, Ellen!” he cried jovially, for he knew the woman, and -sitting down, stretched out one delicate hand, on the middle finger of -which a ring glittered, to the stove.</p> - -<p>“It may be a guid e’en, but it’s gey cold,” said Ellen.</p> - -<p>“There are many new faces here,” said Morrison, looking into the corner -where Norah Ryan was sitting, sewing patches on her working dress. The -girl was deep in thought.</p> - -<p>“Why has Dermod gone away and left me for them cards?” she asked herself -and for a while sought in vain for an answer. Then when it came she -thrust it away angrily and refused to give it credence, although the -answer came from the depths of her own soul. “He cares more for the -cards than he cares for me.”</p> - -<p>She looked up and saw the glint of the fire on the ring which the -visitor wore, and noticed that he was looking at her. She had not -noticed the man before. Never had such a well-dressed person visited the -squad.</p> - -<p>“It’s Alec Morrison, the farmer’s son,” old Maire a Glan, who was -sitting beside the girl, whispered. “He just comes in here like one of -ourselves, as the man said. Just think of that and him a gentleman!”</p> - -<p>Norah bowed her head, for Morrison’s eyes were fixed<a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a> on her still. Why -did he keep staring at her? she asked herself and felt very -uncomfortable, but not displeased. And how that ring sparkled, too! It -must have cost a great amount of money.</p> - -<p>A wave of tenderness swept across Morrison as he looked at Norah. “She’s -too good for this sort of life,” he said inwardly as he noticed her -white brow, and the small delicate fingers in which she held the needle. -“It’s criminal to condemn a girl like her to such a life. The sanitary -authorities will not give my father permission to house his cattle in -the stall where that girl has now to sleep. That maiden to sleep there! -I, a man, who should be able to bear suffering and privation, sleep in -soft clothes that are clean and comfortable, and she has to lie in rags, -in straw, in a place that is not good enough for cattle. And all these -people are like myself, people with souls, feelings and passions....”</p> - -<p>“Have you just come to this country for the first time?” he asked Norah, -and when he put the question a sense of shame surged through him.</p> - -<p>“The first time,” answered the girl.</p> - -<p>“And you’ll not think much of Scotland?” he said.</p> - -<p>“People like yerself may like it,” said Maire a Glan; “but as for us, -it’s beyont talkin’ about.... In the last farm we had to sleep in a shed -that was full of rats. They ate our bits of food, aye, and our very -clothes. The floor was alive with wood-lice and worms.... The night -before we left the shed was flooded, and there was eighteen inches of -water on the floor. We had to rise from our beds in the bare pelt and -stand all night up to our knees in the cold water.... There’s Norah Ryan -getting red in the face as if it was her very own fault.”</p> - -<p>“Norah! What a pretty name,” said the young man. “And did she sleep in -that shed?”<a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a></p> - -<p>“The farmers think that we’re pigs,” said Maire a Glan harshly. “That’s -why they treat us like pigs.”</p> - -<p>“It’s wrong, very wrong,” said the young man, and his eyes were still -fixed on Norah. The girl wondered why he stared at her in such a manner. -He was handsome to look upon, clean-skinned, dark-eyed, and -well-dressed. She had never spoken to such a well-dressed man in all her -life before; but she felt frightened at something which she could not -understand and wished that the man was gone. An idea came to her that -she was doing something very wrong, and with this idea came fear, fear -of the unknown.</p> - -<p>Gourock Ellen, elbows on knees, her hands crossed over her breast and -her thumbs propping her chin, began to tell a story of one of her early -love affairs; how a man would not pay and how she took away his clothes -and vowed to send him out naked into the streets. Morrison listened -attentively and Norah, who did not understand the story fully, and who -was shocked at all she understood, wondered why the farmer’s son was not -horrified at this episode in the life of Ellen.</p> - -<p>About ten o’clock he rose to go and stood for a moment talking to -Micky’s Jim at the card-table. Norah examined him attentively. He was -well favoured and vigorous, and he spoke so nicely and quietly too!</p> - -<p>“Dermod Flynn is makin’ a fortune,” Jim was saying. Alec Morrison went -to the door; there he stood for a moment and looked back into the shed. -Norah glanced at the youth; their eyes met and both felt that this was -something which they desired.</p> - -<p>Morrison’s simplicity, his interest in the squad and his kindly remarks, -established a bond of sympathy between himself and Norah; but even yet -she could not understand why such a well-dressed youth had visited the -squalid shed in which the squad was staying. He seemed<a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a> out of place; he -could not feel at home in such dirty surroundings. And he had gazed so -earnestly at her: in his eyes was a look of appeal, of entreaty. It -seemed to Norah that it was in her power to bestow some favour on the -youth, give him some precious gift that he desired very earnestly. -Filled with a mixed emotion of pleasure and natural modesty, the girl -wondered if all that had happened was real and if it had any -significance for her.</p> - -<p>“The way he looked at me!” she murmured in a puzzled voice. “And him a -gentleman talking to us as if we were of his own kind! He must be very -learned. And why didn’t Dermod Flynn stay with me here, not runnin’ away -to them old cards!”</p> - -<p>She glanced at Dermod, whose face was flushed and whose fingers trembled -nervously as he placed a silver coin down on the gaming-table, and -instinctively it was borne to her that something black and ugly had -crept into the purity of the passion which attracted her towards the -Glenmornan youth.</p> - -<p>“The blame’s all on me,” she whispered, hardly realising what she was -saying, and began to turn over in her mind every incident of the evening -from the time when she first noticed Alec Morrison sitting by the fire -up till the present moment.</p> - -<p>“Did you see the way that the farmer’s son was watchin’ ye, Norah Ryan?” -Maire a Glan asked. “His two eyes were on ye all the time. He’ll be -havin’ a notion of ye.”</p> - -<p>“That he will,” said Gourock Ellen, and both women laughed loudly.</p> - -<p>“And Maire a Glan, the decent woman, says that,” Norah whispered to -herself and blushed. “And them laughin’ as if there was nothing wrong in -it. Then there’s no harm in me speakin’ to the farmer’s son.”</p> - -<p>At the table the game was now fast and furious. None of the players -heard the women’s remarks.<a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII<br /><br /> -<small>IN THE LANE</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span><small>UNDAY</small> afternoon of a week later.</p> - -<p>Alec Morrison was walking along a sheltered lane towards the house, his -hands deep in his trousers’ pockets, a cigarette between his lips, and -his mind dwelling on several things which had taken place the week -before. On Sundays he liked to walk alone when there was nothing -extraneous to distract his mind, and then to ponder over thoughts that -thronged his brain from time to time. He was a Progressive, and the -term, which might mean anything to the general public, to Morrison meant -all that was best in an age that, to him, was extremely reactionary and -lacking in earnestness of purpose and clarity of vision. The young man -believed that he, himself, realised all the beauty and all the -significance of life and the importance of the task allocated in it to -man. He also imagined that he possessed unlimited powers and that in the -advance of humanity towards perfection he was destined to play an -important part. Most young men of sanguine temperament, who read a -little, paint a little, and write a little, have at times hallucinations -of this kind. The young man’s pet idea was that he, by some inscrutable -decree of Fate, had been appointed to show the working classes the road -towards a better life, towards enlightenment and prosperity.<a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a></p> - -<p>Up till very recently (he was now twenty-one) he had taken no notice of -the great class to which he did not belong. He lived in middle-class -society, was cradled in its smug self-conceit and nourished at the -breasts of affectation. He spent many years at school and now realised -that he had wasted his time there. After leaving school he entered a -bank in Paisley and spent a number of hours daily bending over a desk, -copying interminable figures with a weary pen.</p> - -<p>Seeing the conditions under which labourers wrought on his father’s farm -caused him to think seriously. Once when he was at home two persons, a -man and a woman, Donal and Jean, supposed to be husband and wife, got -employment in the steading. These two people were very ragged, very -dirty, and very dissolute. The woman’s face was hacked in a terrible -manner; her nose had been broken, and her figure looked more like a -maltreated animal’s than a human being’s. The man was low-set, stunted, -and weedy. Both drew their wages daily and got drunk every night. One -night when they had returned from a neighbouring village Morrison saw -them in their sleeping quarters. A disused pig-sty, no longer tenable -for animals, was handed over to these creatures. A pile of dirty straw -lay on the floor and on this the man and woman were sleeping, the man -snoring loudly, the woman lying face upwards; the blunt nails of her -bleeding fingers showed over the filthy bags which covered her body. A -guttering candle was dying in the neck of a beer-bottle beside them and -the smell of beer pervaded the place.</p> - -<p>“It must be an awful life, this,” he said to his father, who accompanied -him.</p> - -<p>“These kind of people think nothin’ of it,” his father said. “They get -drunk every night and are very happy. Whisky is the only thing they -want.”<a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a></p> - -<p>“Yes, they want something like that to live in a place like this.”</p> - -<p>What struck the young man forcibly at that moment was that the people -were like himself; that under certain conditions he might be just as -they were, even like the man lying under the dirty bag by the side of -the pockmarked harridan; and that man under favourable conditions might -be himself, Morrison, and full of glorious dreams for the betterment of -the race to which he belonged.</p> - -<p>That night Morrison slept little, and when sleep came he dreamt that he -lay with the old harridan under the dirty coverlet, his arms round her -and his lips pressed against the dry and almost bloodless lips of the -woman. In the morning the remembrance of the dream filled him with -horror. That such people should exist; that, under certain conditions, -he might be the man lying there in the pig-sty! He began to think -seriously of things. Then he came across a woman in Paisley—a woman who -belonged to the club of which he was a member—a woman whom he thought -was different to all others. She was progressive and pronounced in her -views and explained to Morrison how society from top to bottom, from -hall to hovel, from robes to rags, was an expression of injustice, of -wrong, of vice, of filth and moral decrepitude, and that in the interest -of the future race the social system had to be changed and society to be -renovated. Because she was very clever and good looking Morrison fell in -love with this woman. She was a typist in a merchant’s office.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HINKING</small> of many things, he sauntered towards the farm. The cigarette -went out; he threw it away and lit another. The evening was calm and -quiet; a few<a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a> late birds were chirruping in the hazel bushes and -somewhere in the distance a dog barked loudly. The grey twilight that -links day and night was over everything.</p> - -<p>Suddenly Morrison perceived Norah Ryan coming towards him. She wore her -grey tweed, which showed to perfection the outlines of her slender -figure. In one hand she carried a book, the other hand hung idly by her -side.</p> - -<p>“Are you going for a walk, Norah Ryan?” Morrison asked when he met her.</p> - -<p>“I am,” she answered, hardly knowing whether she should stop and talk to -him or continue on her way.</p> - -<p>“You’re reading, I see.” He took the cigarette from his mouth as he -spoke, held it between finger and thumb and flicked the ash off with his -little finger.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I’m readin’,” she said, but did not tell him what book she held in -her hand; he could see, however, that it was a prayer-book.</p> - -<p>“When do the squad go to Ireland?”</p> - -<p>“Next Friday, if all goes well,” she answered.</p> - -<p>“So soon!” Morrison exclaimed, and in his voice there was a vague hint -of regret. “Are you glad to get home again?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“And the rest of the squad—what are they doing this evening? Are they -playing cards?”</p> - -<p>“The men are; the women are singin’, some of them; and Gourock Ellen and -Annie are mendin’ their clothes.”</p> - -<p>“It is getting dark quickly,” said Morrison. “Are you coming back now?”</p> - -<p>“Is it time?” she asked, then said, “I suppose it is.”</p> - -<p>He was going to the farm and it would be nice to have his company. She -had seen him going out and anticipated meeting him coming home. Perhaps -that was why she<a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a> had come; if so she did not dare to confess it, even -to herself. She now thought that she should not have come; a tremor -shook her for a moment, then she turned and went back along the lane -with the young man.</p> - -<p>A car drawn by a white pony came up behind them, and they stepped nearer -to the line of hazel bushes to let it pass. They were now very close to -one another.</p> - -<p>“Some of the people on the next farm, coming home from church,” said -Morrison as the car was passing. “Watch that the wheels don’t catch you. -The lane is very narrow.... There!”</p> - -<p>He caught hold of her by the waist, drawing her close to him and -pressing her very tightly.</p> - -<p>“The car was almost running over you,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Don’t!” she cried, striving to get free. “Don’t now; it’s not right.”</p> - -<p>“The wheel ...” he said in a husky voice. “The lane is so narrow.” He -knew that he was telling a lie, but at the same time he felt very -pleased with himself. He had dropped the cigarette, which could be seen -glowing red on the dark ground. He released the girl, but would have -liked to catch her in his arms again. The vehicle went rumbling off into -the distance. “It is so very dark, too,” he muttered under his breath.</p> - -<p>They walked along together, both busy with their own thoughts, the girl -hot and ashamed, but curiously elated; the young man in some way angry -with himself for what he had done, but at the same time desirous of -clasping Norah again in his arms.</p> - -<p>“If I had someone to tell me what to do,” she said under her breath, but -knew instinctively that there was no one but herself to determine what -action should be pursued in an event like this. Even if advice were -proffered to her she knew that it would be useless. Something was<a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a> -driving her to the brink of an unknown which she feared, and from which -there was no retreat and no escape.</p> - -<p>“You are stumbling,” said Morrison, and again caught hold of her. She -had not stumbled; it was a pretext on his part; he merely wanted an -excuse to hold her in his arms. She could see his hand on her sleeve and -noticed the gold ring sparkling in the darkness.</p> - -<p>In man there are two beings, the corporal and the spiritual; one -striving after that happiness which ministers to the passion of the -individual to the detriment of the race; the other which seeks for -happiness according to divine laws, a happiness that is good for all. -Yesterday, to-day, ten minutes before, this spiritual being presided -over Morrison’s destiny; now as he walked along the crooked lane, a lone -wind sighing in the hazel bushes and a few stars out above him, he felt -the animal man come and take possession of him. The rustling of Norah’s -petticoats as she walked beside him, the slight pressure of her little -rough fingers on his large smooth hand filled him with an insatiable -animal desire which held him captive.</p> - -<p>This was no new experience, and it possessed for him a certain charm -which in his saner moments he loathed, but now he could neither conquer -nor drive it away.</p> - -<p>“I like the bow in your hair,” he said in a hoarse voice that startled -the girl. “It suits you.”</p> - -<p>“I must be off and away now,” she said, freeing her hand from his, but -not drawing it away quickly enough to prevent him getting possession of -it again. “Let me go,” she said in a low voice. “Ye must let me go. What -would yerself be talkin’ to the likes of me for? There’s the farm!”</p> - -<p>“Don’t hurry away,” said Morrison, bending down and placing both arms -round her waist. For some reason<a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a> which he could not fathom he felt -ashamed of himself, but he clasped her more tightly as he spoke. “Why -are you in so great a hurry? You’re better here. Is that young -fellow—Flynn they call him, I think—waiting for you? Micky’s Jim was -telling me all.”</p> - -<p>“He had no right to,” said the girl angrily, but refrained from drawing -herself away. “Dermod Flynn is nothin’ to me.”</p> - -<p>“I’m glad of that.”</p> - -<p>“Why?”</p> - -<p>Morrison did not answer. It would be unwise to commit himself in any -way, he thought, and for a moment he mastered the passion which filled -his body. The lights of the farm sparkled in front. The open shed was -facing them. The fire glowed red inside, and against it dark forms came -and went. He stooped down and kissed her three times and she could feel -his warm body press passionately against her own.</p> - -<p>Someone passed near them and Morrison let her go. She hurried off -towards the shed, and he could hear the patter of her boots as she ran. -She passed Dermod Flynn on her way; no doubt he had seen Morrison kiss -her, she thought. When she entered the shed Gourock Ellen, who was -bending over the card table, looked up and saw the flush of colour in -Norah’s face. Then Ellen noticed Dermod coming in and saw the troubled -look in the boy’s eyes.</p> - -<p>“Dermod’s been kissin’ ye, lass, I’ll warrant,” she whispered to Norah, -then turning round to Micky’s Jim, she opened his shirt front and ran -her fingers down his hairy chest. “Come on now, Jim, for that’ll gie ye -luck,” she cried.</p> - -<p>“Yes, decent woman, it’s sure to give me luck,” said Jim, throwing down -the cards and putting a match to his pipe.<a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a></p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">“W</span><small>HAT</small> have I done, what’s Alec Morrison to me?”</p> - -<p>Norah asked herself as she looked in her little cracked hand mirror ten -minutes later. “He’s nothin’ to me, nothin’, nothin’; no more than -Dermod Flynn is. The two of them might so well be strangers to me. Now -why did he kiss me? Dermod never kissed me. I’m glad of that.”</p> - -<p>Norah looked round the byre, at the bunks in the stalls, the cattle -troughs and the candle burning on the iron stanchion. She was alone, the -other women were still out with the card-players in the shed.</p> - -<p>“I must be very good-lookin’,” she whispered to herself as her eyes -sought their reflection in the cracked mirror; then she blushed at her -girlish vanity and innocent pride. “And him so grand, too, a gentleman!” -But in some indistinct and indefinite way she felt that she would be -raised to his level. “And he kissed me—here.” She put her fingers over -her red lips. “But he’s nothin’ to me, nothin’. Dermod Flynn is nothin’ -either.” She knew that the first assertion was not true; the repetition -of the second gave her a certain pleasure.</p> - -<p>“Do I love two of them? Can one love two people?” she asked herself. -“But I’m not in love and never was. I like Dermod, but all the girls in -the squad like him.... Why did Alec Morrison kiss me, and him a -gentleman? It wasn’t my fault, was it?” She looked round and addressed -an imaginary person, a look of bewilderment settling on her face.</p> - -<p>“Did I go out to meet him this evenin’? Did I like his kisses? Is Dermod -Flynn angry? I couldn’t help liking Dermod; he is so good, so kindly. -But I’m a bad girl, very bad; all my life was full of sin. Pride and -vanity,<a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a> what the Catechism condemned, are my two sins. I used to be -vain at school. I had two shoes and I was proud, because other people -wore only mairteens. I used to dress my hair and try and look nicer than -any other girsha; because I was vain. And now I’m vain because a -well-dressed gentleman talks kindly to me. God forgive me! Ah, this -looking-glass, I hate it! I’ll just have one look at myself and then -never get hold of a glass again.”</p> - -<p>She sat down on the bed and her fingers toyed with the potato sacks that -served as quilt.</p> - -<p>“Yes, he’s very nice and talks to us so kindly,” she whispered, and -again her eyes sought the mirror. “Oh, it was a fine evening, one of the -nicest ever I had.... They’re not too red, just pale, and when the blush -is in them I’m better lookin’ than at any time. Has any one in the squad -cheeks like mine?... Why did he want to kiss me? And my boots to one -side at the heels and the toe-cap risin’ off one of them. I wish I had -money, lots of it, gold, a crock of gold like the fairies leave under -the holly bush.... I could buy new dresses and maybe rings. Norah, don’t -let your hair hang down so far over your forehead, it doesn’t become ye. -A wee bit back there, no, here; that’s it. Now ye’re very good lookin’.” -“And to think of it as the first time and he has won fifteen shillin’s!” -said Maire a Glan, who had just entered the byre. “Fifteen shillin’s, -Norah!”</p> - -<p>“What?”</p> - -<p>“He won!”</p> - -<p>“Who?”</p> - -<p>“Who but Dermod Flynn?” said the old woman. “And him playin’ for the -first time!”<a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX<br /><br /> -<small>THE END OF THE SEASON</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span><small>N</small> a week’s time the squad was to break up: Gourock Ellen, Annie and the -two men who joined at Greenock, were leaving for Glasgow; Dermod Flynn -who, despite the initial success, had lost all his money at the -card-table, was going to remain in Scotland and earn his living at the -first job that came to hand. Such a little boy! Norah felt sorry for -him, but now he hardly deigned to look at her. When at work the far-away -look was always in his eyes and at night he played for hours on end at -the gaming-table. Most of the players said that he was awfully plucky -and that he would stake his last penny on a card and lose the coin -without turning a hair.</p> - -<p>For the whole week prior to departure Norah, who was now very restless, -laughed nervously when a joke was passed, but seemingly took no heed of -the joke. She was not unhappy, but in a dim, subconscious way felt that -she had done something very wrong. Before knowing Dermod intimately he -frightened her; it was only after knowing Morrison so well that she -became frightened of him. Dermod had never kissed her; she and the boy -were only friends, she said to herself time and again. Dermod was only a -friend of hers, nothing more. Sometimes when alone she said so aloud, as -if trying to drown<a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a> the inner voice that told her it was not true. If -Dermod only ceased playing cards things might right themselves, she -thought, but deep down in her heart she wished everything to go on just -as at present.</p> - -<p>Morrison went to town on the day following the episode in the lane, but, -before leaving, told Norah that he would come back to see her prior to -her departure for Ireland.</p> - -<p>“Don’t tell anybody that I am coming back,” he said, and, while -wondering at his words, she promised not to tell.</p> - -<p>The squad was going on Friday; on Thursday night Morrison returned, a -rose in his buttonhole and a silver-handled stick in his hand. She saw -him enter the farmhouse as she returned from the field, her knees sore, -her clothes wet, and straggling locks of hair falling over her brow. At -supper she ate little but took great care over her toilet; scrubbed her -hands, which were very sore, until they bled, and spent nearly half an -hour before the little looking-glass which she had brought from Ireland. -She sorted her tresses, and put in its place an erring lock that -persisted in falling over her little pink ear.</p> - -<p>She put on her grey dress, tied a glossy leather belt around her waist, -laced her shoes, and when she had finished left the byre, which was lit -up by a long white candle stuck in the neck of a whisky-bottle, and went -out to the cart-shed where the squad assembled.</p> - -<p>Morrison was there before her, sitting beside Micky’s Jim on the end of -an upturned cart, and speaking to Maire a Glan about the hardships of -the field. Willie the Duck played his fiddle, now sadly out of tune; a -game of cards was in progress, and Dermod Flynn, who held the bank, was -losing rapidly. It was said that he had no money in hand except the -wages which he had lifted that day, and now it was nearly gone. What -would he do<a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a> when all was spent? Nobody enquired, but it was evident -that he would not return to Ireland that winter.</p> - -<p>Norah entered, her head bent down a little, her hands clasped together -and a look of hesitation on her face.</p> - -<p>“Ha! there’s another one that’s for Ireland in the morning,” said -Micky’s Jim, taking the pipe from his mouth and spitting down between -his legs to the floor. It was to Norah that he spoke, and Dermod Flynn -ceased playing for a moment to glance over the rim of his cards at the -girl. But his mind was busy with something else and his eyes turned back -almost instantly to the gaming-table. He cared nothing for her, Norah -thought, and the idea gave her a strange comfort.</p> - -<p>“You’re going to-morrow as well as the rest?” said Morrison when the -girl drew up to the fire. He knew that she was going and felt that he -should have said something else. Presently, however, he asked: “Are you -glad?”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she answered, but the look in her eyes might have meant “No.” -Morrison understood it thus, and the sensation which surged through him -on Sunday evening surged through him again.</p> - -<p>“Not goin’ to play any more; skinned out,” someone said at the table. -Norah glanced at the players and saw that Dermod Flynn had risen. He -approached the fire, one hand deep in his pocket, the other holding a -splinter of wood which he threw into the flames. He had lost all his -money; he hadn’t a penny in the world now. Gourock Ellen offered him a -piece of silver to retrieve his fallen fortunes.</p> - -<p>“If I don’t win I cannot pay you back,” he said, and sat down beside -Morrison and facing Norah. Fixing his eyes on the fire he was presently -buried in a reverie and the dreamy look of the schoolboy was again on -his face. One of his hands was bleeding; it had been torn on a<a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a> jagged -stave which got loose on the rim of Norah’s basket earlier in the day; -his knees peeped out through his trousers and the uppers of both his -boots had risen from the soles.</p> - -<p>Norah gazed at him covertly, saw the wound on his hand, the bare knees -showing through the trousers, and the toes peeping through the torn -uppers. Then something glistened brightly and caught her eyes. It was -the ring on Morrison’s finger. The young man was speaking.</p> - -<p>“ ...and it will be ten months before you are back in the squad again. -Such a long time!”</p> - -<p>“It’s not much comfort we have in this country anyway,” said Maire a -Glan, who was turning the heel of a stocking, stopping for a moment to -run one of the needles through her hair.</p> - -<p>“I have got to go into the house now,” said Morrison, rising to his feet -and holding out a hand to the fire. “I hope you’ll all have a good -voyage across to-morrow night.”</p> - -<p>“The Lord will be with us,” said Biddy Wor, who had just come in from -the byre carrying a small frying-pan in one hand and a pot of porridge -in the other.</p> - -<p>“How long does it take to cross from Greenock to Londonderry?” Morrison -asked Biddy Wor, meanwhile fixing his eyes on Norah Ryan.</p> - -<p>“Derry, ye mean,” said the old woman. “We always say ‘Derry,’ but it’s -the foreigner, bad luck be with him! that put London on to it. From -Greenock it takes ten hours, more or less.”</p> - -<p>Morrison drew a cigarette from a leather case which he took from his -pocket. As he was lighting the cigarette he dropped the case and it fell -beside Norah’s feet. He bent down hurriedly.</p> - -<p>“Come out into the open, for I have something to say to you,” he -whispered in a low voice to Norah as he<a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a> stooped; then he went out, -taking leave of the party in one “Good-night,” and five minutes later -Norah rose from her seat and followed him.</p> - -<p>“Where are ye goin’, girsha?” asked Maire a Glan.</p> - -<p>“Down to the byre,” said the girl without turning round.</p> - -<p>Morrison was standing in the shadow which fringed the fan-like stretch -of light thrown from the shade.</p> - -<p>“Is that you, Norah?” he asked, knowing well that it was she, and as he -spoke he took her into his arms and kissed her. To Norah there was -something dreadful in this kiss, and while not knowing that it gave -expression to the pent-up passion of the man, she felt nervous and -afraid. She looked back to the shed, saw the faces round the -gaming-table, old Maire knitting in the corner, her needles showing -brightly as the firelight played on them. A disused cart-wheel hung from -the wall; she had never noticed it before.... Here in the dark beyond -the circle of light something terrible threatened her, something that -she could not comprehend but which her beating heart told her was wrong, -and should be avoided. Why should she be afraid? Norah had all the -boldness of innocence: her virtue was not armed with that knowledge -which makes it weigh its every action carefully. Morrison was speaking, -asking her to come further out into the darkness, but she still kept her -eyes fixed on the shed. Safety lay there; freedom from what she could -not comprehend. The man had hold of her hands, pressing them tightly, -entreating her to do something. She freed herself from his grasp and ran -back to the shed, half glad that the whole incident had taken place, and -more than a little desirous to go out again. Her love for the -well-dressed youth imparted a recklessness to her timid nature. When she -went to her sleeping quarters two hours later old Maire a Glan -accompanied her. The gamblers were<a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a> still playing, the fire blazed -merrily, and Ginger Dubbin held the bank and was winning heavily.</p> - -<p>“What’s that, that’s shinin’ in front of us?” asked Maire a Glan as she -came out. “Maybe it’s only seein’ things that I am, for me old eyes play -tricks in the darkness.”</p> - -<p>“It looks like a live spark lyin’ on the ground,” said Norah.</p> - -<p>“That’s not on the cold ground,” answered the woman. “See, it’s movin’! -It’ll be the farmer’s son with the gold ring on his finger. Now what -will he be after waitin’ for there?”</p> - -<p>“How am I to know?” said Norah, but in such a low voice that the old -woman had to draw near to catch the words. “I’m sleepy,” she said after -a pause; “it’s time we were in bed.”</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span><small>N</small> the morning of the day following, the squad prepared for their -departure, and gathered up all their spare clothes, their pans and -porringers, and packed them in woollen handkerchiefs and tin boxes. The -blankets, eighteen in all, were tied up in a parcel, ready to be sent -off to the merchant in town.</p> - -<p>“God knows who’ll sleep in them next year!” said Willie the Duck in a -pathetic voice, and everybody laughed, some because they enjoyed the -remark and others because it was the correct thing to laugh at every -word uttered by Willie the Duck.</p> - -<p>Dermod Flynn watched the preparations with impassive face. He was not -going home; in fact, he had not as much money in his possession as would -pay the railway fare to the nearest town. All his wages had been lost on -the gaming-table; he had nothing now to rely on<a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a> but the labour of his -own hands and the chance of getting a job.</p> - -<p>“What will ye do, Dermod?” Maire a Glan asked.</p> - -<p>“I’ll try and.... But what does it matter to you what I do? One would -think to hear you talk that I was a child.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose there’ll be a lot of drunk people on the boat this night,” -said Micky’s Jim as he tied a tin porringer in a rag and placed it in -his box. “There’ll be some fightin’ too, I’ll go bail.”</p> - -<p>“The Derry boat is the place for fightin’, as the man said.”</p> - -<p>“Aye, sure, and the Irish are very fond of fightin’ when they’re drunk.”</p> - -<p>“It’s more in the blood than in the bottle, all the same,” said Eamon -Doherty.</p> - -<p>“I mind one fight on the Derrier,” said Micky’s Jim, biting a mouthful -from the end of his plug. “I was in the fight meself. (If the cork comes -out of that bottle of milk, Owen Kelly, it’ll make a hell of a mess on -yer clothes.) It started below. ‘There’s no man here,’ said I, ‘that -could——’ (Them trousers are not worth taking with ye, Eamon Doherty. -No man would wear clothes like that; a person would better be painted -and go out bare naked)—‘that could put up his fives to me.’ (If ye -dress yer hair like that, Brigit Doherty, I’ll not be seen goin’ into -Greenanore with ye.) Then a man drove full but for my face and I took -the dunt like an ox. (Willie the Duck, are ye goin’ to take that famine -fiddle home again? Change it for a Jew’s harp or a pair of laces!) -‘That’s how a Glenmornan man takes it,’ says I, and came in with a clowt -to the jowl——”</p> - -<p>“Stop yer palaver about fightin’, Micky’s Jim, and let us get away to -the station,” said Maire a Glan. “We’ll not auction time while we’re -waitin’, as the man said.”<a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a></p> - -<p>“If we go off now we’ll only have three hours to wait for the train,” -remarked Jim sarcastically.</p> - -<p>“And poor Dermod Flynn,” said Maire a Glan, tying her bundle over her -shoulders with a string. “Not a penny at all left him. Where’s Norah -Ryan? She’s the girl to save her money.”</p> - -<p>At that moment Norah was outside with Morrison and the young man was -asking a question. The wish to find an answer to it had kept him awake -for nearly half the previous night.</p> - -<p>“Why did you run away from me yesterday evening, Norah?”</p> - -<p>“I was frightened.”</p> - -<p>“Of what?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I certainly don’t know what caused you to run away.”</p> - -<p>Morrison knew that, innocent though Norah was, some subtle instinct -warned her the night before to hurry off to the safety of the shed.</p> - -<p>“I would like to know why you did it, why you ran away, I mean?” he -asked, knowing in his own heart that, if she understood, she had good -reason to be afraid. “Does the girl understand?” he pondered. He had -heard them talk of most things in Micky’s Jim’s squad, but perhaps the -girl paid no heed to the talk.</p> - -<p>“Are you coming back next year?” he enquired.</p> - -<p>“It’s more nor likely.”</p> - -<p>“Do you care for the life in the squad?”</p> - -<p>“It could be worse.”</p> - -<p>“That’s no recommendation,” said Morrison with a laugh, but seeing that -Norah failed to understand him, he went on: “I don’t think you could -have a life much harder than this.”</p> - -<p>“I did not even kiss you last night,” he said after a<a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a> short silence, -“and now you are going away and maybe never coming back again. I would -kiss you now, only some of the squad might see us, and you wouldn’t like -that.”</p> - -<p>But for the squad Morrison cared nothing. He was just on the point of -kissing Norah when he noticed his father looking at him through a window -of the farmhouse. Although not respecting his father overmuch, for old -Morrison was a hard-drinking and short-tempered man, the son did not -want the little love affair to be spoken of in the house.</p> - -<p>“If you stay to-night in Greenock, Norah, I’ll go down with you,” said -the young fellow. “Will you stay?”</p> - -<p>“Why should I stay?” asked Norah, who did not understand what Morrison’s -words meant.</p> - -<p>“Because—well, you see—” stammered the youth. “Oh! I think you’d -better go with the rest. I’ll see you next year.”</p> - -<p>He held out his hand, clasped hers almost fiercely and without another -word turned and went towards the house. On the way he lit a cigarette, -rubbed a speck of dirt from the knee of his well-creased trousers, and -wondered why he wanted to take possession of the innocent girl. Despite -his high-flown views on the equality of man, Morrison never thought of -marrying Norah. Besides, there was Ellen Keenans, the advanced woman and -author of <i>Songs of the Day</i>, and it was Ellen who taught him what man’s -conception of duty towards the race should be. At the present moment -Morrison did not see how he could fit in with Ellen’s teachings.</p> - -<p>That night most of the squad sailed for Ireland; Gourock Ellen and Annie -took their way to Glasgow, and Dermod Flynn set out on the open road, -ragged, penniless, and alone.<a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX<br /><br /> -<small>ORIGINAL SIN</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p>A year had passed; the potato season was over, but old Morrison, who was -making considerable improvements in his steading, had kept the squad to -work for him two months longer than usual, and all the party of the -previous year, with the exception of Dermod Flynn, Ellen, and Annie, was -there. Nobody in the squad knew where Dermod had gone, but rumour had it -that he worked during the previous winter as a farm hand on a farm near -Paisley. It was also said that he had done very well and had sent ten -pounds home to his people in Glenmornan.</p> - -<p>Norah Ryan had spent the winter and spring at home; her mother was still -alive, but seldom ventured outside the door of the cabin. “The coldness -of the dead is creeping over me,” she told Norah when the girl was -leaving for Scotland. “My feet are like lumps of ice, and when the cold -reaches my heart it will be the end, thanks be to God!”</p> - -<p>Norah felt deeply for her mother; the old woman had none now but her -daughter in all the world. Fergus had not been heard of for the last -three years; some said that the boy was dead, others that he was alive -and making a big fortune. Norah always prayed for him nightly when she -went down on her knees, asking the Virgin to<a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a> send him safe home, and -“if he is dead to intercede with her Son for the repose of his soul.”</p> - -<p>At the end of each fortnight the girl, who earned twelve shillings -weekly, sent sixteen home to her mother. In four months Norah sent six -pounds eight shillings to Frosses, and a pound of this went towards the -expense of the priest’s mansion. The same amount had been paid the year -before and Norah was well-pleased, because now her father would rest -easily in his grave. “He’ll rest in peace now that all his lawful debts -are paid,” the old parish priest said.</p> - -<p>Micky’s Jim had fallen in love with Oiney Dinchy’s daughter and it was -said that he was going to get married to her when he went back to -Ireland. Owen Kelly was as niggardly as ever. Once during the year he -had bought a pennyworth of milk and at night he left it in a beer-bottle -beside his bed. In the morning the milk was gone and Owen wept! So -Micky’s Jim said; and Jim also circulated a story about a rat that drank -the milk from the bottle.</p> - -<p>“But that couldn’t be, as the man said.”</p> - -<p>“But it could be. I saw it while all the rest of ye were snorin’.”</p> - -<p>“There’s no standin’ your lies, Micky’s Jim.”</p> - -<p>“True as death ’twas a rat that drunk the milk,” Jim explained. “I saw -it meself. Stuck its tail down the neck of the bottle and licked its -tail when it took it out. Took two hours to drink the whole lot. I once -had a great fight and all about a bottle of milk——”</p> - -<p>It was Christmas Eve. Norah sat beside the coal fire which burned in the -large stove in Morrison’s cart shed, seeing pictures in the flames. -Outside there was no moon, but a million stars shone in a heaven that -was coldly clear. To-morrow the squad was going home.</p> - -<p>“I haven’t seen that fellow, young Morrison, for a<a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a> whole year,” said -Maire a Glan, who was sewing patches on her dress. “I don’t like the -look of yon fellow; it makes me sick to see him sittin’ here, askin’ us -about how we do this and how we do that, what we do at home and how many -acres of land have we got in Ireland, and hundreds of other things that -the very priest himself wouldn’t ask ye.”</p> - -<p>“He’s a good youngster, for all ye say,” remarked Owen Kelly, who once -got a shilling as a tip from the young fellow. “That’s no reason for ye -takin’ such an ill will against him, Maire a Glan.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t like him atall, atall,” said the old woman doggedly. “There’s -something about him that I care little for.”</p> - -<p>“We all have our faults, Maire,” said old Biddy Wor. “And it goes -against the grain with me to speak ill of anybody, no matter who they -are. Ye’ve noticed that yerself.”</p> - -<p>“I couldn’t fail to, seein’ you’ve told me so often,” said Maire a Glan.</p> - -<p>“There are faults and faults,” remarked Eamon Doherty. “And some faults -are worse at one time than another. D’ye mind the beansho?” he asked, -turning to Biddy Wor. “Of course ye mind her. Well, the man that was the -cause of—ye know yerself—he got drounded at the fishin’ before he -could get married to Sheila. Her fault was not a great one atall, -atall.”</p> - -<p>“She was a brazen heifer, anyway,” said Biddy Wor.</p> - -<p>“Where is she now?” Eamon Doherty enquired.</p> - -<p>“No one knows atall, atall,” said Judy Carrol. “Maybe she’s a—a one -like Gourock Ellen, God be good to us all!”</p> - -<p>“I hear that she’s in Glasgow,” said Murtagh Gallagher.</p> - -<p>“Glasgow is the town to be in,” remarked Micky’s<a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a> Jim, scraping the wet -tobacco from the bottom of his pipe. “By the hokey! It was a great place -for fightin’. One night I had seven fights hand running. A fellow named -Droughty Tom was shootin’ out his neck on the Docks. ‘What are ye -chewin’ the rag for, old slobber chops?’ I ups to him and says, shovin’ -my fist under his nose: ‘There’s a smell of dead men off that fist,’ I -said——”</p> - -<p>“We’re sick to the bottom of the grave of hearin’ about yer fightin’, -Micky’s Jim,” said Dora Doherty, who entered the shed at that moment. -“D’ye know who’s out there?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“It’s that youngster, Morrison,” said the woman. “I saw somethin’ black -in the darkness, and I thought it would be the farmer’s son.”</p> - -<p>Norah Ryan started forward in her seat, turned round, looked at Maire a -Glan, rose, and went outside.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span><small>HE</small> had not seen Morrison for close on fourteen months, and he had never -written to her; but time and again she intended to post one of the -letters which she spent part of her time in writing to him. But they -were never posted, and often she wondered why she had written them. Why, -he wouldn’t care for her, she told herself many times. He was far above -her, a gentleman; she was only a poor worker, a little potato gatherer. -He had never written and perhaps he did not love her one little bit. She -felt angry and resentful with him, as she went out from the stuffy shed -and looked up at the starlit sky.</p> - -<p>Alec Morrison was waiting. Norah could see his dark<a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a> form showing -against the white gable of the byre, and could hear the crunch of his -boots on the gravel as he changed his position. He had just come from -Glasgow; he was working there now and he had come down to see Norah -before she went back to Ireland. He had often intended to write to her -but never did. Other more pressing problems, relating to a new -sweetheart, a pretty little damsel in wonderful dresses and with no more -morals than a bird, took up his attention. He held out his hand to Norah -when she approached.</p> - -<p>“I’m glad you’ve come out,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve been waiting -here for quite a long while.”</p> - -<p>He had been waiting for her! Norah’s heart gave a bound of gladness.</p> - -<p>“But you never wrote to me,” she said reproachfully.</p> - -<p>“You didn’t write to me and I didn’t know your address.”</p> - -<p>That was really why he hadn’t written! How strange she had never thought -of that.</p> - -<p>“And ye would write?”</p> - -<p>“Certainly, Norah,” he said. He had not let her hand go, now he -imprisoned the other. How coarse they were and hard from her season’s -work! The hands of the Glasgow girl.... But he felt that he was doing -something wrong in comparing the two women at that moment.</p> - -<p>“Do you mind the last night you were here?”</p> - -<p>“I have often been thinkin’ of that night,” said Norah.</p> - -<p>“Are you going to run away from me to-night?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“Why did you run away the last time?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know. Maybe it was that I was afraid.”</p> - -<p>She looked back at the shed as she spoke, saw old Maire a Glan bending -over the fire, Willie the Duck playing his fiddle; could hear the loud -laughter of Micky’s<a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a> Jim. Norah looked up at the face of the man beside -her and was not in the least afraid.</p> - -<p>“We’ll go along the lane a bit,” he said.</p> - -<p>They went together hand in hand along the hazel-lined gravel pathway. -Overhead the stars sparkled, the trees, showing thin against the sky, -waved their bare arms in the slight breeze and moaned plaintively. -Willie the Duck was playing “Way down upon the Swanee River,” and it -seemed as if the melody drifted in from a great distance.</p> - -<p>“That’s a wonderful melody,” said the young man. “In it is the heart and -soul of a persecuted people.”</p> - -<p>He had heard somebody make that remark in the club and it appealed to -him. The girl made no answer to his words. They stopped as if by mutual -consent opposite the large shed in the stack yard.</p> - -<p>“It’s very cold,” said Morrison.</p> - -<p>“Is it? No.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll go in here,” said the young man. He pulled the gate of the stack -yard apart and went in, Norah following. A vague sense of danger, of -some impending menace, suddenly took possession of the girl. The sight -of the fire shining would be comforting, but she could not see the shed -now. Between her and it the farmhouse stood up white and lonesome. A -light glimmered for a moment in one of the rooms, then went out. -Somewhere near a dog barked loudly, another joined in the outcry; an -uneasy bird rose from the copse and fluttered off into the night.</p> - -<p>They entered the shed. Inside it was warm and quiet and the scent of old -hay pervaded the place. A strange fear, blending in some measure with -joy, came over Norah. Morrison’s arms were round her and she felt as if -she wanted to tell him some great secret. No thought of danger was now -in her mind. The problems of existence had never given her a moment’s -thought.<a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a> All things were to her a matter of course, the world, the -trees, the flowers and stars, and men and women. Love in some vague way -she knew was related to marriage just as faith had some relation to -heaven. But the faith in God which was hers was something which she -never strove to analyse, and the love for the young man filled her being -so much at present that she could not draw herself apart from it and -consider the rights and wrongs of her position.</p> - -<p>Everything was so peaceful and quiet that it seemed as if all the world -were asleep and dreaming. Some words, hazy as the remembrance of almost -forgotten dreams, drifted into her mind. They were words once spoken by -Sheila Carrol at the hour of midnight on Dooey Strand.</p> - -<p>“When the earth is asleep, child, that will be a dangerous hour, for you -may then commit the mortal sin of love.”</p> - -<p>What did Sheila mean when she spoke like that? Why was she thinking of -those words now? Norah did not know. Before her was a great mystery, -something unexplainable, terrible. The great fundamental truths of life -were unknown to Norah; no one had ever explained to her why she was and -how she had come into being. She walked blindly in a world of pitfalls -and perils; unhelped by anyone she groped futilely in the dark for one -sure resting place, looked for one illuminating ray of certainty to -light up her path. At that moment the soul within the fair body of hers -warned her in some vague way of the danger which lay before her. “You -may commit the mortal sin of love.”</p> - -<p>What did those words mean? She wanted to run away, but instead she clung -closer to the man; she could feel his lips hot on hers and his breath -warm on her cheek.<a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a></p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span><small>OMETHING</small> terrible had happened. The maiden’s purity, never sullied by a -careless thought, was sullied for ever. To the girl it appeared as if -something priceless which she loved and treasured had suddenly been -broken to pieces. Morrison stood beside her, his hands resting on her -shoulders, his breath short and husky; and his whole appearance became -suddenly repulsive to the girl. And the man wanted to be gone from her -side. He had desired much, obtained what he desired, but was now far -from satisfied. He felt in some vague, inexplicable way that she had -suddenly become distasteful to him. With other women he had often before -experienced the same feeling. He bent over the girl, who quivered like a -reed under his hands.</p> - -<p>“Are you going into the house?” he asked. He almost said “byre.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll go in myself,” she answered in a low voice. “Go away and leave -me.... Go away!”</p> - -<p>“Are you angry with me?” he asked. He was now ashamed of all that had -taken place, ashamed of himself and ashamed of the girl. In some -subconscious way it was borne to him that the girl was to blame. He -thrust the thought away for a moment but when it returned again he -hugged it eagerly. He wanted to believe it; he chose to believe it.</p> - -<p>“Good-night, Norah. I’ll see you again to-morrow before you go away.” He -released her arms and went out through the gateway. She could hear his -footsteps for a long while but never looked after him. A great fear -settled on her heart; she was suddenly conscious of having done -something terribly wrong, and it seemed as if the very fabric of her -life had been torn to shreds.<a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a> Weeping, she stole back to the shed like -a frightened child.</p> - -<p>The party was in a great state of excitement. A rat chased by some -prowling dog had just run into the shed and passed between the legs of -Maire a Glan, who was warming her hands at the fire.</p> - -<p>“Mercy be on us! a dirty, big grey rat,” Maire was saying. “It was that -long, as the man said.” She stretched a long lean arm out in front of -her as she spoke.</p> - -<p>“If we caught it we’d put paraffin oil all over it and set fire to its -hair,” said Micky’s Jim. “That’s what scares the rats!”</p> - -<p>“Ye wouldn’t set fire to a dumb animal, would ye?” asked Brigid Doherty.</p> - -<p>“Wouldn’t I? What would yerself do with it?”</p> - -<p>“One might kill it in an easier way.”</p> - -<p>“Any way at all, for it’s all the same,” said Micky’s Jim. “Last year me -and Dermod Flynn killed a lot on yon farm in Rothesay. The farmer gave -us a penny a tail and we made lots of tin. How much did we make, Norah -Ryan?” he asked. “It’s yerself that has the memory and ye were always -concerned about Dermod.” “I don’t remember,” said Norah, who was -standing at the door of the shed.</p> - -<p>“The old mad farmer was goin’ to cheat us out of a tanner, anyway,” said -Micky’s Jim. “But I soon put up my fives to him. ‘Smell them fists,’ I -says to him——”</p> - -<p>“Ye never stop talkin’ about fights,” said Biddy Wor.</p> - -<p>“That’s the kind of him,” said Maire a Glan. “His people had the -contrary drop in their veins always. D’ye mind, Norah Ryan, the way -that——”</p> - -<p>But when the old woman looked round Norah had disappeared. She had -stolen out through the starlight to her bed, her mind groping blindly -with a terrible mystery which she could not fathom.<a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI<br /><br /> -<small>REGRETS</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span><small>N</small> the June of the following year Norah Ryan received a letter from -Scotland. It ran:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p class="r"> -“47, Ann Street,<br /> -“Cowcaddens,<br /> -“Glasgow.</p> - -<p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Norah</span>,</p> - -<p>“It is a long while now since you heard a word from me. I often -intended to write to you, but my hand was not used to the pen; it -comes foreign to my fingers. I am not like you, a scholart that was -so long at the Glenmornan school-house with Master Diver.</p> - -<p>“I am working away here in Scotland, the black country with the -cold heart. I have only met one of the Glenmornan people for a long -while. That was Oiney Dinchy’s son, Thady, and he’s a dock labourer -on the quay. He told me all about the people at home. He said that -poor Maire a Crick, God rest her soul! is dead. Do you mind the -night on Dooey Head long ago? Them was the bad and bitter times. He -said that Father Devaney has furnished his new house and the cost -of it was thousands of pounds, a big lot for a poor parish to pay. -He also told me that you were over with the potato squad in -Scotland and that you were looked on with no unkindly eyes by a -rich farmer’s son. But whoever he is or whatever he is, you are too -good for him, for it is yourself that was always the comely girl -with the pleasant ways. Whatever you do, child, watch yourself -anyway,<a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a> for the men that are in black foreign parts are not to -have the great trust put in them.</p> - -<p>“Mac Oiney Dinchy was saying that no word has come from Dermod -Flynn for a long time. He didn’t send much money home to his own -people and they think that he has gone to the bad. Well, for all -they say, Dermod was a taking lad when I knew him.</p> - -<p>“And old Farley McKeown—the Lord be between us and harm!—got -married! What will we see next? I wonder what an old dry stick like -him wants to get married for; and Mac Oiney Dinchy says that he -gave his wife sixty thousand pounds as a wedding present. Well, -well!</p> - -<p>“I do be lonely here often, and I am wishful that you would take up -the pen and write me a long letter when you get this one, and if -ever you come to Scotland again come to Glasgow and spend a couple -of days with me.</p> - -<p>“Hoping that yourself and your mother is in good health,</p> - -<p class="r"> -“<span class="smcap">Sheila Carrol</span>.”<br /> -</p></div> - -<p>“Who would that letter be from?” asked Mary Ryan from her seat in the -chimney corner. A pile of dead ashes lay on the hearth; the previous -summer had been wet and the turf was not lifted from the bog.</p> - -<p>“It’s from Sheila Carrol, mother.”</p> - -<p>“From that woman, child! And what would she be writing to you for, -Norah?”</p> - -<p>“She’s dying to hear from the Frosses people,” answered the girl. “And -it is very lonely away in the big city.”</p> - -<p>“Lonely!” exclaimed the mother. “If she is lonely it’s her own fault. -It’s the hand of God that’s heavy on her because of her sin.”</p> - -<p>“That’s no reason why the tongue of her country people should be bitter -against her.”</p> - -<p>“Saying that, child!” cried the woman. “What’s comin’ over you at all, -girsha? Never let me hear of you writing to that woman!”<a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a></p> - -<p>Norah went to the door and looked at the calm sea stretching out far -below. The waves were bright under the glance of the sun; a dark boat, a -little speck in the distance, was moving out towards the bar.</p> - -<p>“Where are you going, Norah?” asked the woman at the fire.</p> - -<p>“Down to the sea, mother,” answered the girl as she made her way towards -the beach.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">B</span><small>ETWEEN</small> the ragged rocks the grass was soft to the feet and refreshing -to the eyes. Two lone sycamore trees showed green against the sky; a few -stray leaves, shrivelled and filed through by caterpillars, were -fluttering to the earth. A long fairy-thimble stalk, partly despoiled by -some heedless child but still bearing three beautiful bells at the -extreme top, whipped backwards and forwards in the wind, and Norah, -reaching forward, pulled off one of the flowers and pinned it to her -breast.</p> - -<p>The tide was on the turn. The girl sat on a rock by the shore and put -her small brown feet in the water. Down under the moving waves they -looked as if they didn’t belong to her at all. Here it was very quiet; -the universal silence magnified the tranquillity of things. Under the -girl’s feet it was very deep, very dark, and very peaceful; there, where -a reflected swallow swept through a wide expanse of mirrored blue, in -the sea under her, were no regrets, no heart-sickness, and no sorrow. -When the tide went out a fair young body, a white face with closed eyes -would lie on the strand. Then the Frosses people would know why the -terrible phantom, Death, was courted by a girl.</p> - -<p>“It was all a great mistake,” she said to herself, and<a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a> in the -excitement caused by the stress of thought she sank her nails into her -palms. The memory of a night passed seven months before came vividly to -her mind. How many tearful nights had gone by since then! How many times -had she written to Alec Morrison telling him of her plight! No answer -had come; the man was indifferent.</p> - -<p>“I wasn’t the girl for the likes of him, anyway,” said Norah, looking at -her feet in the water. “But why has all this happened to me?”</p> - -<p>As in all great crises of a person’s life, there came a moment of vivid -consciousness to Norah and every surrounding object stamped itself -indelibly on her mind. The tide was sweeping slowly out; the seaweed in -the pool beneath swayed like the hair of a dead body floating in the -water. Two little fish with wide-open eyes looked up and seemed to be -staring at her. Beneath in the water the fleecy clouds looked like -little white spots against the blue of the mirrored sky, and the bar -moaned loudly on the frontier of the deep sea.</p> - -<p>“No matter what I do now, no one will think me worse than I am,” said -the poor girl. “I’ll have no joy no more in my life, for there’s no -happiness that I can look forward to.”</p> - -<p>She pulled the fairy thimbles from her breast and crushed them in her -hand. Out near the bar she could see the little black boat heaving on -the waves. Norah rose to her feet.</p> - -<p>How dark the water looked under her. The sand sloped sharply from her -feet to the bottom of the pool, which was bedded with sharp rocks -covered with trailing, slimy seaweed. She peered in, catching her breath -sharply as she did so. Then one little brown foot went further into the -water, afterwards the other. She bent down, cut the water apart with her -hands; a slight ripple<a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a> spread out on both sides and was lost almost as -soon as it was formed.</p> - -<p>“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, pray for me a sinner now and at the hour of my -death, Amen,” she said, repeating a prayer which had flowed countless -times since childhood from her lips.</p> - -<p>A sudden thought struck her and a look of perplexity overspread her -face. “This is pilin’ one sin on top of the other,” she said in a low -voice and looked round, fearing that somebody had overheard her. -Everything about was silent as if in fear; in that moment she thought -that the sea had ceased to move, the swallow to circle, herself even to -live; the world seemed to be waiting for something—an event of great -and terrible purport, hidden and unknown.</p> - -<p>Suddenly the child that was in her leapt under her heart and a keen but -not unpleasant pain swept through her body. She drew back from the pool, -horror-stricken at the thing which she intended to do.</p> - -<p>“I’ll go home,” she said meekly, as if obeying some command. “Maybe -he’ll have pity on me when I go over again beyond the water. This day -week Micky’s Jim, he goes again. And I can go to Sheila Carrol. She -knows and she has the good heart. God in His heaven have pity on me and -all that’s like me! for it’s the ignorant girl that I was.... If anyone -had told me.... But I knew nothin’, nothin’, and I’m black now in the -eyes of God as I’ll soon be black in the eyes of the world, of Dermod -Flynn, of me mother and everybody that knows me. Nobody will speak to me -then atall, atall!”<a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII<br /><br /> -<small>ON THE ROAD</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p>A dead weight lay on Norah’s heart; the child beneath her heart was a -burden. But even yet (it was now the month of August) those in Micky’s -Jim’s squad did not suspect her condition. She knew, however, that she -could not conceal her plight much longer, and she wanted to run away and -hide. How could she endure the glance of her country people, of Micky’s -Jim and Maire a Glan, when the truth became known?</p> - -<p>The squad would soon set off to Morrison’s. Things would go well if once -she got there, she assured herself. At present she wished that she had -someone to confide in, somebody to whom she could tell her story. But in -the squad there was none whom she could take into her confidence. The -old women from Glenmornan and Frosses, brimful of a narrow, virtuous -simplicity, were not the ones to sympathise with her; they would only -condemn. If Gourock Ellen was here, Norah felt that she could sigh her -misfortune into that woman’s heart; but neither Gourock Ellen nor Annie -had turned up for the last two years, and nobody knew what had become of -them.</p> - -<p>One day Norah felt that her secret was discovered. No one spoke of it; -no one hinted at her condition, but<a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a> all at once a curious feeling of -restraint, of suspicion, charged the atmosphere of the barn and potato -field. Whenever she asked a question those to whom she spoke fixed on -her a stare of thinly-veiled pity, not pity in essence but in design, -before replying. Once or twice when ploughing through the fields, her -head bent upon her work, she glanced round covertly to see the eyes of -everybody in the squad fixed on her. No one spoke and all silently -resumed their work when she looked at them. The silence terrified and -crushed the girl. “How much do they know?” she asked herself. That -afternoon as she ploughed her way through the wet fields Micky’s Jim -came up and stood behind her. Instinctively she knew that he was going -to speak and she waited his words in fear and trembling.</p> - -<p>“Norah Ryan,” he said, and his words came out very slowly, “who is to -blame? Is it——”</p> - -<p>Jim bent down, lifted a potato which she had passed over, threw it into -the barrel and left the sentence unfinished.</p> - -<p>It was Friday, the day on which the weekly wages of the party were paid. -That night, when Norah received her money, she stole away from the squad -intending to call on Alec Morrison.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span><small>T</small> was the last day of August. The swallows and swifts circled above -Norah’s head and from time to time swept down over the sodden pastures -where the farm cattle were grazing. The birds snapped greedily at the -awkward crane-flies that were now rising on their great September -flights. Morrison’s farm was twenty miles distant, and not wanting to -spend the money which she had earned at her work, Norah travelled all -night<a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a> long. In the morning she found that she had lost her way and had -to retrace her steps for full seven miles in order to regain her former -course. At a wayside post-office she sent half the money in her -possession home to her mother. Late in the evening, feeling footsore and -very weary, she came to the farm. Although she had not eaten food since -leaving the squad she did not feel in the least hungry. Now and again -dizziness seized her, however, and a sharp pain kept tapping as if with -a hammer in her head.</p> - -<p>“Everything will be all right now,” she said as she saw the lights of -the farm glowing through the haze of the evening, but for all that she -said the grave doubts which weighed upon her could not be shaken away. -She entered the farmyard. A few stars were out in the sky, a low wind -swept round the newly-built hayrick and the scent of hay filled her -nostrils. Alec would surely be at home. She uttered the word “Alec” -aloud; she had never given it utterance in his presence, she -recollected, and wondered why she thought of that now.</p> - -<p>The windows of the house were lighted up, and a long stream of light -quivered out into the darkness. Norah approached the door, stood for a -moment looking at the shiny brass knocker but refrained from lifting it. -She was very frightened; the heart within her fluttered like a little -bird that struggles violently against the bars of the cage in which it -is imprisoned. One frail white hand was slowly lifted to the knocker; -between the girl’s fingers it felt very cold and she let it go without -moving it. A great weariness had gripped her limbs, and her hand, heavy -and dead, seemed as if it did not belong to her.</p> - -<p>She came away from the door and approached the window. She could hear -loud laughter from the inside and somebody was playing on the piano. A -dark blind<a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a> hid the interior of the room from her view, but the light -streaming out showed where the blind had been displaced at one corner, -and pressing her brow against the pane Norah looked in.</p> - -<p>The piano suddenly ceased; a frail shadow came between the light and the -window; then a young and beautiful girl passed like a vision across the -stretch of room open to the watcher’s eyes. Norah’s glance took in the -girl for a moment; she noticed a fair head firmly poised, a small hand -raised to brush back the tresses that fell down over a white brow. Even -as the small hand was raised, a hand, larger, but almost as white, -reached out and the fingers of the girl were gripped in a firm embrace.</p> - -<p>Norah started violently, hitting her head sharply against the -window-pane, and with difficulty restraining the cry that rose to her -lips. The hand, white as a woman’s almost, with the glittering ring on -the middle finger, how well she knew it. And who was the fair girl, the -fleeting and beautiful vision on whom she looked in from the cold and -darkness of the night? Norah did not know, but instinctively she felt -rising in her heart a great resentment against the woman in the room. -Hatred filled her soul; her breath came sharply through her nostrils and -a mist gathered before her eyes.</p> - -<p>“I’m not goin’ to cry!” she said defiantly, and began to weep silently -even as she spoke.</p> - -<p>A withered husk of moon crept up the sky; a dying wind moaned feebly on -the roof overhead and on the ground beneath the girl’s feet; a -blundering moth struck sharply against her face, fell to the ground, -rose slowly and as slowly disappeared. All around was the vast breathing -silence of the infinite, the mystery of the world.</p> - -<p>Norah looked into the room again and old Farmer Morrison was facing her, -a long white pipe in his mouth and<a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a> a starched collar under his chin. A -broad grin overspread his face, and he looked like a fat, serious frog -that had suddenly begun to smile. The upturned end of the blind slowly -fluttered down and the whole interior of the room was hidden from the -girl’s eyes.</p> - -<p>“Here am I out in the cold, and everyone is happy inside,” said the poor -girl, pressing her hand tightly against her breast as she spoke. “What -was I doin’ atall, atall, when I was here before? How I call to mind -that night of all nights, a dear night to me! And it is forever written -red in my soul.... There he’s in there and in there is another girl—not -me. I’m out here in the cold.... Mother of God! What am I to do?”</p> - -<p>Norah went back from the window, caring nothing for the noise she made; -caring little for what might now happen to her. Her face twitched, her -breath stressed through her nostrils, her shoulders rose slowly and fell -rapidly. The breeze gathered strength; it swept as if in a light passion -around the farmyard and caused the girl’s skirts to cling closely about -her legs. She leant for support against the shed in which Micky’s Jim -and his squad had taken up their quarters so often. How bare and lonely -the place looked now! Somewhere in the far corner a rat was gnawing at -the woodwork with its sharp teeth; presently it ran out into the open, -moving along rapidly, but as softly as a piece of velvet trailed on -polished wood.</p> - -<p>At that moment an intense and sudden revulsion of feeling took place -within Norah. She was filled with a strange dislike for everything and -everybody. A great change began to operate in her soul. In one vivid -flash the whole world lay as if naked before her. Man lived for pleasure -only; he had no thought for others; he cared only for himself, his -passions and desires. What had she been doing all her life? Working for -others, slaving<a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a> that others might be happy. She worked to bring money -to the landlord (ah! the dresses that the landlord’s daughters wore!), -to Farley McKeown (ah! the lady that got sixty thousand pounds to become -his wife!), and to the priest (ah! the big mansion and the many rooms!). -At this awful moment she dared not go to one of her people for help. -Even her mother would give her the cold glance if she went home; she -might shut the very door in her daughter’s face. There was nobody to -care for her—but even at that moment she recollected Gourock Ellen and -Sheila Carrol, and felt that in these two women great wells of sympathy -were open and at these she might refresh her weary soul.</p> - -<p>Before her for an instant the world lay exposed to its very core; then -as if by a falling curtain the sight was hidden again from her eyes and -she found herself, a lonely little girl, leaning against the cold wall, -her head sunk on her breast and her numb fingers, that almost lacked -feeling, pressing against the rough masonry of the shed. A great wave of -self-pity surged through the girl and she burst into tears.</p> - -<p>She took no heed of the voice near her, did not see the dark forms which -stood beside her, and only started violently and looked round when a -hand was laid upon her shoulder. Two persons, a man and a woman, were -looking at her. But even then in the terrible isolation of her own -thoughts she took little heed of the strangers. She gazed at them -vacantly for a moment, then turned towards the wall again as if nothing -interested her but the bleak shed and the rats squeaking in the corner. -When, after a moment, the strange woman ventured to speak, Norah looked -round in surprise. She had forgotten all about the two people. -Recollection of having seen them before came to her; they were the man -and woman<a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a> that had made such an impression on Morrison when he viewed -them sleeping in the pig-sty.</p> - -<p>“What’s wrong with ye?” asked the woman in a not unkindly voice. Norah -could detect the odour of whisky in her breath and concluded that both -the man and woman were drunk.</p> - -<p>“Poor girl!” said the man when Norah did not answer. He looked closely -at her and seemed to understand her plight. “Poor lassie!” he -repeated.... “Where’s yer folk? Ah, I know who ye are, for I saw ye -before. Ye were here with the tattie diggers last year, weren’t ye?”</p> - -<p>“Come doon to the shed with us,” said the woman. “It’s warmer there than -here.”</p> - -<p>The woman took the girl gently but firmly by the hand and led her into -the sty in which herself and the man lived. Norah made no protest and -followed the woman without a word. In the dwelling-place of the man and -woman it was very dark and rats were scampering all over the place.</p> - -<p>“Jean,” said the man on hearing the scurrying in the corner, “rats!”</p> - -<p>“Last night they ate all our food,” said the woman.</p> - -<p>“Last night, Jean?” interrogated the man.</p> - -<p>“The night before,” the woman corrected.</p> - -<p>The man drew a match from his pocket, rubbed it on his trousers and lit -a candle stuck in the neck of a black bottle which stood on the floor. -Near it a small pile of wood, hemmed with a few lumps of coal, was ready -for lighting. To this the man applied the match and in a few minutes the -fire was burning brightly. A dark smoke rose to the roof, which was -broken in several places; something small like a bird fluttered out from -the rafters and whirred in the air above.</p> - -<p>“Jean,” said the man, “a blind bat!”</p> - -<p>“Sit doon here, lass,” said the woman, drawing forward<a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a> a splintered -chest and placing it beside Norah. “We’ll gie ye somethin’ to eat in a -meenit. Are ye hungry?”</p> - -<p>“Not hungry,” said Norah, sitting down on the box, “but dry.”</p> - -<p>“This is what ye need,” said the man, drawing a bottle from his pocket -and handing it to the girl.</p> - -<p>“I don’t drink,” said Norah. “I’ve the pledge.”</p> - -<p>“Jean,” said the man, looking at his wife and pointing to a tin -porringer which lay on the ground beside him, “water.”</p> - -<p>The woman went out and returned in a few minutes with a porringer of -water which she handed to Norah, who drank deeply.</p> - -<p>“Jean,” said the man, uncorking the bottle which he held in his hand, -“drink!” The woman returned the bottle when she had drunk a mouthful.</p> - -<p>“Jean, tea!”</p> - -<p>The woman emptied the porringer from which Norah had drunk and went out -again.</p> - -<p>“She’s a rare body that!” said the man to Norah when the woman clattered -away through the darkness. “I like her, I like her—like——” he paused -for a moment and bit the nail of his thumb; “like blazes!” he concluded.</p> - -<p>Norah looked round and took a sudden interest in the place. An -instinctive liking for this man and woman crept into her soul. True they -were both half-tipsy, and the man now and again without any apparent -reason uttered words which were not nice to hear.</p> - -<p>“Yer wife is a kindly woman,” said Norah, breaking through the barriers -of her silence.</p> - -<p>“Wife!” said the man and laughed a trifle awkwardly. “Wife! Well, I -suppose it is all the same.”</p> - -<p>The man was a stunted little fellow, unshaven and ragged, but his -shoulders were very broad. The little<a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a> finger of his left hand was -missing and his toes peeped out through his boots. His teeth were -stained a dirty yellow with tobacco juice.</p> - -<p>“It’s not much of a place, this,” he said. “We never have much company -here ’cept the bat that lives in the rafters and the wind that comes in -by the door and the stars that look down through the roof.”</p> - -<p>He laughed loudly, but seeing that Norah did not join in his laughter, -he suddenly became silent. Norah’s eyes again roved round the place. It -was dirty and squalid, well in keeping with the occupants. A potato -barrel stood in one corner; beside it was a pile of straw covered with a -few dirty bags. This was the bed. The guttering candle gleamed feebly in -the corner and the grease ran down the bottle. Overhead the bat was -still fluttering madly, hitting against the joists every moment.</p> - -<p>The woman re-entered the shed and placed the porringer of water on the -fire; the man went to the barrel, lifted the bag which served as a -cover, and brought out little packets of food.</p> - -<p>“Can I be of any help to you?” asked Norah, rising to her feet.</p> - -<p>“Ye’re tired and worn,” said the woman.</p> - -<p>“Jean,” said the man, “don’t let the lass work.”</p> - -<p>Norah sat down again. A box came from the dark recess of the room; the -woman wiped it with her apron and laid it on the floor by the fire. The -man placed a loaf, some sugar, a piece of butter, and a tin mug on the -table.</p> - -<p>“Donal,” said the woman suddenly, “milk.”</p> - -<p>The man went out and returned in about ten minutes with some warm milk -at the bottom of a large wooden pail.</p> - -<p>“We just get a wee drop from the farmer’s cows when there’s nobody -about,” he explained.<a name="page_211" id="page_211"></a></p> - -<p>When tea was ready the girl was handed the tin porringer filled to the -brim; the pannikin in which the tea was made served the other two, both -drinking from the vessel in turn. Norah ate the bread greedily; she felt -very hungry. The man and woman had recourse to the bottle once more when -the meal was finished.</p> - -<p>“Where is the tattie squad now?” asked Donal.</p> - -<p>“Down at G—— farm, near S——,” answered Norah.</p> - -<p>“Donal, dinna speir,” said the woman in a sharp voice.</p> - -<p>“Jean, haud yer tongue,” answered the man, but he did not press the -question when he noticed a startled look steal into Norah’s eyes.</p> - -<p>“Things maun be some way,” said the woman in a voice of consolation, -though she seemed to be addressing nobody in particular, “and things -will happen.”</p> - -<p>“There’s great goings-on in there,” said Donal, pointing his thumb over -his shoulder in the direction of the farmhouse. “Morrison’s son has been -and engaged to a young lady. Happen that ye may have seen the young man -when ye were here afore.”</p> - -<p>Norah looked at Donal straight in the eyes and he felt that she was -seeing through him into a world far beyond. The man looked at Jean; -their glances met and a message flashed between them.</p> - -<p>“Him!” said the woman.</p> - -<p>“The feckless rascal!” exclaimed the man.</p> - -<p>He threw another lump of coal into the fire, kicked the others into a -riotous blaze, shook up the straw in the corner and spread out the -blankets and bags.</p> - -<p>“Bed, lassie,” he said to Norah, pointing at the straw.</p> - -<p>“But where’ll yerselves sleep?” asked the girl.</p> - -<p>“Jean, where’ll we doss?”</p> - -<p>“By the fire,” answered the woman.</p> - -<p>“But it’ll be wrong of me,” said Norah; then stopped and left the words -that rose to her tongue unuttered.<a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a> Sleep was stealing over her; she -shut her eyes. A gentle arm was laid on her shoulders; she rose, because -a voice suggested that she should rise, and afterwards found herself -lying on the bed of straw.</p> - -<p>A vision of a lighted window came to her; she was looking in at the man -she loved and his lips were pressing those of another woman. Then scenes -and objects vague and indistinct passed before her eyes, big dark -shadows mustered together in the centre of the roof above her, then -other shadows from all sides rushed in and joined together, trembled and -became blended in complete obscurity. Norah fell asleep.</p> - -<p>“Poor lassie!” said Donal, throwing himself down on the floor by the -fire, “poor lassie!”</p> - -<p>“God have pity on her,” said the woman; “and her sic a comely lass!”<a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII<br /><br /> -<small>COMPLICATIONS</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span><small>N</small> the night of Norah’s arrival at the steading Alec Morrison slept -well, but wakened with the dawn and sat up betimes. He was very pleased -with himself and his position at the bank; things had gone well, his -father had doubled his allowance, and on the strength of that the young -man had become engaged.</p> - -<p>He had broken with the little girl in Glasgow; for while admiring her -good looks he deplored her lack of intelligence. She spent a great deal -of her time in dressing herself, and Morrison knew that there would come -a day when dresses would not please, when a husband would require -something more worthy of respect, something more enduring than pretty -looks and gaudy garments. Besides this drawback there was another. The -girl, who took her good looks from her mother, long dead, had a -grasping, greedy father whom nobody could love or admire. Morrison had -met him twice and disliked him immensely. He was a dirty little man and -generally had three days’ growth of hair on his chin. When shaking hands -his thumb described a curious backward turn, forming into a loop like -one of those on the letter S. The daughter had the same peculiarity. -Before meeting the father this movement of the girl’s thumb amused -Morrison; afterwards it disgusted him. Finally he took<a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a> his departure -and again got into tow with Ellen Keenans, the live woman with advanced -views ten years ahead of her age. Morrison fell in love easily, -indifferently almost. He was an attractive young man, well built and -muscular, who cultivated the art of dress with considerable care. All -good-looking women fascinated him, but none held him captive for very -long. He had become engaged to the girl with the advanced ideas and took -her to his people’s home. The old farmer liked her but did not -understand many of the things of which she spoke. That was not to be -wondered at, seeing that he was a plain, blunt man, although a gentleman -farmer, and the girl was ten years ahead of her time.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span><small>LEC</small> Morrison, the sleep gone entirely from his eyes, his face a little -red after shaving, came downstairs to the breakfast-room. Ellen Keenans -was sitting on the sofa, a book in her hand.</p> - -<p>“Up already, dear?” asked Morrison, and bent to kiss the girl. She laid -down the book which she had been reading and met the kiss with her lips.</p> - -<p>“The country life is so quiet, so refreshing; one cannot have too much -of it,” she said, drumming idly with her fingers on the edge of the -sofa.</p> - -<p>“What are you reading, dear?” the young man asked.</p> - -<p>“Kautsky’s <i>Ethics of Materialist Conception of History</i>.”</p> - -<p>“Rather a big thing to tackle before breakfast.”</p> - -<p>She cast a look of reproof at the young man, lifted the book from the -table, then, as if something occurred to her, laid it down again.</p> - -<p>“You haven’t read it, I bet,” she said; then before he<a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a> could answer: -“You promised last night to let me see some queer people—”</p> - -<p>“Wrecks of the social system.”</p> - -<p>“—who live on this farm.”</p> - -<p>“An old man and woman,” said Morrison. “A quaint pair they are, stunted -and seedy. They seem to have no souls, but I suppose deep down within -them there is some eternal goodness, some fundamental virtue.”</p> - -<p>“Who are you quoting?” asked the girl, getting to her feet. “Where are -these two people?”</p> - -<p>“In an outhouse near by,” he told her. “It’s terrible the abyss to which -some people sink,” he went on. “How many of these derelicts might be -saved if some restraining hand was reached out to help them, if some -charitable soul would take pity on them.”</p> - -<p>“When did you begin to look upon charity as a means of remedying social -evils?” asked the girl almost fiercely. “Charity is a bribe paid to the -maltreated so that they may hold their tongues.”</p> - -<p>Morrison, as was his custom when the girl spoke in that manner, became -silent.</p> - -<p>“In here,” he said when they arrived at the dilapidated door of the -pig-sty.</p> - -<p>“In there?” questioned the girl and looked at Morrison.</p> - -<p>Morrison entered with rather an important air; he was showing a new -world to his fair companion. The girl hesitated for a moment on the -threshold, then followed the young man into the dark interior.</p> - -<p>Donal and Jean were seated at the fire drinking tea from the same can. -On a small and dirty board which lay on the ground between them a chunk -of dry bread and a little lump of butter could be seen. The two -occupants of the sty took very little notice of the visitors; the man<a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a> -said “Good-morning” gruffly, the woman looked critically at the girl’s -dress then went on with her meal.</p> - -<p>“It must be cold here,” said the young girl, looking curiously round and -noticing a streak of grey daylight stealing through the roof.</p> - -<p>“Jean, is it cold here?” asked the man by the fire, biting the end of -his crust.</p> - -<p>“As cold as the grave,” answered the woman.</p> - -<p>Ellen Keenans looked closely at the speaker. The broken nose, almost on -a level with her face, the pockmarked flesh of the cheeks and chin, the -red eyelids, the watery, expressionless eyes filled the young lady with -nauseous horror. In the renovated society of which Ellen Keenans dreamt, -this woman would be entirely out of place, just as much as her -sweetheart and herself with their well-made clothing, their soft leather -shoes and gold rings, were out of place here. And these two people, the -man who wolfed up his bread like a dog and the woman with the disfigured -face, might have something great and good in their natures. Alec had -given such sentiments voice often. How noble-minded he was, she thought.</p> - -<p>The door of the building faced east. The early sun, rising over a bank -of grey clouds, suddenly beamed forth with splendid ray and lit up the -dark interior of the sty. This beautiful beam disclosed what the -darkness had hidden, the dirt and squalor of the place.</p> - -<p>The floor, on which crawled numberless wood lice and beetles, was -indented with holes filled with filthy smelling water, and the blank -walls were literally covered with reddish cockroaches. The sunlight -beamed on a spider’s web hanging from the roof; the thin silky threads -were covered with dead insects. Rats had burrowed into the base of the -walls and the whole building was permeated with an overpowering and -unhealthy odour. Ellen Keenans glanced up at the joists where the -sun-rays<a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a> struck them, then down the stretch of dark slimy wall, down, -down to the floor, and there, in bold relief against the darkness, she -saw in all its youthful beauty the face of a sleeping girl. Ellen turned -an enquiring glance to the woman by the fire; then to Morrison, whose -face wore a troubled expression.</p> - -<p>“Who have you here, Donal?” asked the young man.</p> - -<p>“A lass that we found greetin’ outside your door last night,” said the -man, this time not appealing to Jean for an answer. “Happen that ye know -her?”</p> - -<p>The two by the fire looked at the young couple. The woman’s watery eyes -took on a new expression; they seemed suddenly to have become charged -with condemnation and contempt.</p> - -<p>“Is she one of Jim Scanlon’s squad?” asked Morrison. Although putting -the question he had recognised Norah instantly, and now he wished to be -away. Donal and Jean looked suddenly terrible in his eyes; the pity he -felt for them a moment ago now gave place to a fear for himself. Odd -little waves of expression were passing over the woman’s face and in her -eyes he read a terrible accusation.</p> - -<p>“It was all her fault, not mine,” he muttered under his breath. “That -night and the dog howling and the stars out above us.... But it was all -her own fault. Why did she keep following me about? She might have known -that I could never have.... We’ll go back to the house now,” he said -aloud to Ellen Keenans. “We’ve seen all that is to be seen.”</p> - -<p>The girl glanced at him interrogatively, curious. “Who is she?” came the -question.</p> - -<p>“Ye’ll soon know,” said the woman by the fire, rising and going to the -shake-down by the wall. “Wake up, lass!” she cried to the sleeper.</p> - -<p>Norah rose in bed, her mind groping darkly with her<a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a> surroundings. She -had been dreaming of home and wakened with a vivid remembrance of her -mother’s cabin still in her mind. The light of the sun shone full in her -face and she lifted her hand up to shield her eyes. Then in a flash it -was borne to her where she had spent the night. Several dark objects -stood between her and the door; these developed into a grouping of -persons, in the midst of which Alec Morrison stood out definitely. -Norah, fully dressed, just as she had gone to sleep, moved towards him.</p> - -<p>“Alec Morrison, I’ve come back,” she said, paused and looked at the girl -beside him, then began to talk hurriedly. “I left the squad the day -before yesterday; I travelled all the dark night and lost me way, for me -mind would be busy with the thoughts that were coming to me.... Last -night I came to yer door.... Alec Morrison, why are ye so scared -lookin’? Sure ye’re not afraid of me!”</p> - -<p>Morrison was in a very awkward fix, and this he confessed to himself. He -never intended to marry the girl and never for a moment thought that the -adventure of Christmas Eve would lead him into such a predicament. “And -you are as well rid of her,” some evil voice whispered in his ear. “Look -at her as she is now. Is she a suitable companion for you?” Morrison -gazed covertly at the girl. Her hair, which had not been combed for two -days, hung over her eyes and ears in tangled tufts; even the face, which -still retained all its splendid beauty, was blackened by the dust which -had fallen from the roof during the night.</p> - -<p>“Are ye goin’ to do the right thing to the girl?” asked Donal. “It’s the -only way out of it if ye have the spirit of a man in ye.”</p> - -<p>Morrison gazed blankly at the man, then at Norah. A<a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a> fierce and almost -animal look came into her eyes as she faced him.</p> - -<p>“I’ll do the right thing,” he said in a hoarse voice and turned and went -out of the building, Ellen Keenans following at his heels. Norah watched -them go, making no effort to detain them. When they went out she -tottered towards the wall, reaching upwards with her hands as if wanting -to touch resignation.</p> - -<p>“It’s all over!” she exclaimed. “It’s him that has the black heart and -will be goin’ to do the right thing with little bits of money. The right -thing!” She leant against the cockroach-covered wall, her little voice -raised in loud protest against the monstrous futility of existence.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span><small>N</small> hour later Morrison returned to the sty, carrying gold in his pocket -but feeling very awkward. He and Ellen had quarrelled. When they went -out into the open from the sty she turned on him fiercely.</p> - -<p>“How many of these souls might be saved if some restraining hand was -reached out to help them!” she quoted sneeringly.</p> - -<p>“But, Ellen, it was more the girl’s fault than mine. And when one is -young one may do many things that he’s sorry for afterwards. And I’ll do -the right thing for the girl.”</p> - -<p>“The right thing?” queried Ellen Keenans, and a troubled expression -settled on her face. “But you cannot. It’s impossible. To two——”</p> - -<p>“I’m wealthy now, you know. My allowance——”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I see,” said the girl and, strangely enough, a suggestion of relief -blended with her voice.</p> - -<p>“I suppose you’ll think me a prig, Ellen,” said the<a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a> young man. “But it -wasn’t altogether my fault, neither was it the girl’s, I suppose. I -suppose it was fate.... The girl won’t be highly sensitive. I’ve seen -ones working here on the farm, young women, and they made a slip. But it -did not seem to affect them. And we all make mistakes, Ellen....”</p> - -<p>His speech came to an end and he left her and went towards the house; an -hour later he re-entered the sty.</p> - -<p>The woman with the pock-marked face looked at him angrily. Norah sat -beside her on the upturned box, one arm hanging loosely by her side, the -other resting on her knees, the hand pressed against her chin and a -tapering finger stretching along her cheek. The old woman had given -Norah a broken comb to dress her hair and now it hung to her waist in -long, wavy tresses. But in the middle of the work she had dropped the -comb and fallen into a deep reverie.</p> - -<p>“I’ve come to see you,” Morrison began with an abruptness which showed -that he wanted to hurry over a distasteful job. He was going to make -atonement for his sin, and atonement represented a few pieces of gold, a -few months’ denial of the luxuries which this gold could procure. He -looked straight at Norah’s bowed head, taking no notice of the other -occupants of the hovel.</p> - -<p>“I’ve come to see you,” he repeated, but the girl paid no heed to him. -He drew an envelope from his pocket, shook it so that the money within -made a loud rattle, and placed it on her lap. The girl roused herself -abruptly as if stung, lifted the envelope and looked at the man. Fearing -that she was going to fling the terrible packet in his face, he put up -his hand to shield himself. Norah smiled coldly and then handed him back -the packet, which he had not the courage to refuse nor the audacity to -return. The girl seemed to be performing some task that had no interest -for her, something out and beyond the<a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a> scope of her life. For a moment -Morrison felt it in him to pity her, but deep down in his heart he -pitied himself more.</p> - -<p>“I thought ... I would like.... You know that....” he stammered. “I’ll -go away just now,” he said in a low voice.</p> - -<p>“You’d better,” said Donal, crouching by the fire like a cat ready to -spring.</p> - -<p>Alec Morrison left the sty. At the hour of noon Norah bade good-bye to -Donal and Jean and set off for Glasgow, where she intended to call on -Sheila Carrol, the beansho.<a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV<br /><br /> -<small>THE RAT-PIT</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> address on the letter which Norah received from Sheila Carrol was -“47, Ann Street, Cowcaddens,” but shortly after the letter had been -written the Glasgow Corporation decided that 47 was unfit for human -habitation, and those who lived there were turned out to the streets.</p> - -<p>It was late in the evening of the day on which she left Jean and Donal -that Norah came to No. 47, to find the place in total darkness. She -groped her way up a narrow alley to the foot of a stair and there -suddenly stepped on a warm human body lying on the ground.</p> - -<p>“What the devil!—Ah, ye’re choking me, an old person that never done no -one no harm,” croaked a wheezy voice, apparently a woman’s, under -Norah’s feet. “I only came in oot of the cauld, lookin’ for a night’s -shelter. Hadn’t a bawbee for the Rat-pit. Beg pardon! I’m sorry; I’ll go -away at once; I’ll go now. For the love of heaven don’t gie me up to the -cops. I’m only a old body and I hadn’t a bawbee of my own. I couldn’t -keep walkin’ on all night. Beg pardon, I’m only a old body and I hadn’t -a kirk siller piece<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a> for the Rat-Pit!”</p> - -<p>“I’m sorry, but I didn’t know that there was anyone here,” said Norah, -peering through the darkness. “I’m a stranger, good woman.”<a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a></p> - -<p>“Ye’re goin’ to doss here too,” croaked the voice from the ground.</p> - -<p>“I’m lookin’ for a friend,” said Norah. “Maybe ye’ll know her—Sheila -Carrol. She lives here.”</p> - -<p>“Nobody lives here,” said the woman, shuffling to her feet. “Nobody but -the likes of me and ones like me. No human being is supposed to live -here. I had at one time a room on the top of the landin’, the cheapest -room in Glasgow it was. Can’t get another one like it now and must sleep -out in the snow. Out under the scabby sky and the wind and the rain. It -wasn’t healthy for people to sleep here, so someone said, and we were -put out. Think of that, and me havin’ the cheapest room in the -Cowcaddens. If the cops find me here, it’s quod. Wha be ye lookin’ for?”</p> - -<p>“A friend, Sheila Carrol.”</p> - -<p>“Never heard of her.” The voice, almost toneless, seemed to be forcing -its way through some thick fluid in the speaker’s throat. The darkness -of the alley was intense and the women were hidden from one another.</p> - -<p>“Everybody that stayed here has gone, and I don’t know where they are,” -the old woman continued. “Don’t know at all. Ye dinna belong to Glesga?” -she croaked.</p> - -<p>“No, decent woman.”</p> - -<p>“By yer tongue ye’ll be a young girl.”</p> - -<p>“I am.”</p> - -<p>“Mind ye, I’m a cute one and I ken everything. It’s not every one that -could tell what ye are by yer tongue. Are ye a stranger?”</p> - -<p>“I am,” answered Norah. “I was never in Glasgow before.”</p> - -<p>“I knew that too,” said the old woman. “And ye want lodgin’s for the -night? Then the Rat-pit’s the place; a good decent place it -is—threepence a night for a bunk. Beg pardon, but maybe ye’ll have a -kid’s eye (threepence)<a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a> extra to spare for an old body. Come along with -me and I’ll show the way. I’m a cute one and I know everything. Ye -couldn’t ha’e got into better hands than mine if ye’re a stranger in -Glasgow.”</p> - -<p>They went out into a dimly-lighted lane and Norah took stock of her new -friend. The woman was almost bent double with age; a few rags covered -her body, she wore no shoes, and a dusty, grimy clout was tied round one -of her feet. As if conscious of Norah’s scrutiny she turned to the girl.</p> - -<p>“Ah! Ye wouldn’t think, would ye, that I had once the finest room in the -Cowcaddens, the finest—at its price?”</p> - -<p>“The Rat-pit’s a lodgin’ place for women,” the old creature croaked -after an interval. “There are good beds there; threepence a night ye pay -for them. Beg pardon, but maybe ye’ll pay for my bunk for the night. -That’s just how I live; it’s only one night after another in my life. -Beg pardon, but that’s how it is.” She seemed to be apologising for the -crime of existing. “But ye’ll maybe have a kid’s eye to spare for my -bunk?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“All right, decent woman,” said Norah.</p> - -<p>“What do they cry ye?”</p> - -<p>“Norah Ryan.”</p> - -<p>“A pretty name; and my name’s Maudie Stiddart,” said the old woman.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>EN</small> minutes later the two women were seated in the kitchen of the -Rat-pit, frying a chop which Norah had bought on their way to the -lodging-house.</p> - -<p>The place was crowded with women of all ages, some young, children -almost, their hair hanging down their backs, and the blouses that their -pinched breasts could not<a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a> fill sagging loose at the bosom. There were -six or seven of these girls, queer weedy things that smoked cigarettes -and used foul words whenever they spoke. The face of one was pitted with -small-pox; another had both eyes blackened, the result of a fight; a -third, clean of face and limb, was telling how she had just served two -months in prison for importuning men on the streets. Several of the -elder females were drunk; two fought in the kitchen, pulling handfuls of -hair from one another’s heads. Nobody interfered; when the struggle came -to an end the combatants sat down together and warmed their hands at the -stove. At this juncture a bare-footed woman, with clay caked brown -behind her ankles and a hairy wart on her chin, came up to Norah.</p> - -<p>“Ye’re a stranger here,” she said.</p> - -<p>“I am, decent woman.”</p> - -<p>“Ye’re Irish, too, for I ken by yer talk,” said the female. “And ye’ve -got into trouble.”</p> - -<p>She pointed at the girl with a long, crooked finger, and Norah blushed.</p> - -<p>“Dinna be ashamed of it,” said the woman; then turning to Maudie -Stiddart she enquired: “And ye’re here too, are ye? I thought ye were -dead long ago? Jesus! but some people can stick it out. There’s no -killin’ of ’em!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, ye’re a blether, Mary Martin,” said Maudie, turning the chop over -on the stove. “Where are ye workin’ now?”</p> - -<p>“On the free coup outside Glesga.”</p> - -<p>“The free coup?” asked the young girl who had just left prison, lighting -a cigarette. “What’s that atall?”</p> - -<p>“The place to where the dung and dust and dirt of a town is carried away -and throwed down,” Mary Martin explained. “Sometimes lumps of coal and -pieces of metal<a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a> are flung down there. These I pick up and sell to -people and that’s how I make my livin’.”</p> - -<p>“Is that how you do?” asked the girl with a shrug of her shoulders.</p> - -<p>“Everyone isn’t young like you,” said Mary, sitting down on a bench near -the stove. The girl laughed vacantly, tried to make a ring of the -cigarette smoke, was unable to do so, and walked away. Mary Martin -turned to Maudie and whispered something to her.</p> - -<p>“Ah, puir lass!” exclaimed Maudie.</p> - -<p>“And the one to blame was a toff, too!” said Mary. “They’re all alike, -and the good dress often hides a dirty hide.”</p> - -<p>“Beg pardon, but have ye got anything to ate?” asked Maudie.</p> - -<p>“Nothin’ the night,” answered Mary. “Only made the price of my bed for -my whole day’s work.”</p> - -<p>“Will ye ate something with us?” asked Norah.</p> - -<p>“Thank ye,” said Mary Martin, and the three women drew closer to the -chop that was roasting on the stove.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> beds in the Rat-pit, forty in all, were in a large chamber upstairs, -and each woman had a bed to herself. The lodgers undressed openly, -shoved their clothes under the mattresses and slid into bed. One sat -down to unlace her boots and fell asleep where she sat; another, a young -girl of seventeen or eighteen, fell against the leg of the bed and sank -into slumber, her face turned to the roof and her mouth wide open. The -girl who had been in prison became suddenly unwell and burst into tears; -nobody knew what she was weeping about and nobody enquired.<a name="page_227" id="page_227"></a></p> - -<p>Maudie, Mary, and Norah slept in three adjoining beds, the Irish girl in -the centre. The two older women dropped off to sleep the moment their -heads touched the pillows; Norah lay awake gazing at the flickering -shadows cast by the solitary gas-jet on the roof of the room. The heat -was oppressive, suffocating almost, and not a window in the place was -open. Women were still coming in, and only half the bunks in the room -were yet occupied. Most of the new-comers were drunk; some sat down or -fell on the floor and slept where they had fallen, others threw -themselves in on top of the bed and lay there with their clothes on. An -old woman whose eye had been blackened in a fight downstairs started to -sing “Annie Laurie,” but forgetting what followed the first verse, -relapsed into silence.</p> - -<p>Norah began to pray under her breath to the Virgin, but had only got -half through with her prayer when a shriek from the bed on her left -startled her. Maudie was sitting upright, yelling at the top of her -voice. “Cannot ye let an old body be?” she cried. “I’m only wantin’ a -night’s doss at the foot of the stairs. That’s not much for an old un to -ask, is it? Holy Jesus! I cannot be let alone for a minute. Beg pardon; -I’m goin’ away, but ye might let me stay here, and me only an old -woman!”</p> - -<p>Maudie opened her watery eyes and stared round. Beads of sweat stood out -on her forehead, and her face—red as a crab—looked terrifying in the -half-light of the room.</p> - -<p>“Beg pardon,” she croaked, and her voice had a sound like the breaking -of bones. “Beg pardon. I’m only an old woman and I never did nobody no -harm!”</p> - -<p>She sank down again, pulled the blankets over her shoulders and fell -asleep.</p> - -<p>Fresh arrivals came in every minute, staggered wearily to their bunks -and threw themselves down without undressing.<a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a> About midnight a female -attendant, a young, neat girl with a pleasing face, entered, surveyed -the room, helped those who lay on the floor into bed, turned down the -gas and went away.</p> - -<p>Slumber would not come to Norah. All night she lay awake, listening to -the noise of the dust-carts on the pavement outside, the chiming of -church clocks, the deep breathing of the sleepers all around her, and -the sudden yells from Maudie’s bunk as the woman started in her sleep -protesting against some grievance or voicing some ancient wrong.</p> - -<p>The daylight was stealing through the grimy window when Norah got up and -proceeded to dress. A deep quietness, broken only by the heavy breathing -of the women, lay over the whole place. The feeble light of daybreak -shone on the ashen faces of the sleepers, on the naked body of a -well-made girl who had flung off all her clothing in a troubled slumber, -on Mary Martin’s clay-caked legs that stuck out from beneath the -blankets, on Maudie Stiddart’s wrinkled, narrow brow beaded with sweat; -on the faces of all the sleepers, the wiry and weakly, the fit and -feeble, the light of new-born day rested. Suddenly old Mary turned in -her sleep, then sat up.</p> - -<p>“Where are ye goin’ now?” she called to Norah.</p> - -<p>“To look for a friend,” came the answer.</p> - -<p>“A man?”</p> - -<p>“A woman called Sheila Carrol is the one I’m lookin’ for,” said Norah. -“I went to 47, Ann Street last night, for I had a letter from her there. -But the place was closed up.”</p> - -<p>“Sheila Carrol, they cry her, ye say?” said the old woman, getting out -of bed. “Maybe it’s her that I ken. She came from Ireland with a little -boy and she used to<a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a> work with me at one time. A comely strong-boned -wench she was. Came from Frosses, she once told me.”</p> - -<p>“That’s Sheila!”</p> - -<p>“And she’s left 47?”</p> - -<p>“So I hear.”</p> - -<p>“Then take my advice and try No. 46 and No. 48,” said Mary Martin; “and -also every close in the street. The people that lived in 47 will not -gang far awa’ from it. They’ll be in the next close or thereabouts. What -do they cry you, lass?” asked the old woman, slipping into her rags.</p> - -<p>“Norah Ryan.”</p> - -<p>“A pretty name it is, indeed. And have ye threepence to spare for my -breakfast, Norah Ryan? I haven’t a penny piece in all the wide world.”</p> - -<p>Norah gave threepence of her hard-earned money to Mary, sorted her dress -and stole out into the streets to search for Sheila Carrol.<a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV<br /><br /> -<small>SHEILA CARROL</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">N</span><small>ORAH</small> travelled through the streets all day, looking for her friend and -fearing that every eye was fixed on her, that everybody knew the secret -which she tried to conceal. Her feet were sore, her breath came in -short, sudden gasps as she took her way into dark closes and climbed -creaking stairs; and never were her efforts rewarded by success. Here in -the poorer parts of the city, in the crooked lanes and straggling -alleys, were dirt, darkness, and drunkenness. A thousand smells greeted -the nostrils, a thousand noises grated on the ears; lights flared -brightly in the beershops; fights started at the corners; ballad singers -croaked out their songs; intoxicated men fell in the gutters; policemen -stood at every turning, their helmets glistening, their faces calm, -their eyes watchful. The evening had come and all was noise, hurry, and -excitement.</p> - -<p>“Isaac Levison, Pawnbroker; 2 Up,” Norah read on a plate outside the -entrance of a close and went in.</p> - -<p>“I wonder if Sheila will be here?” she asked herself, and smiled sadly -as she called to mind the number of closes she had crawled into during -the whole long trying day.</p> - -<p>Dragging her feet after her, she made her way up the crooked stairs and -rapped with her knuckles at a door on<a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a> which the words “Caretaker’s -office” were painted in black letters. A woman, with a string for a neck -and wisps of red hair hanging over her face, poked out her head.</p> - -<p>“Up yet,” was the answer when Norah asked if anybody named Sheila Carrol -dwelt on the stairs.</p> - -<p>“After all my searchin’ she’s here at last,” said the young woman. “It’s -Sheila Carrol herself that’s in the place.”</p> - -<p>The beansho opened the door when she heard a rapping outside. She knew -her visitor at once.</p> - -<p>“Come in, Norah Ryan,” she said, catching the girl’s hands and squeezing -them tightly. “It’s good of ye to come. No one from Frosses, only Oiney -Dinchy’s gasair, have I seen here for a long while. But ye’ll be tired, -child?”</p> - -<p>“It’s in an ill way that I come to see ye, Sheila Carrol,” said Norah. -“It’s an ill way, indeed it is,” and then, sitting down, she told her -story quietly as if that which she spoke of did not interest her in any -way.</p> - -<p>“Poor child!” said Sheila, when the pitiful tale came to an end. “Why -has God put that burden on yer little shoulders? But there’s no use in -pining, Norah. Mind that, child!”</p> - -<p>“I would like to die, Sheila Carrol,” said Norah, looking round the bare -room, but not feeling in the least interested in what she saw. One -chair, a bed, a holy water stoup, a little black crucifix from which the -arms of the Christ had fallen away, an orange box on which lay a pair of -scissors and a pile of cloth: that was all the room contained. A feeble -fire burned in the grate and a battered oil-lamp threw a dim light over -the compartment.</p> - -<p>“I once had thoughts that were like that, meself,” said Sheila. She -placed a little tin pannikin on the fire and fanned the flame with her -apron. “People face a terrible<a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a> lot in body and in soul before they face -death. That’s the way God made us, child. We do be like grains of corn -under a mill-stone, and everything but the breath of our bodies squeezed -out of us. Sometimes I do be thinkin’ that the word ‘hope’ is blotted -from me soul; but then after a wee while I do be happy in my own way -again.”</p> - -<p>“But did ye not find yer own burden hard to bear, Sheila?”</p> - -<p>“Hard indeed, child, but it’s trouble that makes us wise,” said the -beansho, pouring tea into the pannikin that was now bubbling merrily. -“The father of me boy died on the sea and me goin’ to be married to him -when the season of Lent was by. The cold grey morning when the boat came -in keel up on Dooey Strand was a hard and black one for me. Ah! the cold -break of day; sorrow take it! The child came and I was not sorry at all, -as the people thought I should be. He was like the man I loved, and if -the bitin’ tongues of the Frosses people was quiet I would be very -happy, I would indeed, Norah! But over here in this country it was sore -and bitter to me. I mind the first night that I stopped in Glasgow with -the little boy. He was between my arms and I was lookin’ out through the -window of 47 at the big clock with the light inside of it. It was a lazy -clock that night and I thought that the light of day would never put a -colour on the sky. But the mornin’ did come and many mornin’s since -then, and stone-cold they were too!”</p> - -<p>Then Sheila told the story of her life in Scotland, and Norah, hardly -realising what was spoken, listened almost dumbly, feeling at intervals -the child within her moving restlessly, stretching out as if with a hand -and pressing against her side, causing a quivering motion to run through -her body.</p> - -<p>Sheila’s story was a pitiful one. When first she came<a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a> to Glasgow she -took an attic room at the top of a four-storeyed building and for this -she paid a weekly rent of three shillings and sixpence.</p> - -<p>“ ‘Twas the dirty place to live in, Norah, for all the smells and stinks -of the houses down under came up to me,” said the woman. “And three -white shillin’s and sixpence a week for that place that one wouldn’t put -pigs into! The houses away at home may be bad, but there’s always the -fresh air and no drunk men or bad women lyin’ across yer door every time -ye go outside. 47 was a rotten place; worse even than this, and this is -bad. Look at the sheets and blankets on the bed behind ye, Norah, look -at the colour of them and the writin’ on them.”</p> - -<p>Norah gazed at the bed and saw on every article of clothing, stamped in -large blue letters, the words: “STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT.”</p> - -<p>“That’s because someone may steal the rags,” said Sheila. “This room is -furnished by the landlord, God forgive him for the furnishin’ of it! And -he’s afraid that his tenants will run away and try to pawn the -bedclothes. Lyin’ under the blankets all night with STOLEN FROM JAMES -MOFFAT writ on them is a quare way of sleepin’. But what can a woman -like me do? And 47 was worse nor this; and the work! ’Twas beyond -speakin’ about!</p> - -<p>“The first job I got was the finishin’ of dongaree jackets, sewin’ -buttons on them, and things like that! I was up in the mornin’ at six -and went to bed the next mornin’ at one, and hard at it all the time I -wasn’t sleepin’. Sunday was the same as any other day; always work, -always the needle. I used to make seven shillin’s a week; half of that -went in rent and the other half kept meself and my boy. Talk about teeth -growin’ long<a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a> with hunger at times when the work was none too plentiful! -Sometimes, Norah——”</p> - -<p>Sheila paused. Norah was listening intently, her lips a little apart, -like a child’s.</p> - -<p>“Sometimes, Norah, I went out beggin’ on the streets—me, a Frosses -woman too,” Sheila resumed with a sigh. “Then one night when I asked a -gentleman for a few pence to buy bread he handed me over to the police. -Said I was accostin’ him. I didn’t even know what it meant at the time; -now—But I hope ye never know what it means.... Anyway I was sent to -jail for three weeks.”</p> - -<p>“To jail, Sheila!” Norah exclaimed.</p> - -<p>“True as God, child, and my boy left alone in that dirty attic. There -was I not knowin’ what was happenin’ to him, and when I came out of -prison I heard that the police had caught him wanderin’ out in the -streets and put him in a home. But I didn’t see him; I was slapped into -jail again.”</p> - -<p>“What for, Sheila?”</p> - -<p>“Child neglect, girsha,” said the woman, lifting her scissors and -cutting fiercely at a strip of cloth as she spoke. “I don’t know how -they made it out again’ me, but the law is far beyond simple people like -us. I was put in for three months that time and when I came out——”</p> - -<p>A tear dropped from Sheila’s eyes and fell on the cloth which lay on her -lap.</p> - -<p>“The little fellow, God rest his soul! was dead,” said the woman. “Then -I hadn’t much to live for and I was like to die. But people can stand a -lot one way and another, a terrible lot entirely. After that I thought -of making shirts and I got a sewin’ machine from a big firm on the -instalment system. A shillin’ a week I had to pay for the machine. I -could have done well at the shirt-makin’, but things seemed somehow to -be again’ me. On the sixth week I couldn’t pay the shillin’. It was due<a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a> -on a Friday and Saturday was my own pay day. I prayed to the traveller -to wait for the morrow, but he wouldn’t, and took the machine away. -’Twas the big firm of —— too, that did that. Think of it! them with -their mills and their riches and me only a poor woman. Nor it wasn’t as -if I wasn’t wantin’ to pay neither. But that’s the way of the world, -girsha; the bad, black world, cold as the rocks on Dooey Strand it is, -aye, and colder.</p> - -<p>“Sometimes after the sewin’ machine went I used to go out on the streets -and sing songs, and at that sort of work, not at all becomin’ for a -Frosses woman, I could always make the price of a bunk in the Rat-pit, -the place where ye were last night, Norah. Ah! how often have I had my -night’s sleep there! Then again I would come back to 47 and start some -decent work that wasn’t half as easy or half as well paid as the singin’ -of songs. So I went from one thing to another and here I am at this very -minute.”</p> - -<p>Sheila paused in her talk but not in the work which she had just -started.</p> - -<p>“Not much of a room, this one, neither,” she remarked, casting her eye -on the bed, but not missing a stitch in her sewing as she spoke. “Four -shillin’s I pay for it a week and it’s supposed to hold two people. -Outside the door you can see that ticketed up, ‘To hold two adults,’ -like the price marked on a pair of secondhand trousers. I’m all alone -here; only the woman, old Meg, that stops in the room behind this one, -passes through here on her way to work. But ye’ll stay here with me now, -two Frosses people in the one room, so to speak.”</p> - -<p>“What kind of work are ye doin’ here?” asked Norah, pointing to the -cloth which Sheila was sewing.</p> - -<p>“Shirt-finishin’,” Sheila replied. “For every shirt there’s two rows of -feather-stitchin’, eight buttonholes and seven buttons sewed on, four -seams and eight fasteners.<a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a> It takes me over an hour to do each shirt -and the pay is a penny farthing. I can make about fifteen pence a day, -but out of that I have to buy my own thread. But ye’ll be tired, child, -listenin’ to me clatterin’ here all night.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not tired listenin’ to ye at all, but it’s sorrow that’s with me -because life was so hard on ye,” said Norah. “Everything was black -again’ ye.”</p> - -<p>“One gets used to it all,” said Sheila with the air of resignation which -sits on the shoulders of those to whom the keys of that delicious -mystery known as happiness are forever lost. “One gets used to things, -no matter how hard they be, and one doesn’t like to die.”</p> - -<p>But now Norah listened almost heedlessly. Thoughts dropped into her mind -and vanished with the frightful rapidity of things falling into empty -space; and memories of still more remote things, faint, far away and -almost undefined, were wafted against her soul.</p> - -<p>The girl fell into a heavy slumber.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span><small>N</small> the morning she awoke to find herself lying in bed, the blankets on -which the blue letters STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT were stamped wrapped -tightly around her, and Sheila Carrol lying by her side. For a moment -she wondered vaguely how she had got into the bunk, then raising herself -on her elbow, she looked round the room.</p> - -<p>The apartment was a very small one, with one four-paned window and two -doors, one of which led, as Norah knew, out to the landing, and one, as -she guessed, into the room belonging to old Meg, the woman whom Sheila -had spoken of the night before. The window was cracked and crooked, the -floor and doors creaked at every move, a<a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a> musty odour of decay and death -filled the whole place. A heap of white shirts was piled on the orange -box that stood in the middle of the floor, one shirt, the “finishing” of -which had not been completed, lay on an old newspaper beside the -fireplace. It looked as if Sheila had become suddenly tired in the midst -of her feather-stitching and had slipped into bed. She was now awake and -almost as soon as she had opened her eyes was out of the blankets, had -wrapped a few rags round her bony frame and was busy at work with her -needle. Sleep for the woman was only a slight interruption of her -eternal routine.</p> - -<p>“Have a wee wink more,” she cried to Norah, “and I’ll just make a good -warm cup of tay for ye when I get this row finished. Little rogue of all -the world! ye’re tired out and worn!”</p> - -<p>Norah smiled sadly, got up, dressed herself, and going down on her knees -by the bedside, said her prayers.</p> - -<p>“It’s like Frosses again,” said Sheila, when the girl’s prayers came to -an end. “Even seein’ ye there on yer knees takes back old times. But -often I do be thinkin’ that prayin’ isn’t much good. There was old -Doalty Farrel; ye mind him talkin’ about politics the night yer father, -God rest him! was underboard. Well, Doalty was a very holy man, as ye -know yerself, and he used to go down on his knees when out in the very -fields and pray and pray. Well and good; he went down one day on his -knees in the snow and when he got home he had a pain in one of his legs. -That night it was in his side, in the mornin’ Doalty was dead. Gasair -Oiney Dinchy was tellin’ me all about it.”</p> - -<p>“But they say in Frosses that God was so pleased with Doalty that He -took him up to heaven before his time,” said Norah.</p> - -<p>“But it’s not many that like to go to heaven before<a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a> their time,” Sheila -remarked as she rose from her seat and set about to kindle the fire. At -the same moment the door leading in from the compartment opened, and an -old woman, very ugly, her teeth worn to the gums, the stumps unhealthily -yellow, her eyes squinting and a hairy wart growing on her right cheek, -entered the room.</p> - -<p>“Good morra, Meg,” said Sheila, who was fanning the fire into flame with -her apron. “Are ye goin’ to yer work?”</p> - -<p>“Goin’ to my work,” replied Meg and turned her eyes to Norah. “A friend, -I see,” she remarked.</p> - -<p>“A countrywoman of my own,” said Sheila.</p> - -<p>“Are ye new to Glesga?” Meg asked Norah, who was gazing absently out of -the window.</p> - -<p>“I have only just come here,” said the girl.</p> - -<p>“Admirin’ the view!” remarked Meg with a wheezy laugh as she took her -place beside the girl at the window. “A fine sight to look at, that. -Dirty washin’ hung out to dry; dirty houses; everything dirty. Look down -at the yard!”</p> - -<p>A four-square block of buildings with outhouses, slaty grey and ugly, -scabbed on to the walls, enclosed a paved courtyard, at one corner of -which stood a pump, at another a stable with a heap of manure piled high -outside the door. Two grey long-bodied rats could be seen running across -from the pump to the stable, a ragged tramp who had slept all night on -the warm dunghill shuffled up to his feet, rubbed the sleep and dirt -from his eyes, then slunk away from the place as if conscious of having -done something very wrong.</p> - -<p>“That man has slept here for many a night,” said Meg; then pointing her -finger upwards over the roofs of many houses to a spire that pierced -high through the smoke-laden air, she said: “That’s the Municipal -Buildin’s; that’s where the rich people meet and talk about the best<a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a> -thing to be done with houses like these. It’s easy to talk over yonder; -that house cost five hunner and fifty thousand pounds to build. A gey -guid hoose, surely, isn’t it, Sheila Carrol?”</p> - -<p>“It’s comin’ half-past five, Meg, and it’s time ye were settin’ out for -yer work,” was Sheila’s answer. “Ye’d spend half yer life bletherin’.”</p> - -<p>“A good, kindly and decent woman she is,” Sheila told Norah when Meg -took her departure. “Works very hard and, God forgive her! drinks very -hard too. Nearly every penny that doesn’t go in rent does in the -crathur, and she’s happy enough in her own way although a black -Prodesan.... Ah! there’s some quare people here on this stair when ye -come to know them all!”</p> - -<p>Over a tin of tea and a crust Sheila made plans for the future. “I can -earn about one and three a day at the finishin’,” she said. “I have to -buy my own thread out of that, three bobbins a week at twopence ha’penny -a bobbin.</p> - -<p>“Ye used to be a fine knitter, Norah,” Sheila continued. “D’ye mind the -night long ago on Dooey Strand? God knows it was hardships enough for -the strong women like us to sleep out in the snow, not to mention a -young girsha like yerself. But ye were the great knitter then and ye’ll -be nimble with yer fingers yet, I’ll go bail. Sewing ye might be able to -take a turn at.”</p> - -<p>“I used to be good with needle, Sheila,” said the girl.</p> - -<p>“Then that’ll be what we’ll do. We’ll work together, me and yerself, and -we’ll get on together well and cheaper. It’ll be only the one fire and -the one light; and now, if ye don’t mind, we’ll begin work and I’ll show -ye what’s to be done.”<a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI<br /><br /> -<small>THE PASSING DAYS</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HEY</small> came and went, days monotonously slow, each bearing with it its -burden of sorrows and regrets, of fear and unhappiness. The life of the -two women was ever the same: out of bed at five in the morning, a -salutation exchanged with old Meg as she went to her work; breakfast—a -crust of bread and a cup of tea; the light, weak and sickly, peeping -through the narrow, murky window, the eternal scissors and needles, the -white heaps of shirts, the feather-stitching and finishing. In the -morning the cripple next door clattered downstairs on crutches, the card -with the rude inscription, PARALYSED FOR LIFE, shaking to and fro as he -moved. All day long he lay on the cold flagged pavement begging his -daily bread. Tommy Macara, the lad with the rickets, came out singing to -the landing on his way to the industrial school. He stuck his head -through the door and shouted: “Ye twa women, warkin’ hard.” Both loved -little Tommy, his cheery laugh, his childish carelessness, his poor body -twisted out of shape by the humours of early disease. His legs would -twitch as he stood at the door, making an effort to control the tremors; -sometimes he would laugh awkwardly at this and hurry away. Thus the -morning.</p> - -<p>Noon.—A quarrel at No. 8. The two loose women who lived there argued -about the spoils taken from a<a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a> drunken sailor the night before, and came -to blows. One was dressed, the other, just out of bed, had only time to -wrap the blanket round her body. Both came out on the landing tearing at -each other’s hair and swearing. All the doors in the place opened; women -ragged to the point of nudity, men dirty and unshaven, hurried out to -watch the fight, which was long and severe. The women bit and scratched, -and the younger—Bessie was her name—a plump girl wearing the blanket -on which the words STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT could be read at a -distance—was deprived of her only article of apparel, and she scurried -rapidly indoors. The onlookers laughed loudly and clapped their hands; -the elder, a light-limbed lassie with very white teeth, returned to her -room closing the door behind her. Now and again a shriek could be heard -from the apartment, then a hoarse gurgle, as if somebody was getting -strangled, afterwards silence. The watchers retired indoors, and peace -settled on the stairhead. Only the two women, Sheila and Norah, never -ceased work; the needles and scissors still sparkled over and through -the white shirts.</p> - -<p>Evening.—Meg returned half-tipsy and singing a chorus, half the words -of which she had forgotten. The day’s work had been a very trying one, -the dust rising from the rags did not agree with her asthma. On entering -she looked fixedly at Sheila, shook her head sadly, ran her fingers over -Norah’s hair and began the chorus again, but stopped in the middle of it -and started to weep. After a while she reeled into her own room, closed -the door behind her, and sank to sleep on the floor beside the dead -fire.</p> - -<p>Little Tom Macara came up the stair, looked in, the eternal smile on his -pinched face, and cried out in a thin voice: “Ah! the women are warkin’ -awa’ yet. They never have a meenit to spare!”<a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a></p> - -<p>“Never a minute, Tom,” Sheila answered, and the boy went off, whistling -a music-hall tune. Tom’s mother was consumptive, his father epileptic; -he had two brothers and three sisters all older than himself. After Tom, -the man with the crutches came upstairs. From the street to the top of -the landing was a weary climb, but often he got helped on the journey; -sometimes the two whores escorted him up, sometimes Sheila gave him an -arm, and everybody on the stairs liked the man. He was always in good -humour and could sing a capital song.</p> - -<p>Later in the evening, those who indulged in intoxicants became drunk; an -ex-soldier, with one sleeve of his coat hanging loosely from his -shoulder, who lived with two women, kicked one unmercifully and got -dragged off to prison; the two harlots netted two men, one of them a -well-dressed fellow with a gold tie-pin and a ring on his finger, and -took them to their room; the paralytic could be heard singing and his -voice seemed to be ever so far away. Sheila and Norah were still busy -with the shirts, sewing their lives into every stitch of their work.</p> - -<p>“And them two women at No. 8, there’s not the least bit of harm in them -at bottom,” Sheila would exclaim. “They help the old cripple up every -time they meet him on the stairs. And to think of it! there’s seventeen -thousand women like them in Glasgow!”</p> - -<p>“God be good to us!”</p> - -<p>Midnight came and quiet, and still the two women worked on. Outside on -the landing into the common sink the water kept dripping from the tap. -Sheila made a remark about the people away home in Frosses and wondered -if they were all asleep at that moment. Outside, the city sank to its -repose; only the unfortunate and the unwell were now awake. The -epileptic’s wife coughed continually; Bessie, the plump girl, stole the -pin from the tie of her lover; downstairs the caretaker, the woman<a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a> with -the red wisps of hair, counted the number of men who went to No. 8; half -the profits went to her.</p> - -<p>One o’clock came and, as if by mutual consent, the Irish women left -their work aside and looked out of the window for a moment. High up they -could see the spire of the town hall prodding into the heavens; nearer -and almost as high the tower of a church with the black hands passing on -the lighted face of a clock; closer still the dark windows of the houses -opposite. Glasgow with all its churches, its halls, with its shipping -and commerce, its wharves and factories, its richness and splendour, its -poor and unhappy, its oppressed and miserable, Glasgow, with its -seventeen thousand prostitutes, was asleep.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">N</span><small>ORAH</small> and Sheila went to bed, wrapped the blue-lettered blankets round -their bodies and placed their heads down on the condemnatory sentences: -STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT. Almost immediately Sheila was asleep, her -knees drawn up under her (for the bed was too short for her body) and -her arms around Norah. The young girl could not sleep well now; short -feverish snatches of slumber were followed by sudden awakenings, and -fears and fancies, too subtle to define, constantly preyed on her mind. -Sometimes, when under the influence of a religious melancholy that often -took possession of her, she repeated the <i>Hail Mary</i> over and over -again, but at intervals she stopped in the midst of a prayer, started as -if stung by an asp and exclaimed: “What does the Virgin think of me, me -that has committed one of the worst mortal sins in the world!”</p> - -<p>In the midst of a prayer she dropped to sleep, maybe for the third time -in an hour, but immediately was awakened<a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a> by a sharp rapping at the -door. Sheila heard nothing, she lay almost inert, and perspiring a -little.</p> - -<p>“Who’s there?” Norah called out.</p> - -<p>“The sanitary,” a hoarse voice answered from the landing.</p> - -<p>The girl slipped out of bed, hardly daring to breathe lest her companion -was disturbed, fumbled round for the matches, lit the oil-lamp and -opened the door. Two strangers in uniform stood outside; one, a tall man -with a heavy beard, held a lamp, the other, a sallow-faced, shrunken -individual, hummed a tune in a thin, monotonous voice and picked his -nose with a claw-like finger. The two entered, brushing against the girl -who took up her stand behind the door, making a slight rapping noise -with her heels on the bare floor.</p> - -<p>“How many here?” asked the tall man with the beard.</p> - -<p>“Two,” Norah answered, “the woman in the bed and me.”</p> - -<p>“No one else under the bed?”</p> - -<p>“No one,” Norah replied, but the man knelt on the floor, lifted the -bedclothes and peeped under.</p> - -<p>“Only one in the next room?” asked the sallow-faced fellow, pointing at -Meg’s door.</p> - -<p>“Only one and nobody else.”</p> - -<p>They chose not to believe the girl’s statement, rapped on the door, -which was opened after a long delay by old Meg, who had risen naked from -bed and was now hiding her withered body behind a blanket stamped with -the blue lettering. The sentence STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT ran from the -left knee to the right shoulder; the left shoulder was bare, as was also -the left leg from ankle to hip.</p> - -<p>“Only one here,” she croaked, glowering evilly at the men who had -disturbed her slumber. “Christ! an auld body has no peace at all here, -for there are always some<a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a> folk crawlin’ round when decent folk are in -bed. Bed! callin’ it a bed and so particular about it. One would almost -be as well off if they were thrown out a handful of fleas and allowed to -sleep on the doorstep. God’s curse on ye both, comin’ at this hour of -the night to pull an old woman like me from my scratcher.”</p> - -<p>The bearded man entered the room, his companion took out a note-book and -wrote something down, shut the book and placed it in his pocket. The -tall man came out again; both bade Norah “Good-night” in apologetic -tones and took their leave. Sheila had slept unmoved through it all.</p> - -<p>The young girl closed the door, extinguished the light and re-entered -the bed. She was very tired, but sleep would not come to her eyes. An -hour passed. Sheila was snoring loudly, but Norah awake could hear the -water dropping into the sink on the landing, and the vacant laugh of -Bessie escorting a man upstairs. At night this woman never slept; her -business was then in full swing.</p> - -<p>Someone knocked at the door again, and Norah cried, “Who’s there?” “Is -this No. 8?” enquired a man’s voice. Norah answered, “No,” and steps -shuffled along the passage outside. Next instant the crash of someone -falling heavily was heard, then a muttered imprecation, and afterwards -silence.</p> - -<p>Norah fell asleep again.<a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII<br /><br /> -<small>THE NEW-COMER</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HREE</small> weeks, laggard and leaden in movement, passed away. It was late -evening; nine o’clock was just striking, and Sheila, true to her usual -habit, counted the strokes aloud.</p> - -<p>“The clock goes faster now than it did the first night I was here,” she -said. “I suppose they’ll all be goin’ to bed in Frosses now, or maybe -sayin’ the rosary. Are ye tired, Norah?” she suddenly asked her -companion.</p> - -<p>“No, not tired, only....”</p> - -<p>“Maybe ye would like to go to bed,” said Sheila, anticipating Norah’s -desires and looking very wise.</p> - -<p>“I think that.... Oh! it’s all right,” answered Norah, an expression of -pain passing across her face.</p> - -<p>“I know,” said Sheila, laying down her scissors and stirring up the -fire, which was brighter than usual. “Ye must go to bed now and keep -yerself warm, child. Ye’ll be all right come the mornin’.”</p> - -<p>“I’m very unwell, Sheila. I feel.... No, I’m better again,” said Norah, -making a feeble attempt to smile and only succeeding in blushing.</p> - -<p>She undressed to her white cotton chemise, lay down, and Sheila gathered -the blankets round the young woman with tender hands. Norah appeared -calm, her fingers for a moment toyed with the tresses over her brow, -then<a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a> she drew her hand under the blankets. Her face had taken on a new -light; the cold look of despair had suddenly given place to a new and -nervous interest in life and in herself. It seemed as if things had -assumed a new character for her; as if she understood in a vague sort of -way that a woman’s life is always woven of dreams, sorrow, love, and -self-sacrifice. She was now waiting almost gladly, impatient for the -most solemn moment in a woman’s life.</p> - -<p>“I’m not one bit afraid,” she said to the serious Sheila who was bending -over her. “Now don’t be frightened. One would think....” Norah did not -proceed. It was a moment of words half-spoken and the listener -understood.</p> - -<p>Suddenly Norah sighed deeply, clutched Sheila’s dress in a fierce grip -and closed her eyes tightly and tensely. She was suffering, but she -endured silently.</p> - -<p>“I’m better again,” she said after a moment. “Don’t heed about me, -Sheila. I’m fine.”</p> - -<p>The older woman went back to her work with the large shiny scissors and -the bright little needle. Only the swish-swish of the cutting shears and -the noise of a falling cinder could be heard for a long while. On the -roof wave-shadows could be seen rushing together, forming into something -very dark and breaking free again.</p> - -<p>“Will ye have a drop of tea, Norah?”</p> - -<p>“No, Sheila,” said the girl in the bed in a low strained voice: then -after a moment she asked: “Sheila, will ye come here for a minute?”</p> - -<p>A cinder fell into the grate with a sharp rattle, the scissors sparkled -brightly as they were laid aside. Sheila rose and went towards the bed -on tiptoe.</p> - -<p>“I’m not needin’ ye yet,” said Norah. “I thought.... I’m better again.”</p> - -<p>The woman went back to her work, stepping even more<a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a> softly than before. -The night slipped away; the noises on stair and street became less and -less, the women of No. 8 had retired to their beds, a drunken man sang -homewards, a policeman passed along with slow, solemn tread; even these -signs of life suddenly abated, and the noise of the cutting scissors, -the clock striking out the hours, and the wind beating against the -window were all that could be heard in the room.</p> - -<p>About three o’clock the sanitary inspectors called. Sheila whispered to -them at the door and they went away muttering something in an apologetic -voice.</p> - -<p>The grey dawn was lighting up the street; the blind had been drawn aside -and the lamp flickered feebly on the floor. Sheila turned it down and -approached the bed. On Norah’s face there was the calmness of -resignation and repose. She had suffered much during the night, but now -came a quiet moment. Her brow looked very white and her cheeks -delicately red. Her face was still as beautiful as ever; even so much -the more was it beautiful.</p> - -<p>“There’s great noises in the streets, Sheila,” she said to the woman -bending over her.</p> - -<p>“ ‘Tis the workers goin’ out to their work, child,” was the answer. “How -are ye feelin’ now?”</p> - -<p>“Better, Sheila, better.”</p> - -<p>But even as she spoke the pain again mastered her and she groaned -wearily. And Sheila, wise with a woman’s wisdom, knew that the critical -moment had come.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> child who came to Norah, the little boy with the pink, plump hands, -the fresh cheeks and pretty shoulders, filled nearly all the wants of -her heart. The fear that she had had of becoming a mother was past and<a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a> -the supreme joy of motherhood now was hers. She knew that she would be -jealous of the father if he was with her at present; as matters stood -the child was her own, her very own, and nothing else mattered much. -Sometimes she would sit for an hour, her discarded scissors hanging from -her fingers, gazing hungrily at the saffron-red downy face of the child, -anticipating every movement on its part, following every quiver of its -body with greedy eyes. In the child lay Norah’s hopes of salvation; it -was the plank to which she clung in the shipwreck of her eternity. All -her hopes, all her fortunes lay in the babe’s fragile bed; the sound of -the little voice was heavenly music to her ears. In Norah’s heart welled -up this incomparable love, in which are blended all human affections and -all hopes of heaven, the love of a mother. The great power of motherhood -held her proof against all evils; dimly and vaguely it occurred to her -that if that restraining power was withdrawn for a moment she would -succumb to any temptation and any evil which confronted her.</p> - -<p>She found now a great joy in working with Sheila: both talked lovingly -of home and those whom they had left behind. Sometimes Norah mingled -tears with her recollections. Sheila Carrol never wept.</p> - -<p>“Years ago I could cry my fill,” she told Norah, “but for a long while, -save on the night yerself came here, the wells of my eyes have been very -dry.”</p> - -<p>At another time when the mother was giving the breast to the child -Sheila said: “Ye look like the Blessed Virgin with the child, Norah.”</p> - -<p>A difficulty arose about the child’s name: that of the father was out of -the question.</p> - -<p>“One of the Frosses names for me,” said Sheila. “Doalty, Dony, or -Dermod, Murtagh, Shan, or Fergus; Oiney, Eamon, or Hudy; ah! shure, -there’s hundreds of<a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a> them! All good names they are and all belonging to -our own arm of the glen. The trouble is that there’s too many to pick -from. We’ll be like the boy with the apples; they were all so good that -he didn’t know what one to take and he died of fargortha while lookin’ -at them. Dermod or Fergus, which will it be?” asked the beansho.</p> - -<p>“Dermod,” said Norah simply.</p> - -<p>“I thought so,” said the woman. “And I hope another Dermod will come one -of these days to see us. Then maybe ... Dermod Flynn was a nice kindly -lad, comely and civil.”<a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII<br /><br /> -<small>THE RAG-STORE</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span><small>NCE</small> a week, on Friday, Sheila took a bundle of finished shirts to the -clothes-merchant’s office. Seven months after Norah’s arrival Sheila -went out one day with her bundle and in the evening the woman did not -return. Midnight came and went. From the window Norah watched the lazy -hands of the clock crawl out the seconds of existence. Steps could be -heard coming up and going down the stairs; then these suddenly ceased. -Far away the flames flaring from the top of a chimney-stack glowed -fiercely red against the dark sky. A policeman came along the dimly -lighted street, walking with tired tread and examining the numbers on -the closed entrances. He suddenly disappeared below; afterwards a knock -came to the door.</p> - -<p>“A woman was run down by a tram-car,” said the policeman, speaking -through his heavy moustache, when Norah gave him admittance; “she was -killed instantly.... She had a slip of paper ... this address ... maybe -you can identify.”</p> - -<p>Norah lifted the sleeping babe, wrapped it in her shawl and followed the -man. At the police mortuary she recognised Sheila Carrol. The dead woman -was in no way disfigured; she lay on a wooden slab, face upwards, and -still, so very still!<a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a></p> - -<p>“Sheila Carrol!... she’s only sleepin’!” said Norah.</p> - -<p>“Sheila Carrol, you say,” said a uniformed man who had just entered and -who overheard Norah’s remark. “Twice convicted, once for being on the -streets, once for child neglect,” he muttered, looking not a little -proud of his knowledge. “The back of the head and the spine that’s hurt. -When one is struck hard in them places it’s all over.”</p> - -<p>Norah felt like a cripple whose crutches have been taken away. That -night when she returned to her room she slept none and wept bitterly, at -times believing that the dead woman was with her in the room. Being very -lonely she kept the light burning till morning, and as the fire had gone -out she shivered violently at intervals and a dry tickling cough settled -on her chest.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> merchant who supplied cloth to the two women had gone bankrupt. -Probably Sheila was so much overwhelmed by this that she forgot to avoid -the dangers of the crowded streets on her way home. Perhaps she was -planning some scheme for the future, and as is the case when the mind -dwells deeply on some particular subject, the outside world was for a -while non-existent to her. An eye-witness of the tragedy said that -Sheila had taken no heed of the oncoming tram; that death was -instantaneous.</p> - -<p>When morning came Norah Ryan was conscious of a dull sickly pain behind -her left shoulder-blade. The child slept badly during the night and -coughed feebly when it awoke. There were no matches to light the fire; a -half-loaf, a pennyworth of tea and a quarter hundred-weight of coal was -all that remained in the room.</p> - -<p>Norah went into Meg’s compartment. The door was<a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a> lying open. The woman -sat by a dead fire, having just awakened from a drunken sleep on the -floor. She was a kind-hearted soul, generous and sympathetic, but fond -of drink. A glass of whisky made her very tipsy, two glasses made her -very irritable.</p> - -<p>“Ye’re up early, lass,” said the old woman, rising to her feet and -scratching her head vigorously. “Is Sheila sleepin’ yet?”</p> - -<p>“She’s dead.”</p> - -<p>“Dead!” exclaimed old Meg, sitting down on the only chair in the room -and raising both hands, palms outwards, to a level with her face.</p> - -<p>“A tram struck her last night when she was comin’ home,” said Norah. -“Killed at once, the policeman said that she was.”</p> - -<p>Meg wept loudly for a few moments, then: “What are ye goin’ to do now?” -she asked, drying her eyes.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know.”</p> - -<p>“There’s often a chance goin’ in the rag-store where I work and it’s not -a hard job at all,” said the old woman. “The job may be a wee bit dirty -and clorty, but think it over. Six shillin’s a week is the pay to start -wi’, then it rises to eight.”</p> - -<p>“Thanks for the help that ye are to me,” said Norah; “and when d’ye -think that I’ll get the job?”</p> - -<p>“Maybe at any time now, for there’s one of the young ones goin’ to get -marrit a fortnight come to-morrow,” said the old woman. “Then there’s a -woman that lives at No. 27 of this street, Helen McKay is her name; -‘Tuppenny Helen,’ the ones on the stairhead ca’ her. She takes care of -children for twopence a day.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not goin’ to leave my child,” cried Norah. She spoke fiercely, -angrily. “D’ye think that I would give up my child to a woman like -Tuppenny Helen? God sees<a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a> that I can keep my own child whatever happens -to me!”</p> - -<p>“Whatever ye say it’s not for me to say the word agen it,” said Meg, -surprised at Norah’s wrath.</p> - -<p>“Could I take the boy with me if I get a job?”</p> - -<p>“Nae fear; nae fear of that,” said the old woman. “It would smother a -child in a week in yon place. Dust flyin’ all over the place; dirty rags -with creepin’ things and crawlin’ things and maybe diseases on them; -it’s a foulsome den. But folks maun eat and folks maun earn siller, and -that’s why some hae to wark in a place like a rag-store. But dinna take -the child wi’ ye there. For one thing ye winna be allowed and for -another the feelthy place would kill the dear little thing in less than -a week.”</p> - -<p>For a fortnight following Norah looked in vain for a job at which she -might work with the child beside her. At the end of that time the old -woman spoke again of a vacant post in the store where she laboured. -Norah put the child out to Twopenny Helen, a stumpy little woman with -very large feet and hacked hands, then applied for and obtained the -vacant post in the rag-store.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span><small>N</small> the chill, damp air of the early morning the two women tramped to -their work, wearing their boots to save the tram fare. The old woman -always walked with her head down, humming little tunes through her nose -and breaking into a run from time to time. Her long red tongue was -always out, slipping backwards and forwards over her upper lip, her -hair, grey as a dull spring morning, eternally falling into her eyes, -and her arms swinging out in front of her like two dead things as she -trotted along.</p> - -<p>The rag-store opened out on a narrow, smelling lane;<a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a> the office where a -few collared clerks bent over grimy ledgers and endless rows of figures -was on a level with the street; the place where the women sorted the -rags was a basement under the office. There were in all thirty human -machines working in this cellar, which stretched into the darkness on -all sides save one, and there it now and again touched sunshine, the -weak sunshine that streamed through a dirty cobwebbed window, green with -moisture and framed with iron bars.</p> - -<p>All day long two gas-jets flared timidly in the basement, spluttering as -if in protest at being condemned to burn in such a cavern. The women, -bowed over their work, were for the most part silent; all topics of -conversation had been exhausted long ago. Sometimes Monday morning was -lively; many came fresh to their work full of accounts of a fight in -which half the women of the close joined and which for some ended in the -lock-up, for others with battered faces and dishevelled hair. These -accounts roused a certain interest which lasted a few hours, then came -the obstinate dragging silence again.</p> - -<p>All day long they worked together in the murky cavern sorting the rags. -The smell of the place was awful, suffocating almost; the damp and -mouldy rags gave forth an unhealthy odour; dust rose from those that -were drier and filled the place and the throats of the workers. Each -woman knew every wrinkle of her neighbour’s face, on all the yellowish -white and almost expressionless faces of the spectres of the cellar. And -now and again the spectres sang their ghost-songs, which died away in -the lone corners of the basement like wind in a churchyard.</p> - -<p>It was amongst these women that Norah started work.</p> - -<p>“A new start!” exclaimed one, a little sallow-faced thing who looked as -if she had been gradually drying up<a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a> for several years, on seeing the -new-comer. “Ye’ll soon get the blush oot o’ yer cheeks here, lass!”</p> - -<p>“D’ye know that there are only three people in the worl’ when all is -said and done?” another woman called to Norah. “The rag-picker, the -scavenger, and the grave-digger are the three folk who count most in the -long run.”</p> - -<p>Everybody but Norah laughed at this remark, though all, save Norah, had -heard it made a thousand times before.</p> - -<p>“Ah! lass, ye’ve the red cheek,” said a bow-legged girl of seventeen.</p> - -<p>“They’ll soon be pale enough,” another interrupted.</p> - -<p>“And such white teeth!”</p> - -<p>“They’ll soon be yellow!”</p> - -<p>“And such long hair!”</p> - -<p>“It’ll soon be full o’ dust.”</p> - -<p>But they said no more, perhaps because Norah was so beautiful, and -beauty calls forth respect in even the coarsest people.</p> - -<p>The new start had many troubles at first. Being new to the work and -unable to do as much as the other women, she was paid only five -shillings a week. After a while the natural dexterity of her fingers -stood her in good stead, and she became more adept at the rag-picking -than anyone in the basement. Therefore her companions who had before -laughed at her inexperience became jealous of Norah and accused her of -trying to find favour with the boss.</p> - -<p>But the girl did not mind much what they said; her one great regret was -in being separated from her boy for the whole livelong day. Her breasts -were full of the milk of motherhood, and severance from the little child -was one of the greatest crosses which she had to bear.</p> - -<p>The master seldom came near the place; it didn’t agree with his health, -he said. He was a stout, well-built man<a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a> with small, glistening eyes -overhung with heavy red brows. The hairs of his nostrils reached -half-way down his upper lip and he was very bald. When the women saw the -bald head appear at the foot of the basement stairs, shining a little as -the gaslight caught it, they whispered:</p> - -<p>“There’s the full moon; turn yer money!” and one of the workers who was -very fond of swearing would invariably answer: “There’s not much money -in the pockets o’ them that’s workin’ in this damned hole!”</p> - -<p>Whenever he came down into the rag-store he took the bow-legged girl to -one side and spoke to her about something. The two seemed to be on very -familiar terms and it was stated that the girl got a far higher wage -than any of the other workers; ten shillings a week was paid to her, -some hinted. Suddenly, however, she left the place and did not come back -again: but now the master came down the stairs oftener than ever before. -One evening just as work was stopping the moon-head appeared, shone for -a moment under the gaslight, then came forward.</p> - -<p>“There’s some linen rags here that I want sorted up to-night,” he said, -licking his lips. “I want one of ye to stay here and do the work.”</p> - -<p>He looked round as he spoke and his eyes rested on Norah, who was -wrapping her shawl over her shoulders.</p> - -<p>“Will ye stay here?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“All right,” said Norah, and took off her shawl again.</p> - -<p>The rest of the workers went upstairs, a bit envious perhaps of the girl -who was picked out for special work in the fetid hole. Master and -servant were left alone, but Norah wished that she had gone away with -the rest; she wanted so much to see her child. The cough which the -little boy had contracted on the night of Sheila Carrol’s death, ten -months before, had never gone wholly away, and now it was worse than -ever. The mother herself was<a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a> not feeling very well; the sharp pain in -her chest troubled her a great deal at night.</p> - -<p>“Ye’re a good sorter, I hear,” said the master, licking his lips, and -Norah noticed the hairs of his nostrils quivering as if touched by a -breeze. “Ye’ll not live well on seven shillin’s a week, will ye?” he -asked.</p> - -<p>“One must live somehow,” said Norah, bending down and picking up a -handful of rags from the floor. “And a few shillin’s goes a long way -when one is savin’.”</p> - -<p>She started even as she spoke, for a large soft hand had gripped her -wrist and she looked up to find her master’s little glistening eyes -looking into hers. She could see the wrinkles on his forehead, the red -weal that the rim of his hat had left on the temples, the few stray -hairs that yet remained on the top of the pink head.</p> - -<p>“What would ye be wantin’ with me?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“I could raise yer screw, say to ten bob a week,” said the man, slipping -his arms round her waist and trying to kiss her on the lips. If one of -the dirty rags had been thrust into her mouth she could not have -experienced a more nauseous feeling of horror than that which took -possession of her at that moment. She freed herself violently from the -grasp of the man, seized her shawl and hurried upstairs, leaving him -alone in the cellar. In the office she had a misty impression of a -grinning clerk looking at her and passing some meaningless remark. When -she got back to her room she told Meg of all that had happened.</p> - -<p>“Ye’re a lucky lass, a gie lucky lass,” said the old woman enviously. -“Just play yer cards well and ye’ll soon hae a pund a week in the store. -I heard to-day about the bowdy girl that left us a month gone. The -master had a fancy for her but a mistake happened and she was in straw. -But it’s now all right and she’s gettin’ a pund a week. Just ye play yer -cards well, Norah Ryan, and ye’ll have a gey guid time,” she added.<a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a></p> - -<p>“Meg Morraws!”</p> - -<p>“Ha, ha!” cried the old woman, laughing and showing her yellow stumps of -teeth, worn to the gums. “That’s the way to act. Carry on like that with -him and he’ll do onything ye ask, for ye’re a comely lass; a gey comely -one! Often I wondered why ye stayed so long workin’ in the rag-store. -Life could be made muckle easier by a girl wi’ a winnin’ face like -yours, Norah Ryan. God! to think that a girl like ye are warkin’ in that -dirty hole when ye could make ten times as muckle siller by doin’ -somethin’ else!”</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">N</span><small>ORAH</small> did not go back to the rag-store. She took her child from Twopenny -Helen and looked for other work. The boy with his round chubby legs and -wonderful pink toes, which she never tired of counting, was a wonder and -delight to her. Everything was so fresh about him, the radiant eyes, the -red cheeks that made the mother so much long to bite them, the little -soft lips and the white sharp teeth that were already piercing through -the gums. The child was dressed poorly, but, as befitted a sanctuary -before which one human being prostrated herself with all the unselfish -devotion of a pure heart, with the best taste of the worshipper.</p> - -<p>The cold which the child caught months before had never entirely gone -away; whenever the cough that accompanied it seized him he curled up in -his mother’s lap in agony, while she feared that the little treasure -that she loved so much was going to be taken away. The thought of the -boy dying occurred to her many times and almost shattered the springs of -action within her. If he died! She shuddered in terror; her fear was -somewhat akin to the fear which possesses a man who hangs over a -precipice<a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a> and waits for the overstrained rope to break. If the child -was gone she would have nothing more to live for.</p> - -<p>Her funds were very low; when she left the rag-store she had only the -sum of nineteen shillings in her possession. This would pay rent for a -few weeks, but meanwhile food, fuel, and clothing were needed. What was -she to do?</p> - -<p>Then followed weary days searching for work. Norah went from house to -house in the better parts of the city, offering herself for employment. -She left the child lying on a bed on the floor and locked the place up. -She no longer sent it out to Twopenny Helen; Norah could not now spare -twopence a day.</p> - -<p>Again she got work, this time finishing dongaree jackets, and made -tenpence a day. She had now to work on Sunday as well as Saturday, and -she usually spent eighteen hours a day at her task. Winter came and -there was no coal. The child, whose cold got no better, was placed in -bed while the mother worked. The dry and hacking cough shook the -mother’s frame at intervals and she sweated at night when asleep. She -ate very little; her breasts were sore when she suckled her child, and -by and by milk refused to come. Her eyes became sore; she now did part -of her work under the lamp on the landing and by the light from the -window across the courtyard. Old Meg, when she was drunk, had pence to -spare for the child.</p> - -<p>“Just for the little thing to play wi’,” she would explain in an -apologetic voice, as if ashamed of being found guilty of a good action. -Afterwards she would add: “Ye should have taken the twa extra shillin’s -a week when they were offered ye.”</p> - -<p>One evening towards Christmas when the old woman was speaking thus, -Norah asked:</p> - -<p>“If I went back now, would I get a job?”<a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a></p> - -<p>“The man has got marrit and the place, as ye know yerself, has been -filled up ages and ages ago.”</p> - -<p>A strange expression, perhaps one of regret, showed for a moment on the -face of Norah Ryan.<a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX<br /><br /> -<small>DERMOD FLYNN</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span><small>HEN</small> the old woman left her, Norah sat for a while buried in thought, -her scissors lying on one knee, one hand hanging idly by her side. The -boy was very ill, the cough hardly left him for a moment and his eyes -were bright and feverish.</p> - -<p>“If he dies what am I to do?” Norah asked herself several times. “Then -it would be that I’d have nothing to live for.”</p> - -<p>She rose and followed Meg into the room. The woman sat beside the fire, -humming an old song. A candle, stuck in the neck of a beer-bottle, was -alight, and a cricket chirped behind the fireless grate. “I’m goin’ out -for a while,” said Norah in a low, strained voice. “Will ye look after -the boy until I come back? I’ll take him in here.”</p> - -<p>“All right,” said the woman, rising to her feet. “Take the little thing -in.”</p> - -<p>When Norah re-entered her own room the boy was coughing weakly but -insistently in the darkness. She lit a candle, sat down on the corner of -the bed and was immediately deep in thought. Her money had now dwindled -away; she had only one and threepence in her possession. She even felt -hungry; for a long while this sensation was almost foreign to her. The -weekly rent was due on the morrow, and the child needed the doctor,<a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a> -needed food, needed fresh air and, above all, the attention which she -was unable to give him.</p> - -<p>She lifted him tenderly from the bed and carried him in to Meg, who -began to crow with delight when the child was placed in her withered -arms. Once back in her own room Norah resumed her seat on the bedside -and seemed to be debating some very heavy problem. The candle flared -faintly in the sconce on the floor; large shadows chased one another on -the grimy ceiling ... the cripple came upstairs, Norah could hear the -rattle of his crutches ... the noise of the city was loud outside the -windows.</p> - -<p>Norah rose, swept the floor, lit the lamp, a thing which she had not -done for many nights, candles being much cheaper than oil. She went out, -bought some coal and a penny bundle of firewood: these she placed on the -grate, ready for lighting. The bed she sorted with nervous care, sighing -as she spread out the blankets and arranged the pillows.</p> - -<p>She then began to dress herself carefully, brushing back her hair with -trembling fingers as she looked into the little broken hand-mirror, one -of Sheila Carrol’s belongings. Her well-worn dress still retained a -certain coquetry of cut and suited her well, her broad-brimmed hat, -which she had not worn for a long while, gave an added charm to her -white brow and grey eyes.</p> - -<p>When dressed she stood for a moment to listen to the child coughing in -Meg’s room. Stifling with an effort the impulse to go in and have one -look at the boy, she crossed herself on forehead and lips and went out -on the landing. For a moment something seemed to perplex her; she stood -and looked round on all sides. The place was deserted; nothing could be -heard but the cripple singing “Annie Laurie” in a loud, melodious voice. -Norah again crossed herself, stepped slowly down the stairs, and went -out to the street.<a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a></p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span><small>T</small> midnight she returned for her child. The boy was still coughing, but -more quietly than before, and the old woman was lying flat upon her -stomach, asleep by the fireside. Norah lifted the child, took him into -her own room and placed the frail bundle, in which was wrapped up all -her life and all her hopes, on the bed.</p> - -<p>The fire was burning brightly, the oil-lamp gave out a clear, comforting -light which showed up the whole room, the bare floor, the black walls -enlivened by no redeeming feature save the crude picture of the Virgin -and Child and the little black cross hanging from a rusty nail near the -window; the pile of dongaree jackets shoved into a corner, the -orange-box and the bed with the blankets, which Norah had sorted such a -short time before, now in strange disorder.</p> - -<p>Old Meg suddenly bustled into the room, a frightened look on her face. -“I thought that some yin had stolen the little dear,” she cried, her -breath reeking with alcohol. “Ah, here he is, the wee laddie,” she cooed -on seeing the little pink face in the bed. “I hae got a fright, I hae -indeed, Norah Ryan!”</p> - -<p>The woman sat down on the orange box and looked curiously round, first -at the lighted lamp, then at the fire, then at Norah, and afterwards -back to the fire again.</p> - -<p>“Hae ye got siller the noo, lassie?” she exclaimed at last. “Has yer -rich uncle kicked the bucket? Fire and light the noo and everything? Ah! -what’s this?” she exclaimed, bending down and lifting a half-smoked -cigarette from the floor. She looked at it for a moment, then threw it -into the flames.</p> - -<p>“Has it come to this, Norah Ryan?” she asked, and a faint touch of -regret mingled with the woman’s tones.</p> - -<p>Norah, who was bending over the child, turned round<a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a> fiercely; for a -moment she looked like some beautiful animal cornered in its own lair.</p> - -<p>“It has come to this, Meg Morraws!” she shouted. “Did ye think that I -couldn’t sell my soul? I would do anything under heaven to save my boy; -that’s the kind of me, Meg Morraws. I’ve money now and Dermod won’t die. -I won’t let him die!... What wouldn’t I do for him, child of my own and -of my heart?... It’s ill luck that’s drawin’ me to ruin, Meg, but not -the boy. He can’t help the sickness and it’s myself that has got to make -him well again.... I had whisky this night: that made me brave. I -could.... Isn’t it time that ye were in bed, Meg Morraws? I’m not -feelin’ kind towards anyone but the child. I want no one here but -Dermod, my little boy.”</p> - -<p>Meg went into her room, closing the door softly behind her. Norah took -some money—five shillings—from her pocket and put it on the -mantelpiece, under the picture of the Virgin and Child. It made a -tinkling sound as she put it down and the silver coins sparkled -brightly.</p> - -<p>Then she turned down the light, threw some more coals on the fire, and -taking the child from the bed she sat down and held the little bundle of -pink flesh against her bosom. She could hear the water bubbling from the -tap out on the landing; the noise of footsteps on the stairs; loud, -vacant laughter from No. 8. Why did those women laugh, Norah -wondered.... The fire blazed brightly, and as she raised her eyes she -could see the silver coins on the mantelpiece shining like stars.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span><small>OMEONE</small> rapped; and receiving no answer, the caretaker, the woman with -the red wisps of hair, and a string for a neck, poked her head through -the door.<a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a></p> - -<p>“Not in bed yet, Norah Ryan?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“Just goin’,” the girl answered.</p> - -<p>“They’re doin’ a big trade at No. 8 the night,” said the woman.</p> - -<p>“I’m not wantin’ to hear; it’s nothing to me.”</p> - -<p>The caretaker smiled, showing her teeth, sharp as a dog’s and in a good -state of preservation.</p> - -<p>“I’m only just tellin’ ye,” said the woman. “I suppose ye ken, lassie, -that half the rooms up this stair are lyin’ idle, wi’ no yin to take -them. What is the reason for that? I’ll tell ye. Some people, decent -folk, ye ken, will not come to sic a place because they dinna like women -of the kind at No. 8. If these two women were put away, this landing -would be fillt ev’ry night. But I let the women stay. Why’s that? -Because I like fair play. Give everyone a chance to live, is what I say. -And they’re makin’ guid siller, them twa lassies at No. 8. Three pounds -a night between them sometimes. And I wouldna turn them oot; wouldna do -it for wurl’s, because I like fair play. But as ye ken yersel’, they -must pay me a little more than other lodgers.”</p> - -<p>“What do ye want me to pay extra?” asked Norah in a hard voice. “Tell me -at once and leave me to meself.” “Say half and half,” answered the -red-haired woman, glaring covertly at the Irish girl. “That’ll be fair, -for ye’ll earn the money very easy, so to speak. And then ye can stay -here as long as ye like. I wouldna turn ye oot, no for onything, because -I like fair play. It’s not ev’ry house, ye ken, that would.... But ye -know what I mean. I wish ye good-night, and I’ll make a note of all the -men that come up. And if the police come along I’ll gi’e ye the wink. -Good-night and good luck!”</p> - -<p>The woman went out, but presently poked her red wisps in again. “I’ll -take it that every man I see comin’ in here gies ye five bob. If they -gie ye more ye can tell me;<a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a> but five bob’ll be the least, and half and -half is fair play. Good-night; good-night and good luck!”</p> - -<p>“A dirty hag she is!” said old Meg, who had been listening at the door -during the conversation and who now came into the room. “Dirty! and her -makin’ piles of tin. Full of money she is and so is the woman that owns -the buildin’. Mrs. Crawford they cry her, and she lives oot in Hillhead, -the rich people’s place, and goes to church ev’ry Sunday with prayer -books under her arm. Strike me dead! if she isn’t a swine, a swine -unhung, a swine and a half. Has a motor car too, and is always writin’ -to the papers about sanitary arrangements. ‘It isn’t healthy to have too -many people in the one room,’ she says. But I ken what she’s up to, her -with her sanitary and her fresh air and everything else, the swine! If -few people stay in ev’ry room she can let more of them; God put her in -the pit, the swine! And the woman downstairs, the thin-necked serpent! -is just as bad. If the likes of her finds women like me and you goin’ to -hell they try to rob us outright before Old Nick puts his mits on our -shoulders.”</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span><small>N</small> the days which followed, Norah learned much which may not be written -down in books, sad things that many dare not read, but which some, under -the terrible tyranny of destiny, dare to endure. It now seemed to the -girl that all freedom of action, all the events of her life had been -irrevocably decided before she was born. Deep down in her heart this -thought, lacking expression and almost undefined, was always with her.</p> - -<p>She bought new dresses, learned the art of making every curl on her -white brow look tempting, and every<a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a> movement of her face and body to -express desires which she did not feel. She followed up her new -profession like one sentenced to death, with reason clogged, feeling -deadened and intellect benumbed. As an alternative to this there was -nothing but starvation and death, and even purity is costly at such a -price. Dragged to the tribunal which society erects for the prosecution -of the poor and pure, she was asked to renounce all that she cherished, -all her hopes, her virginity, her soul. Society, sated with the labour -of her hands, asked for her soul, and society, being the stronger, had -its demand gratified.</p> - -<p>But over it all, over the medley of pain and sorrow, over the blazing -crucible of existence in which all fair dreams and hopes of the woman -were melted away, greater and more powerful than anything else in -Norah’s life, intense and enduring, unselfish and pure, shone the -wonderful flame, the star of passionate love shining in the holy heaven -of motherhood.</p> - -<p>The child’s illness grew worse. One doctor was called in; then another. -Both looked wise for a moment, strove to appear unconcerned, passed -different verdicts and went away. One condemned the bedclothes; they -were unsanitary. Norah procured new clothes; but the child became worse. -Medicines were bought one day; they were condemned the next. A pretty -pink dress was obtained for the child; it did not suit. When taken back -to the clothes-seller he declared it was ruined and charged afresh for -new garments.</p> - -<p>So day after day, each full of a killing anxiety and bringing its own -particular trouble, passed by. Her house had attained a certain fame as -houses of the kind rapidly do.</p> - -<p>The hooligans who stood at the street corner soon knew her by repute, -for an ill name flies far and sticks fast. Little Tommy Macara looked in -at her door no more; the<a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a> boy’s mother had warned him against the woman. -Life was now to Norah one vast intolerable burden that crushed her down. -If only the child were dead things would be clearer; then she would know -what to do. If Dermod died everything would be simplified; one easy -plunge into the river where it swirled under Glasgow Bridge would for -ever end all heartbreak and sorrow.</p> - -<h3>V</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">N</span><small>ORAH</small> went out into the city on her usual errand; she had now known the -life of the streets for fully two months. It was nearly midnight, the -streets were well nigh deserted, save for the occasional prowlers and -drunken men who were coming home from their clubs or from the foul -haunts of the city.</p> - -<p>As she walked along, her head held down against the cutting breeze that -had suddenly risen and was now whirling round every corner, she heard -steps coming behind her, and in these steps she detected something -strangely familiar. For a moment she felt like a wayfarer who goes -alone, along a dark road, and waits for some horrible apparition to -stretch out from the darkness and put a hand on his shoulder. The steps -drew nearer, came closer ... somebody was passing her. Norah looked up, -started a little and cried:</p> - -<p>“Under God, the day and the night! It’s Dermod Flynn that’s in it!”</p> - -<p>She was again looking at Dermod Flynn; he stood in front of her, his -hand stretched out in welcome.</p> - -<p>“Is this you, Norah?” he asked.</p> - -<p>The crushing fatality of her years pressed down upon her; she suddenly -realised that she had lost something very precious; that all her -accidents and faults were<a name="page_270" id="page_270"></a> bunched together and now laid before her. He -had grown so big too; a man he looked.</p> - -<p>“Is it yerself that’s in it, Dermod Flynn?” she asked. “I didn’t expect -to meet you here. Have ye been away home since I saw ye last?” She -thought she detected a wave of pity sweeping over Dermod’s face and -resting in his eyes.</p> - -<p>“I have never been at home yet,” he answered. “Have you?”</p> - -<p>“Me go home!” she replied almost defiantly. “What would I be going home -for now with the black mark of shame over me? D’ye think that I’d darken -me mother’s door with the sin that’s on me, heavy on me soul? Sometimes -I’m thinkin’ long, but I never let on to anybody, and it’s meself that -would like to see the old spot again. It’s a good lot I’d give to see -the grey boats of Dooey goin’ out beyond Trienna Bar in the grey duskus -of the harvest evenin’. D’ye mind the time ye were at school, Dermod, -and the way ye struck the master with the pointer?”</p> - -<p>“I mind it well,” said Dermod with a laugh, “and you said that he was -dead when he dropped on the form.”</p> - -<p>“And d’ye mind the day that ye went over beyont the mountains with the -bundle under yer arm? I met ye on the road and ye said that ye were -never comin’ back.”</p> - -<p>“You did not care whether I returned or not. You did not stop to bid me -good-bye.”</p> - -<p>“I was frightened of ye,” answered Norah, who noticed that Dermod spoke -resentfully, as if she had been guilty of some unworthy action.</p> - -<p>“Why were ye frightened?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know.”</p> - -<p>“And you did not even turn to look after me!”</p> - -<p>“That was because I knew that ye yerself was lookin’ round.”<a name="page_271" id="page_271"></a></p> - -<p>“Do you remember the night on the Derry boat?” Dermod asked wistfully.</p> - -<p>“Quite well, Dermod,” she replied. “I often be thinkin’ of them days, I -do indeed.”</p> - -<p>There was a momentary silence. Norah dreaded the next question which -instinctively she knew Dermod would ask. He was better dressed than -formerly, she noticed, and he was tall and strong. She felt that he was -one in whom great reliance could be placed.</p> - -<p>“Where are you going at this hour of the night?” he asked, and Norah -read accusation in his tones.</p> - -<p>“I’m goin’ out for a walk,” she answered.</p> - -<p>“Where are you workin’?”</p> - -<p>“How much does he know?” Norah asked herself. What could she tell him? -That she was a servant in a gentleman’s house. But even as the lie was -stammering on her tongue she faltered and burst into tears.</p> - -<p>“Don’t cry,” said the young man awkwardly. “Is there—what’s wrong with -ye, Norah?”</p> - -<p>She did not answer, but low sobs shook her bosom. How much she wished to -be away, and yet—how she liked to be beside him! Surely Dermod would -think her a very funny girl to weep like that! A momentary remembrance -of a morning long ago when she met him on the Glenmornan road flashed -across her mind, and she held out her hand.</p> - -<p>“Slan agiv, Dermod,” she said in a choking voice, “I must be goin’. It -was good of ye to speak to me in that nice way of yers, Dermod.”</p> - -<p>His hand closed on hers but he did not speak. The sound of far-off -footsteps reached her ears.... A window was lifted somewhere near at -hand ... a cab rattled on the streets. Norah withdrew her hand and went -on her journey, leaving Dermod alone on the pavement.<a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX<br /><br /> -<small>GROWN UP</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>O</small> all souls who are sensitive to moods of any kind, whether joyful or -sorrowful, there comes now and again a delicious hour when it is not -night and no longer day; the timid twilight gleams softly on every -object and favours a dreamy humour that weds itself, as if in a dream, -to the dim play of light and shade. In that delightful passage of time -the mind wanders through interminable spaces and dwells lovingly on -vanished hopes, broken dreams, and shattered illusions. In that moment a -soul feels the wordless pleasure of a memory that drifts lightly by; a -memory to which only the accents of the heart can give life. Old scenes -are brought up again and are seen in the delightful haze of transient -remembrance; there are waters running to a sea; waves sobbing on a -shore; voices speaking softly and low, and trees waving like phantoms to -a wind that is merely the ghost of a wind. In these dreams there is a -joyful melancholy, a placid acceptance of sorrow and happiness that -might have only been realities of an earlier existence of long past -years.</p> - -<p>An hour like this came to Norah Ryan one evening as she sat in her room -waiting for a fight to come to an end on the landing outside. The -one-armed soldier, who had just returned from prison and found another -man in<a name="page_273" id="page_273"></a> company with one of his loves, was now blackening the man’s -eyes. Norah knew that she would be molested when passing outside; she -chose to wait until the storm was over. She was dressed ready to go out; -old Meg had taken charge of the child; the fight was still in full -swing. A fire burned dimly in the grate at which Norah sat; a frail blue -fleeting flame flared nervously for a moment amongst the red tongues of -fire, then faded away. The blind was drawn across the window, but the -lamp had not been lighted yet. Norah sat on the floor, looking into the -glowing embers, her chin, delicately rounded, resting in the palm of her -hand, her long, tapering fingers touching a little pink ear that was -almost hidden under her soft, wavy tresses. The faintest flush mantled -her cheeks, her brow seen in the half-light of the room looked doubly -white, and her long lashes sank languidly from time to time over her -dream-laden eyes.</p> - -<p>Norah’s thoughts were far away; they had crossed the bridge of many -years and roved without effort of will over the shores of her own -country. Again she lived the life of a child, the life she had known in -her earlier years. The air was full of the scent of the peat, the sound -of the sea, the homesick song of the streams babbling out their plaints -as they hurried to the bosom of their restless mother, the ocean.</p> - -<p>It was evening. The sun, barely a hand’s breadth over the horizon, -coloured the waters of the bar and the sea beyond, amber, crimson, and -dun. The curraghs of Frosses were putting out from the shore; the -bare-footed men hurried along the strand, waving their arms and moving -their lips, but making no sound. Fergus was there, light-limbed and -dark-haired; her father, wrinkled and bearded; the neighbours and the -women and children who came down to the beach to see the people off to -the fishing.<a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a></p> - -<p>One dream blended with another. It was morning: the sun tipped the hills -and lighted Glenmornan; strips of gold in the clouds of the east were -drawn fine as the wrinkles on the brow of a woman; a mist rose from the -holms of Frosses, and the water of the streams sparkled merrily. In the -pools trout were leaping, breaking the glassy surface and raising a -shower of rainbow mist that dissolved in the air. A boy came along the -road; there was a smile on his face and his eyes were full of dreams, as -the eyes of a youth who goes out to push his fortune well may be. In one -hand he carried a stick, in the other a bundle. Dermod Flynn was setting -out for the hiring fair of Strabane....</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span><small>O</small> Norah Ryan dreamt, one vision merging into another and all bringing a -long-lost peace to her soul. She did not hear the first rap at the door, -nor the second. The third knock, louder and more imperative than the -others, roused her to a sense of her surroundings. In the fabric of her -existence the black thread of destiny again reappeared and she rose, -pushed back the erring lock of hair from her white forehead, placed some -more coal on the fire, turned up the lamp and lit it, then went and -opened the door. A young man dressed in sailor’s garb, his face cut and -covered with blood, stood on the threshold; behind him on the ground lay -a prostrate figure, the man with the empty sleeve.</p> - -<p>“Come in,” said Norah. She did not look at the visitor; all men were the -same now to her; all were so much alike. The sailor rubbed a -handkerchief over his face, staggered past the girl and sank into a -chair.</p> - -<p>“What’s that one-armed swine doin’?” he cried.<a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a> “Strikin’ a man, an A.B. -before the mast, without any reason; him and his gabblin’ fools of -women! But I learned him somethin’, I did. One on the jowl and down he -went. An A.B. before the mast stands no foolin’. Has he got up?” he -called to the woman at the door.</p> - -<p>The ex-soldier staggered to his feet on the landing, and swore himself -along the passage. Norah closed the door.</p> - -<p>“He’s up on his feet and away to his own room,” she informed the sailor.</p> - -<p>“This No. 8?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“No,” answered Norah. “It’s three doors round on the left; I’ll show you -where it is.”</p> - -<p>“But is this house one like No. 8?”</p> - -<p>“The same.”</p> - -<p>“Then I’ll stay,” said the sailor, who was still busy with his face. “I -heard tell of No. 8 out abroad. I’m an A.B., you know. Before the mast -on half the seas of the world! I met a sailor who was here; not here, -but at No. 8. Ah! he had great stories of the place. So I said that I’d -come here too, if ever I came to Glasgow. Damn! that one-armed pig he -almost blinded me, did the beggar. But I gave one to him on the jowl -that he’ll not forget.... Where can I wash my face?”</p> - -<p>“On the landing,” Norah told him, and handed the man a towel.</p> - -<p>He went out and washed. Presently he re-appeared and Norah took stock of -him. He was dressed in sailors’ garb; his eyes were hazy from -intoxication, one of his hard and knotted hands was tattooed on the -back, his dark and heavy moustache was draggled at both ends and a red -scar on his right cheek-bone showed where the soldier had hit him. He -was young, probably not over thirty years of age. He sat down again.</p> - -<p>“D’ye know what it is?” he exclaimed, striking his fist heavily against -his knee. “A woman of yer kind may<a name="page_276" id="page_276"></a> be as good as most and better than -many. I always say that, always. Some of them may be bad, but for the -others——”</p> - -<p>He banged his fist again against his knee and paused as if collecting -words for an emphatic finish to his sentence.</p> - -<p>“Others are as good as pure gold,” he concluded. He was silent for a -moment as if deep in thought, then he fixed his eyes on the girl. “Come -here and sit on my knee,” he said.</p> - -<p>She sat down on his knee and laughed, but her laugh was forced and -hollow.</p> - -<p>“Ye’re unhappy,” said the man, looking at her fixedly, and stroking his -face with his hand. “Don’t say that ye aren’t, for I know that ye are. -Ye’ll be new at this game, maybe.... D’ye belong to Glasgow?”</p> - -<p>“I do.”</p> - -<p>“Ye talk like an Irish girl.”</p> - -<p>“My father was Irish.”</p> - -<p>“Ah! that explains it,” said the man. “I’m Irish, ye know.”</p> - -<p>“Are ye?” exclaimed Norah with a start.</p> - -<p>“I am that,” said the man. “Why do ye jump like ye do? Maybe ye’re -frightened of me?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe it’s yer first time at this work?”</p> - -<p>The girl made no answer. Her cheeks were scarlet and she felt as if she -could burst into tears, but stifled bravely the sob that rose to her -throat.</p> - -<p>“Don’t be frightened of me,” said the man. “We sailors are a rough lot -at times, but we respect beauty, so to speak. My God, ye’re a soncy -lookin’ wench. New to this kind of life as well!”</p> - -<p>He paused.</p> - -<p>“And what’s this?” he cried, glancing at the Virgin’s picture and the -little black crucifix. He turned to the<a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a> girl and saw that a tear which -she hastily tried to brush away was rolling down her cheek.</p> - -<p>“Ye’re a Catholic too,” he said in a milder voice. “It’s damned hard -luck. I myself am a Catholic, at least I was born one, but now -I’m—well, I’m nothin’.... A Catholic feels it most.... I’ve always said -that one may find women a great lot worse than women—than a woman like -yerself. The ladies that can gorge themselves at table when ye have to -do the likes of this for a livin’ are more guilty of yer sin than ye are -yerself.... Ye know I’m a bit drunk; not much wrong with me, though, for -I can see things clearly. If I’m a bit groggy ’twas mostly the fault of -that one-armed swine. But I forgive him.... I’m an advanced thinker.... -What is yer name?”</p> - -<p>“Jean.”</p> - -<p>“I mean yer real name. It’s rarely that an Irishman calls his children -by names unbeknown in his own country. Sit closer. There! ye’re a nice -girl. I like yer brow, it’s so white, and yer lips, they’re so pretty. -Now, give me a kiss. It’s nice to have a girl like yerself on my knee. -I’m three sheets in the wind, but I like ye. I’m an advanced thinker and -I’ve read, oh! ever so much: Darwin, Huxley. Have ye ever heard of these -men?”</p> - -<p>“Never,” Norah answered. “Who are they?”</p> - -<p>“They are the great minds of the world. They are the men who proved that -there was no heaven and no God.”</p> - -<p>“But there is a God!”</p> - -<p>“If there is, why do ye suffer like this?”</p> - -<p>“Because I’m bad.”</p> - -<p>“Ha! ha!” laughed the man. “How funny! how very funny! Ye are a child, -and God would feel honoured if ye allowed Him to lace yer shoes. If ye -kept very good and pure He might let ye to heaven when ye died—but -would He give ye a pair of shoes in mid-winter?...<a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a> There’s no God.... -Kiss me again. By heaven! If ye weren’t so good lookin’ and so temptin’ -I’d be generous. I’d go down on my knees and salute ye as a -representative of sufferin’ womankind, and then go away feelin’ honoured -if ye only allowed me to kiss your hand. But ye are so winsome! I should -like ye to be always pure, but why do men like purity in a woman? They -like it so that they can take it away, so that they can kill that which -they love. But what am I talkin’ about anyway? I’m drunk; not so -much—just three sheets in the wind or so. I can see things clearly. I’m -a learned man and I know things, bein’ a great traveller, and a worker -on half the docks in the world, and a sailor too. A.B. before the mast I -am. I’ve seen things in my time, many things, most of them unjust, very -unjust. It’s seven years since I left home, think of that! Yer father -came from Ireland, ye say. What part of the country did he come from?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know,” said Norah in a low voice. “I never asked him. What part -of Ireland did ye come from?”</p> - -<p>“I said that it is an unjust world, a danged unjust world,” said the -man, pressing her tightly and kissing her. “And in Ireland ye see more -injustice than can be seen anywhere in half the world. I’ve seen women -and girls in Ireland working for a penny a day. They were knittin’ socks -and they had to travel miles for the yarn; aye, and to cross an arm of -the sea that took them to their breasts. In the height of winter, too, -with the snow fallin’ and the sleet. Ah! if yerself had suffered such -hardships ye wouldn’t live to tell the tale. And children too had to go -out into the cold black water! My sister, a very little girl—just about -that size”—the sailor held out his hand about two feet from the -ground—“used to work fourteen hours a day when she was but twelve, and -her pay was sevenpence ha’penny a week! The hanged little<a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a> thing! and -she wasn’t that size.... But I’ve made some money—salvage, ye know—and -I’m goin’ to make my sister a lady when I go back to Donegal. She was -such a nice wee girl. Wouldn’t it be fine if girls always kept young! I -think of my sister now as I left her, not grown up at all.... Ye too are -a nice lass, so different from those I’ve seen in the far corners of the -world.”</p> - -<p>“What is yer name?” asked Norah in a tremulous whisper. But she knew his -name, recognised her brother Fergus, saw in his face that indescribable -individuality which distinguishes each face from all others in the -world. With tense, strained look she waited for the answer to her -question.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">“F</span><small>ERGUS</small> <span class="smcap">Ryan</span> of Frosses in the county Donegal,” replied the sailor, -banging his fist against the corner of the chair. “Fergus Ryan, -able-bodied seaman before the mast. I’ve sailed ever such a lot. -Singapore, Calcutta, New York, and Melbourne; I’ve seen all those -places, aye, and nearly all the countries of the world!... Ah! and I’ve -come across a lot of trouble, fighting and all the rest of it. Two times -a knife was left stickin’ in me; more than once I was washed into the -sea. Ah! I could tell ye things about other places if I liked.... What’s -wrong with ye? Ye seem scared. But ye’re not afraid of sailors, are ye? -They’re all decent fellows, honest, though a little careless at times. -My God! what’s comin’ over ye? Ye’re goin’ to faint!”</p> - -<p>Norah had suddenly become heavy in the man’s arms; the hand which he -held contracted tightly and a sickly pallor overspread her countenance.</p> - -<p>“Jean!” cried the sailor, staring at the girl with a puzzled expression. -“Jean! that’s not yer name, but it<a name="page_280" id="page_280"></a> doesn’t matter. Ye aren’t afraid of -sailors, are ye? They’re rough fellows, most of them, but good at heart. -Has a man never told ye before that he got stuck in the ribs with a -knife? Women here know nothin’, but in Calcutta.... What am I talkin’ -about anyhow? Jean, waken up!”</p> - -<p>The man rose unsteadily, and bearing the senseless girl in his arms he -approached the bed and laid her down carefully, sorting with clumsy -fingers the stray tresses on her brow as he did so. Then seizing a glass -that stood on the mantelpiece, he rushed out and filled it with water -from the tap on the landing. He came in, held Norah up in his arms, and -pressed the glass to her lips. She opened her eyes.</p> - -<p>“Drink this,” said the sailor. “What else can I do to help ye?”</p> - -<p>“Leave me to myself,” said the girl. “Go away and leave me. At once, -now!” She sat upright in bed and freed herself from his arms; the glass -fell to the floor and broke with a musical tinkle; the water splashed -brightly and formed into little wells on the planking. The sailor put -his hands between his belt and trousers and gazed placidly at the girl.</p> - -<p>“Now, that is too bad,” he said, speaking slowly; “too dashed bad! All -sailors are decent fellows at heart, only now and then they tell stories -about their wild life. All that I said about the knifing was just a -tale.”</p> - -<p>“I haven’t mind of what ye said,” Norah replied in a whisper, then in a -louder voice: “Go away! do go away and leave me to myself.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not goin’ now,” he said in a voice of reproof. “I cannot go; it’s -impossible! I’ve plenty of money. Look!” He pulled a handful of gold -from his pocket. “My God! I cannot leave ye now, I cannot. Why do ye -want me to go away?”<a name="page_281" id="page_281"></a></p> - -<p>Norah looked at the picture of the Virgin and shuddered as if something -had stung her. Suddenly it came to her that Fate had done its worst; -that evil and unhappiness had reached their supreme climax. She looked -hard at her brother, a fixed and almost defiant look in her eyes, her -lips set in a firmly-drawn line.</p> - -<p>“Why do ye want me to go away?” he repeated.</p> - -<p>“Because I’m yer sister Norah, the one that wouldn’t be grown up when ye -went back.” She felt a grim, unnatural satisfaction in repeating the -man’s words, and strangely enough her voice was wonderfully calm. “I -made a mistake and it was all my own fault. This is how I’m livin’ -now—a common woman of the streets. Now go away and leave me to myself. -Fergus, I’m grown up!”</p> - -<p>“Ye’re my sister, ye’re Norah?” said the man as the girl freed herself, -almost reluctantly, from his arms. He stepped backwards, paused as if he -wanted to say something, approached the door, fumbled for a moment with -the knob, and went out. On the stairway he stood as if trying to collect -his thoughts.</p> - -<p>“Where am I?” he muttered. “It used to be red creepin’ things before, -and besides, I’m not very drunk at present, not more than three -sheets.... But the picture of the Blessed Virgin—that was funny! Fergus -Ryan, A.B., are ye drunk or are ye mad? Look around ye! This is a flight -of stairs, wooden steps; this is an iron railin’, that’s a window. Now, -ye aren’t very drunk when ye can notice these things. That’s where the -one-armed swine struck me. Now I’ll look at my watch. A quarter past -nine. If I was in the D.T.’s I couldn’t tell the time. Besides, I know -where I am at present. On the stairway leadin’ to a Glasgow kip-shop, -and I’ve been dreamin’. No, I haven’t been dreamin’, I’m mad! Talkin’ to -my sister, to Norah! One does dream funny things.<a name="page_282" id="page_282"></a> She isn’t a person -like that.... Seven years is a long time and a lot might happen. I’ll -walk along the street to the quay and maybe the air off the river will -clear me up a bit. I’ll come back here and free her from the place, for -I’ve money, plenty of it.... I’m afraid of nothin’, nothin’ in the -world. Why should I, me with the track of two knives in my body? But -what is the use of talkin’ when I’m awfully sick with fear at this -moment! God! I’ve never ran up against a thing like this in all my life -before.... Have I not, though? Are they not all somebody’s sisters, some -mother’s children? I’ve never thought of it in that way before. I’ll go -up again.”</p> - -<p>He reached the top and tried to push the door open. It did not budge. He -put his ear to the keyhole and heard sobs, smothered as if by a hand, -very near him. On the other side of the door Norah was weeping.</p> - -<p>“That’s my sister,” he whispered hoarsely. Looking down he saw the light -shining through the splintered door. A cavity through which he might -pass his fist lay open before him. He put his hand in his pocket, took -out several pieces of gold and shoved them into the room; then turned -down the stairs and hurried out into the crowded streets.</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span><small>T</small> the end of an hour he found himself sitting on a capstan by the -river, his elbows on his knees and his head buried in his hands. He -could not tell how he had gotten there; his brain was throbbing dizzily -and myriad little red and blue spots danced before his eyes.</p> - -<p>The place was very dark, the sickly light of the few lamps along the -river did not light more than a dozen yards around them. On the deck of -a near boat a sailor walked up and down, stamping his feet noisily and -whistling a popular music-hall tune. Overhead a few stars<a name="page_283" id="page_283"></a> glimmered -soberly; a smell of pitch was in the air; a boat loosened from her -moorings was heading downstream. About fifty paces back from the wharf a -public-house opened out on the river. Dark forms stood at the bar, arms -were waving in discussion, and hoarse voices could be heard distinctly. -Against the garish light the smallest perpendicular object was outlined -in black. Now and again a fist banged on a table and the glasses raised -a silvery tinkle of protest against the striker. A woman came out of the -place and went on her way along the street, reeling from side to side -and giving utterance to some incoherent song. The water lapped against -the wharf, a little wind wailed past Fergus’ ears; he rose, stretched -his arms, took a cigarette from his pocket but threw it away when it was -lighted.</p> - -<p>“It’s lonely here, but in the pub a man may forget things,” he said. “I -wish to heaven I could think of anything but it! I’ll try and forget it, -but it’s hard, danged hard.... If I had a fight I’d forget, for a moment -at least, what I have just seen. My sister Norah? And once I struck a -sailor because he said that no girl was as good as I made out my sister -to be.... A whore! my God, a whore! I’ll go’ver to the pub and get -drunk, mad drunk! What matters now? I’ll not go home, I’ll never go -home!”</p> - -<p>Thrusting his hands under his belt, he crossed the street, entered the -public-house and called for a glass of whisky at the bar. His face was -haggard and the palms of both his hands were bleeding.</p> - -<p>“I’ve driven my nails into them,” he said aloud, and looked round -angrily. Those who were staring at him turned away their eyes, renewed -their conversation and raised their glasses to their lips with evident -unconcern. Fergus lifted his liquor and swallowed all at one gulp.</p> - -<p>“The same again!” he shouted to the bar-tender, and<a name="page_284" id="page_284"></a> lit another -cigarette. “No, not the same; gi’ me a schooner and a stick<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a> in it. -God damn ye! what are ye starin’ at?”</p> - -<p>The bar-tender who was examining Fergus attentively made no reply, but -emptied out the liquor hastily. For a moment Fergus was deep in thought. -Suddenly rousing himself he struck the counter a resounding blow with -his fist, ripping his knuckles on the woodwork and causing everybody in -the room to look round. Then he swallowed his drink and went towards the -door. With his hand on the handle, he looked back. “I’m sorry for -kickin’ up a noise,” he said. “Good-night.”</p> - -<p>He passed out. The ray of light from the door showed him staggering -across the street towards the quay. Once there he sat down on the -capstan, put his hand in his pocket and brought out a fistful of money. -He raised it over his head and for a moment it seemed as if he was going -to throw it into the water. However, he kept hold of it and returned to -the pub, where he purchased a half-pint of whisky. He placed a sovereign -on the counter and went out without his change.</p> - -<p>Ten o’clock passed; then eleven. Fergus Ryan paced up and down the quay, -his hands deep down under his belt and the half-empty bottle in his -pocket. The air was now moist and cold; a smell of rotting wood pervaded -the place, and the water under the wharf was wailing fitfully. The -mooring ropes of the nearest vessel strained tensely on the capstan and -the giant vessel seemed eager as a stabled colt to get out, away and -free.</p> - -<p>“I would like to know where that boat is goin’ when she sails,” Fergus -said, but instantly his thoughts turned to something else. He pulled out -his watch and looked at it.</p> - -<p>“Would anyone know a new day if the clocks did not<a name="page_285" id="page_285"></a> chime?” he asked -himself in a puzzled way. “I suppose not. It’ll soon be here, the new -day.... There, the clocks are beginnin’. Damn them! Damn them!... If it -had been anyone but my sister! Why did she come to Scotland? Landlord, -priest, and that arch-scoundrel, McKeown, livin’ on her earnin’s. I -suppose she’ll send home money even now, and some of it’ll go to the -priest to buy crucifixes and pictures of the Virgin, and some of it to -the landlord to buy flounces for his wife, and some will go to Farley -McKeown. I was goin’ to pay a surprise visit and I was livin’ on that -goin’ home for a long while. Ah! but the world is out at elbow. And I’m -drunk!”</p> - -<p>He stuck both his hands under his belt again and approached the edge of -the wharf. Three dark forms slunk out of the shadows and drew in on the -sailor. Only when they were beside him did anything warn him of danger. -He looked round into the face of the one-armed soldier, whose loose -sleeve was fluttering in the wind.</p> - -<p>“Ah! ye swine!” Fergus exclaimed and struggled with the belt which -prisoned his hands. But the three men were on top of him and the effort -was futile. In an instant he was flung outwards and dropped with a -splash into the water that seemed to rise and meet him as he fell. It -was as cold as ice and the belt held taut despite his efforts to break -free. He had a moment to wonder. “Why did he want to drown me?” he asked -himself. His mouth filled and he swallowed. He was now going down head -first, but slowly. He made another effort to free his hands, but was -unsuccessful. Then he resigned himself to his fate, and consciousness -began to ebb from him. He felt that he had forgotten something that was -very important, not to himself but to somebody else. Then came complete -darkness, and the book of life, as man knows it, was closed forever to -Fergus Ryan.<a name="page_286" id="page_286"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI<br /><br /> -<small>DESPAIR</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> light on the mantelpiece grew faint, flickered and was going out; -the wick, short and draggled, no longer reached the oil. The fire died -down and only one red spark could be seen glowing in the white ashes. -Twelve of the clock struck out slowly and wearily, as if the chimes were -tired of their endless toil. On the floor beside the door a pile of -sovereigns, scattered broadcast, glowed bright even under the dying -light; the figure on the black crucifix showed very white, save where -the daub of red paint told of the Saviour’s wounded side.</p> - -<p>Norah sat on the bare floor, one leg stretching out, her hands clasped -tightly round the knee of the other, which was almost drawn up to her -chin. Action was clogged within her, a terrible black monotony was piled -around and above her; a silence, not even broken by sighs, had taken -possession of the girl.</p> - -<p>Old Meg rapped at the door many times before Norah heard her; then she -rose, poured some oil into the lamp and turned up the light. Afterwards, -not because she wanted to, but because she was desirous of hiding from -everybody that which had taken place within the room during the last few -hours, she lifted the gold pieces and stuffed them into the pocket of -her dress.<a name="page_287" id="page_287"></a></p> - -<p>“Norah Ryan! Norah Ryan!” the old woman was crying outside the door. A -dim, hazy thought of all the good things which the gold would buy for -her child crossed Norah’s mind as she opened the door.</p> - -<p>“The little fellow has taken a turn,” the old woman said as she stepped -inside and looked curiously round. Of late Norah’s compartment had had a -curious interest for her: how many times each night between the hours of -six and twelve did she come to the door and listen to all that was going -on inside. “I thought that ye’d never hear,” she said. “I was knockin’ -and knockin’.”</p> - -<p>“He’ll soon be better now,” Norah said in a voice so tensely strained -that it caused the listener to look at her with surprise. “I can now pay -for doctors, dresses, everything. D’ye hear that, Meg Morraws?” The last -sentence sounded like a threat.</p> - -<p>The child was doubled up on Meg’s bed, and perspiring freely. The old -woman had put on a fire that was now blazing merrily.</p> - -<p>“I had twa stanes of coal, and I put them all on because of the kid,” -said the woman. “Have ye a penny and I’ll get some oil. There’s not a -drop in the house and I’m clean broke.”</p> - -<p>Norah handed the woman a sovereign and told her to keep it. Meg -ejaculated a grunt of surprise, made a remark about the shops being -closed, promptly discovered that she really had some oil, and put the -coin in her pocket.</p> - -<p>The night wore on; the child, breathing heavily and coughing, lay in -Meg’s bed, one little hand showing over the blue lettered sentence on -the blanket. The light burned fretfully, the old woman remarked that the -oil was mixed with water and that she had got poor value for her money. -Norah talked of removing the child into the other room; Meg said it -would be madness, and<a name="page_288" id="page_288"></a> scraping up more coal, heaped it on the fire. In -the morning the old woman intended to get very drunk in the pub outside.</p> - -<p>A clatter was heard on the stairs; then the sound of a falling body -throbbed through the building. Meg went out and found a man—the -one-armed soldier—asleep on the landing. She bent down, fumbled with -the man’s coat, discovered a bottle of whisky, drank and returned the -bottle to the sleeper’s pocket. She entered the room again, smacking her -lips, threw herself down by the fire and started to weep. In a little -while she fell asleep.</p> - -<p>She woke instinctively at eight o’clock, the hour when the taverns were -opening, and rising to her feet, she rubbed her eyes vigorously with her -fingers. She found Norah sitting on the edge of the bed, one hand -pressed tightly against her knee, one resting lightly on the head of the -child.</p> - -<p>“Are the pubs open yet?” asked Meg, then in a lower voice: “I mean, is -the child better, the dear little thing?”</p> - -<p>“He’s dead,” said Norah quietly. “He died over an hour ago.”</p> - -<p>“An hour ago!” exclaimed the woman. “And why didn’t ye waken me?... I’m -a bad yin, Norah Ryan, a gey bad yin!” Saying these words the woman -approached the bed and for a moment stared fixedly at the child. Then -she paced backwards across the room, sobbing loudly and muttering -meaningless words under her breath. Through the dirty window she could -see the beer-shop opposite; the doors were open and a young man in -shirt-sleeves was taking off the shutters.</p> - -<p>“My heart is wae for ye, Norah,” said the old woman. “Death is a hard -thing to bear. But I suppose it’ll come to all of us yin day. Oh! oh! -and all of us maun gang some day.... I’m goin’ oot the noo,” she -suddenly exclaimed, stopping in her walk and looking very serious,<a name="page_289" id="page_289"></a> as -if she had remembered something very important. “I’ll be back again in a -meenit or twa.”</p> - -<p>Meg tied her shawl over her head and without washing her face went out -and became speedily drunk. The young man with the white shirt, who took -down the shutters, made some sarcastic remarks about Meg’s dirty face, -and Meg, being short-tempered, lifted an empty bottle and flung it in -the man’s face, wounding him terribly. A policeman was called in and the -woman was hurried off to the police-station.</p> - -<p>Noon saw Norah Ryan still sitting on the bedside, her brother’s gold -jingling in her pocket whenever she moved, and her dead child lying cold -and silent beside her.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p>A month of black sorrow passed by. There was a great void in Norah’s -heart, a void which could never be filled up. Every morning she rose -from bed, knowing that the day would have no joy, no consolation for -her. Life was almost unendurable; never was despair so overpowering, so -terrible. Nothing but the all-encompassing loneliness of the future -existed for her now—that terrible future from which she recoiled as a -timid animal recoils from the brink of a precipice.</p> - -<p>She had suffered so much, was healed a little; now the healing salve of -motherhood was wrenched from her by the hand of death. Nothing now -remained to the girl but regrets, terrible, torturing, lingering regrets -that tore at her mind like birds of prey.</p> - -<p>“No matter what I do now, nobody will think me no worse than I am,” she -cried, but the thought left her unmoved; even life did not interest her -enough to have any desire to end it. Shame had once covered her, -enveloped<a name="page_290" id="page_290"></a> her as in a garment, but now shame was gone; she had thrust -it away and even the blind trust in some unshapen chance which had once -been hers was now hers no longer.</p> - -<p>She worked no more; only once was she roused to action, and that was -when she looked at the gold coins in her pocket. This was Fergus’ money, -and she had often wondered where he had gone to on that night of nights. -She went to a neighbouring post-office and sent ten pounds home to her -mother. Not a line, not a word went with the money order.</p> - -<p>“I’m dead, dead to everyone,” she said. “To me own mother, to Fergus, to -all the good people in the wide world.”</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span><small>HE</small> was coming back from the post-office and the loneliness weighed -heavily upon her. She thought of the letter on its way to her own -country. Soon the little slip of paper would be in the old home, would -be pressed by her mother’s fingers; and she, poor little suffering -Norah, would still be hemmed up in her narrow room, for all the world -just like a bird prisoned in its cage; hearing nothing but the vacant -laughter and sound of scurry and scuffle on the stairs and streets, and -seeing nothing but the filthy lanes, the smoky sky, and the misery and -squalor of the fetid Cowcaddens.</p> - -<p>She went into a public-house and purchased a bottle of whisky. That -night she got drunk and even happy; but the happiness was one of -forgetfulness. She awoke from a heavy sleep in the middle of the night -and lit her lamp. Then her eyes fell on the picture of the Virgin, the -holy water stoup, the little black crucifix and the white Christ with -extended arms and bleeding breast nailed upon it.<a name="page_291" id="page_291"></a></p> - -<p>“I’ve prayed to ye for years,” she cried, clutching the picture of the -Virgin in her hand. “And look at me to-night! It’s little good me -prayers has done me; me a drunkard and everything that’s worse nor -another!” So speaking, she flung the picture into the dead fire. A -spiral of ashes rose slowly, fluttered round and settled on the floor. -She brought down the holy water stoup, and resisting with a shudder the -desire, bred of long custom, to cross herself, emptied the contents into -the fireplace. Then she looked at the confidant of her innumerable vague -longings—the crucifix.</p> - -<p>“Sorrow!” she laughed. “Did ye ever know what a mother’s sorrow for her -dead child was? That’s the sorrow, the sorrow that would make me commit -the sins, the most awful in the whole world. But what am I saying? It’s -me that doesn’t know all the meanin’ of many things. If the people at -home, the master at school, the priest, any one at all had learned me -all the things that every girl should know I wouldn’t be here now like -something lost on a moor on a black night.”</p> - -<p>She went back to her bed, leaving the light burning and the crucifix -standing on the little shelf. She wondered why she had not thrown it -into the fire as she intended to do, and wondering thus she fell into a -deep and drunken slumber.</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span><small>HE</small> awoke early, dressed, and went down the stairs into the street. It -was Sunday, solitary and silent, with a slight shower of snow falling. -Glasgow looked drearier than usual with its grimy houses and the wet -roofs, its dirty, miry streets where the snow dissolved as soon as it -fell. Norah’s spirits were in sympathy with<a name="page_292" id="page_292"></a> the sombre surroundings, -and she felt glad that the oppressive noise of the week-days had abated.</p> - -<p>Heedless of direction, she walked along and was passing a Catholic -chapel when the worshippers who had been to early Mass showered upon -her. It was too late to turn back; she walked hurriedly through the -crowd, feeling that every eye was turned in her direction.</p> - -<p>“Potato-diggers,” someone said. “They’re goin’ back to Ireland -to-morrow.”</p> - -<p>Norah looked at the speaker, then to the crowd at which he pointed. It -was a party of Irish workers, now numbering about thirty in all, and a -few stragglers were still coming out to swell the ranks. A young girl -with very clear skin and beautiful eyes was putting her rosary, one with -a shiny cross at the end of it, into her pocket. An old woman with a -black shawl over her head was brushing the snow from her hair. Her face -was brown and very wrinkled; the few hairs that fell over her brow were -almost as white as the snow that covered her shawl.</p> - -<p>A young priest in cassock and gown came out, smiling broadly. “It’s -early in the year for snow,” he said, looking at the potato-diggers.</p> - -<p>“One may expect anything at this season of the year, yer reverence,” -said the old woman with the white hair. The young girl looked closely at -the priest, hanging on every word that he uttered.</p> - -<p>“Are you all goin’ across home, this winter?” asked the priest.</p> - -<p>“All of us,” said a man.</p> - -<p>“You like the old country?” enquired the priest.</p> - -<p>“Well may we,” answered the old woman. “It’s our own country.”</p> - -<p>Norah was moving away; the last words came to her like an echo.<a name="page_293" id="page_293"></a></p> - -<p>“Our own country!” Norah repeated half aloud, every word coming slowly -through her lips. “But I have no country at all, no country! He’s a -nice, kind priest, indeed he is. Speakin’ to them just as if they were -his own people! I would like to go and confess me sins to that priest!”</p> - -<p>The snow fell faster, and presently Norah felt cold. A fit of coughing -seized her and the sharp pain which seldom went away from her left -shoulder-blade began to trouble her acutely. She turned and went back to -her room.</p> - -<p>All that evening two pictures kept rising in her mind. One was of the -priest with the smiling face talking to the potato-diggers; the other -was the picture of the young girl with the clear skin and the beautiful -eyes putting the rosary, with the shiny cross at the end of it, into her -pocket.<a name="page_294" id="page_294"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII<br /><br /> -<small>CONFESSION</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p>A week passed; the hour was twelve o’clock on a Saturday night. The -clocks were striking midnight but the streets were still crowded with -people. A boat could be heard hooting on the Broomielaw; a train -whistling at Enoch Street station. A woman came along a narrow lane on -the Cowcaddens, shouldering her way amongst the people, and abusing in -no polite terms those who obstructed her way. She wore a shawl almost -torn to shreds and she staggered a little as she walked. Her features -were far from prepossessing; dry hacks dented her cheeks and brow; her -lips were rough and almost bloodless and wisps of draggled hair hung -over her face. As she walked along she broke into snatches of song from -time to time.</p> - -<p>Under the gaslight staring eyes set in sickly or swarthy faces glared at -her; rude remarks and meaningless jokes were made; sounds of laughter -rose, echoed and died away. Suddenly a noise, loud as a rising gale, -swept through the lane; a man hurried past and rushed along the streets, -a young girl followed. The crowd, as if actuated by one common impulse, -scurried past the woman, yelling and shrieking. A drunken man stared -stupidly after the mob, then fell like a wet sack to the pavement; a -labourer struck against the prostrate body;<a name="page_295" id="page_295"></a> fell, and rose cursing. A -whistle was blown. “The slops! the slops!” a ragged youth shouted, and a -hundred voices took up the cry. “Run! Run!” others roared.... A little -toddling child stood on the pavement crying, one finger in its mouth and -its big curious eyes fixed on the rabble.</p> - -<p>“What are ye greetin’ for?” asked the woman in the ragged shawl. “Have -ye lost yerself?”</p> - -<p>“I want me mither!” wailed the child.</p> - -<p>“Ye’re here, are ye?” cried a stout, brazen-faced woman, ambling up and -seizing the infant, who was trying to chew a penny which the stranger -had just given it. “It’s a lass that’s fainted on the pavement,” -explained the mother, pointing to the crowd. “I think the corner boys, -rascals that they are, were playin’ tricks on her.”</p> - -<p>“That’s always the way with people,” said the strange woman. “See and -don’t let the child swallow the bawbee.”</p> - -<p>With these words she hurried into the press of people, the corners of -her shawl fluttering round her. A group of ragged men and women stood on -the pavement, chattering noisily. Against the wall a frail form was -propped up between two young girls, one of whom had a frightened look on -her face; the other was smiling and chewing an orange. A man, lighting a -pipe and sheltering the match under the palm of his hand, made some -suggestion as to what should be done, but nobody paid any heed.</p> - -<p>The woman with the torn shawl elbowed her way through the crowd, and -came to a standstill when she caught sight of the girl propped up on the -pavement.</p> - -<p>“It’s Norah Ryan!” she exclaimed.</p> - -<p>“That’s the name,” a female in the crowd said. “She lives up 42. She’s a -woman of the kind that.... But ye ken what I mean.”<a name="page_296" id="page_296"></a></p> - -<p>“And ye’d let her die here, wi’out givin’ a hand to help her!” cried the -new-comer, turning fiercely on the speaker. “Help me to take the lass to -her house.”</p> - -<p>The two girls assisted by two men helped the woman to carry Norah -upstairs. The crowd followed, pressing in and shoving against those in -front. Someone made a rude remark and the laughter which greeted it -floated far up even to the topmost landing, where the paralysed beggar, -somewhat the worse for liquor, was singing one of his cheery songs.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> accident to Norah happened in this way.</p> - -<p>After seeing the Irish diggers come out of the chapel, she felt a sudden -desire to go and confess her sins to the young priest. This desire she -did not strive to explain or analyse; she only knew that she would be -happy in some measure if she went to the chapel again.</p> - -<p>The memory of her sins began to trouble her. How many they had been! she -thought. From that night when a ring sparkled in the darkness outside -Morrison’s farmhouse up till now, when she was a common woman of the -streets, what a life she had led! With her mind aspiring towards heaven -she became conscious of the mire in which her feet were set; the -religion of childhood was now making itself heard in the heart of the -woman. Nature had given Norah a power peculiarly her own that enabled -her to endure suffering and in turn counselled resignation; but that -power was now gone. She required something to lean against, and her -heart turned to the faith of which the little black crucifix on the -mantelpiece was the emblem. On the Saturday evening following her -meeting with the potato-diggers she went to confession.<a name="page_297" id="page_297"></a></p> - -<p>She entered the chapel, her shawl drawn tightly over her head and almost -concealing her face, which looked fair, white and childlike, seen -through the half-light of the large building. Although she tried to walk -softly her boots made a loud clatter on the floor and the echo caught -the sound and carried it far down through nave and chancel. A few -candles, little white ghosts with halos of feeble flame around their -heads, threw a dim light on the golden ornaments of the altar and the -figure of the Christ standing out in bold relief against the darkness -over the sacristy door. The sanctuary lamp, hanging from the roof and -swaying backwards and forwards, showed like a big red eye.</p> - -<p>Outside the confessional a number of men and women were seated on long -forms; one or two were kneeling, their rosaries clicking as the beads -ran through their fingers. Those seated, with eyes sparkling brightly -whenever they turned their heads, looked like white-faced spirits. An -old man was shuffling uneasily, his nailed boots rasping on the floor -from time to time; a woman having been seized with the hiccough rose and -went out, and the row on the seat gathered closer, each no doubt pleased -at the prospect of getting in advance of at least one other sinner. -Norah sat down at the end of the row, a strange fluttering in her heart, -and her fingers opening and closing nervously. She felt that the -penitents knew her, that they would arise suddenly and accuse her of her -sins. A man opposite looked fixedly at her and she hung her head. The -low mumbling voice of the priest saying the words of absolution over a -sinner could be heard coming from the confessional. But had there ever -been a sinner as bad as she was? Norah asked herself. For her sins it -was so hard to ask forgiveness.</p> - -<p>“Never, never will I get absolution,” she said under her breath.<a name="page_298" id="page_298"></a></p> - -<p>Then she began to wonder if the young, pleasant-faced priest who talked -to the potato-diggers was in the confessional. He would not be hard on -her; he looked so kind and gentle!</p> - -<p>“I’m afeared, very afeared,” she whispered to herself. “I’ll not go in -this time; I’ll go away and come back again.”</p> - -<p>But even as she spoke the woman with the hiccough came back and took up -her position on the end of the seat. Norah found that she could not get -away now without disturbing the woman. She bowed her head and began to -pray.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span><small>HE</small> could not see the priest in the confessional, but could hear him -breathing in short, laboured pants like a very fat old woman. It -couldn’t be the young man, Norah thought, as she went down on her knees -and began the “Confiteor.” The priest hurried over the words in a weary -voice; Norah repeated them after him, stopping now and again to draw her -breath. A sensation, almost akin to that which precedes drowning, -gripped her throat.</p> - -<p>“What sins have ye committed?” asked the priest. “Tell me the greatest -first.”</p> - -<p>“I am a woman of the streets.” She had now taken the plunge and felt -calmer as she waited to be asked a question.</p> - -<p>“God’s merciful,” said the priest, and his voice was tinged with -interest. “Go on.”</p> - -<p>“I am the mother of a child that died but was never christened,” said -Norah. “It was all through my own fault.”</p> - -<p>“You haven’t been married?”<a name="page_299" id="page_299"></a></p> - -<p>“No,” said the girl, with a shudder. “I often thought of takin’ my own -life.”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“I took to drink and then threw the picture of the Blessed Virgin and a -stoup of holy water into the fire.”</p> - -<p>She paused.</p> - -<p>“Ye’ve given up the life of the streets?” enquired the priest in a voice -teeming with curiosity.</p> - -<p>“I have,” answered Norah.</p> - -<p>“Did ye like it?”</p> - -<p>“No.” The answer was the echo of a whisper almost.</p> - -<p>“God’s merciful,” said the priest. His tones seemed hoarse with the -passion of a sensuous youth. “And yer other sins?” he asked.</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span><small>HE</small> prayed for a long time before the altar, mingling tears with her -prayers. Footfalls came and went, but nobody paid any heed to the -kneeling woman. Of this she was glad. Norah wanted to do good, as other -people commit evil actions, secretly. The trembling shadows thrown by -the sanctuary lamp played round the Christ who, with outstretched hand, -stood over the sacristy door. How great and serious the Saviour looked! -The girl imagined that He was thinking of some great secret belonging to -humanity but hidden so deeply that it was unknown to man.</p> - -<p>At ten o’clock she returned to her room and sat there for a long while. -A great peace had stolen into her soul, a peace that was mingled with no -regrets. She had forgotten the pain in her shoulder, forgotten -everything but the figure of the Christ over the sacristy door, and the -hand that was held out above her head as if in blessing.</p> - -<p>It was near midnight when she went out to buy provisions<a name="page_300" id="page_300"></a> for the next -day. The hooligans at the street corner were very drunk and very noisy. -There were no policemen about; a fight some distance off was engaging -their attention.</p> - -<p>“Ah! here’s one that’ll hae some siller, the kip-shop wench!” shouted -one of the roughs, a big, round-shouldered rascal, on seeing Norah. -“Fork out, my pretty, and gie us some tin.”</p> - -<p>“Fork out!” roared the rest of the gang in chorus.</p> - -<p>Norah stood undecided, one foot in the gutter, one on the pavement. The -grocer’s shop was a dozen paces away.</p> - -<p>“The cops will be here in a jiffy,” someone shouted in a tense whisper. -“Search her!”</p> - -<p>Then followed a wild rush and Norah was conscious of many things in the -next few minutes. The air seemed suddenly charged with the fumes of -alcohol; hands seized her, rough fingers fumbled at her blouse, opened -it and rested on her breasts; a whistle was blown, she fell to the -pavement, got dragged for a few paces on the wet street and was pulled -to her feet again. Someone laid hands on her purse and took it out; a -scramble ensued, then a fight for the money. Norah was thrown down again -and trampled upon. The hooligans tore the purse and several coins fell -to the ground. A second whistle was blown, and the crowd disappeared, -leaving Norah lying in a dead faint on the pavement.</p> - -<h3>V</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span><small>HEN</small> she recovered consciousness she was in her own room, lying on the -bed. The lamp was lit and she could hear the coal crackling in the fire. -She raised herself up in bed and looked enquiringly around.<a name="page_301" id="page_301"></a> A stranger, -a woman who was bending over the fire, hurried forward.</p> - -<p>“And how are ye, Norah Ryan?” asked the stranger.</p> - -<p>“It’s Ellen that’s in it,” exclaimed Norah, sinking back on the pillow, -but more from surprise than from weariness. “Where have ye come from, -Ellen?”</p> - -<p>“I was in the street,” explained the woman, who was indeed -Ellen—Gourock Ellen. “I saw ye lyin’ on the pavement and I kent ye at -once. A woman in the crowd knew where ye lived.... Ye hae nae muckle -changed, Norah Ryan. Ye’re just the same as ye was when I saw ye last in -Jim Scanlon’s squad. And d’ye mind how me and ye was in the one bed?”</p> - -<p>“Ellen, I’m glad that ye came,” said Norah in a low voice. “I used to be -often thinkin’ of ye, Ellen.”</p> - -<p>“Thinkin’ of me, lass?” exclaimed Ellen, bending over the bed, but -keeping her lips as far away as possible from Norah lest the young woman -should detect the smell of whisky off her breath. “Why were ye thinkin’ -about me? Someone worthier should be in your thoughts.... The rascals in -the streets! Ah, the muckle scamps! They should be run into the nick and -never let out again. Ill-treatin’ a little lassie like you!”</p> - -<p>Norah looked up at the woman. Ellen’s pock-marked face was still full of -the same unfailing good nature which belonged to her years before when -she worked in Micky’s Jim’s squad.</p> - -<p>“Where is Annie?”</p> - -<p>“I dinna ken. She went off with a man and I haven’t seen her never -since.” Ellen smiled, but so slightly that the smile did not change the -expression of her eyes.</p> - -<p>“Ye don’t tell me! And ye’ve never been back at the squad again?”</p> - -<p>“Never back. I was times workin’ at the rag-pickin’ and times gatherin’ -coal from the free coup.”<a name="page_302" id="page_302"></a></p> - -<p>“That’s what Mary Martin done,” Norah exclaimed. “She was a woman known -to me.”</p> - -<p>“And ye kent old Mary!” said Ellen. “Me and her have worked together for -many’s a day, makin’ a shillin’ a day each at the job.”</p> - -<p>The woman paused.</p> - -<p>“Are ye feelin’ a wee better, Norah?” she asked presently.</p> - -<p>“I’m fine, Ellen,” was the answer. “I could get up and run about and I’m -not in the least sleepy. What were the corner boys wantin’ to do?”</p> - -<p>“They wanted siller——”</p> - -<p>“My purse, Ellen! Have they taken it from me?” Norah searched nervously -in the pockets of her dress.</p> - -<p>“I’m afeared that they have.”</p> - -<p>“Mother of God! I haven’t one penny now, Ellen, not one brown penny!” -Norah exclaimed. “It’ll be the streets for me again.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll get along somehow, if we work together,” said Ellen.</p> - -<p>“We’ll work together; that’s the way,” Norah whispered after a moment’s -consideration.</p> - -<p>“Twa is always better than yin,” Ellen replied.</p> - -<p>Norah looked closely at the woman as if puzzling out something; then her -eyes closed gently and quietly and she fell asleep. She awoke several -times during the night, mumbled incoherent words, then sank into a deep -slumber again. And all night Gourock Ellen watched over Norah Ryan. -Morning found her still sitting beside the bed, weary-eyed but patient, -her eyes fixed on the face of the sleeping girl.<a name="page_303" id="page_303"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII<br /><br /> -<small>ST. JOHN VIII, I-II</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span><small>N</small> the morning Norah was in a raging fever. She spoke in her delirium of -many things, prattling like a child about the sea and curraghs of -Frosses going out beyond Trienna Bar in the grey dusk of the harvest -evening. She held conversation with people visible to none but herself: -with Fergus, with Dermod Flynn, with her mother, with the dead child. -The girl’s whole history for the last three years was thus disclosed to -Gourock Ellen. Days came and went; the patient became no better. A -doctor was called in; he applied his stethoscope to Norah’s chest and -shook his head gravely.</p> - -<p>“Well?” asked Ellen eagerly.</p> - -<p>“I’ll come again to-morrow,” said the doctor, and his tones implied that -this was a very important announcement. “Meanwhile——” and he gave -Ellen instructions as to how she should treat the patient.</p> - -<p>Money was scarce; Norah had lost every penny of hers on the night that -the hooligans attacked her. The other woman had only twenty-five -shillings in her possession, and this went very quickly. Then Ellen -called on the Jew, Isaac Levison, who had the pawnbroking business on -the stair.</p> - -<p>“D’ye ken the lass Norah Ryan?” Ellen enquired of the man, an -undersized, genial-looking fellow with sharp eyes and a dark moustache.<a name="page_304" id="page_304"></a></p> - -<p>“I know her,” said the Jew. He knew Ellen by sight and reputation; the -kind way in which she was treating the girl was common talk on the -stairs.</p> - -<p>“I want the len’ o’ three pounds,” said Ellen. “I can only gie my -promise to pay it back when I get work. Is that enough of a security?”</p> - -<p>“I’ll take your word,” said the Jew, who was to some extent a judge of -character, and who was kindly disposed towards the woman, having heard -much that was good about her. “Five per cent.,” he added. “That’s extra -good terms.”</p> - -<p>When the doctor came the next day Ellen spoke to him.</p> - -<p>“Cash is gey scarce here,” she said, “but do yer best for the girl and -I’ll meet the bill some day. I’ll meet it, doctor, so help me God!”</p> - -<p>The doctor smiled slightly; such protestations were not new to him. -Besides, he was a kindly man.</p> - -<p>“I’ll do my best for her,” he said. “And as to payment—well, we’ll -see.”</p> - -<p>“Ye’ll get paid,” said Ellen fiercely. “Ye must wait, but it doesn’t -matter what happens, ye’ll get paid, mind that! Though the lass is no -blood relation of mine, I dinna want ye to work for charity. And I’ll -pay ye yer siller; aye, if I’ve to work my fingers to the bone to do -it.”</p> - -<p>The doctor looked at the woman and knew that she was speaking from the -depths of her heart.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span><small>NOTHER</small> fortnight, and the tang of spring was in the air. Ellen had -procured work as a charwoman in a large school, and being a good, -reliable worker, several smaller jobs came her way. Her wages now -amounted to nine shillings a week. Norah had recovered<a name="page_305" id="page_305"></a> a little; the -cough was not as hard as formerly; the pain under her left -shoulder-blade had lost its sting, but, though hardly noticeable, it was -always there. At first Ellen found it difficult to induce Norah to stop -in bed; the girl wanted to get about and do some work. Only when she got -to her feet did Norah become fully conscious of the weakness in her legs -and spine.</p> - -<p>As she lay there in her narrow bed she could discern through the cracked -window the sky, always sombre grey and covered with low, sagging clouds. -Now and again she could see a homing crow fly past on lazy wings or -perhaps a white sea-gull turning sharply far up in the sky with a glint -of sunshine resting on its distended wings. And often on a clear night, -when the moonbeams filtered through the ragged blind, Norah would dream -of Frosses, and the sea, the old home, with the moon rising over the -hills of Glenmornan and lighting up the coast of Donegal.</p> - -<p>“I have been a great trouble to ye, Ellen,” Norah said one evening, -turning round in the bed and looking earnestly at her friend. “I seem to -be only a trouble to everyone that I meet, and now to yerself most of -all. Ye have been the great friend to me, Ellen.”</p> - -<p>“Haud yer tongue, ye muckle simple hussy,” said Ellen with a smile, -sorting the blankets on the bed. “Now gang to sleep and dinna let me -hear ye fash any longer. Are ye happy?”</p> - -<p>“I’m very happy, Ellen, waitin’ for the minit.”</p> - -<p>“What are ye haverin’ aboot, silly lassie?”</p> - -<p>“I used to build castles on Dooey Strand, that’s home in Donegal, when I -was wee,” said Norah. “And then when they were big and high the tide -would come in and sweep them away in one little minit. Them castles were -like people’s lives. Used ye to make castles in the sand when ye were -wee, Ellen?”<a name="page_306" id="page_306"></a></p> - -<p>“Not in the sand, but in the air, Norah,” said Ellen reminiscently. “I -began the bad life gey early. My mither—she wasna what some people -might cry vera guid; but she was my mither, Norah. Maybe I wasna wanted -when I came, but she had the pain o’ bringin’ me forth. Well, I kent -most things before I was sixteen years auld. Sixteen is an age when a -girl dinna weigh her actions, and sixteen likes pretty dresses, and -sixteen disna like to starve. Though we were poor and often hungry I -kept pure for a long while. But to tell the truth I didna think it worth -it in the end, Norah.”</p> - -<p>She paused for a moment and sorted a piece of cloth to fit on the dress -she was patching.</p> - -<p>“At eighteen—that’s a gey guid wheen of years ago now—I took it in my -heid that I wisna goin’ to sin ony mair,” Ellen went on. “I got very -religious and bowed myself in the dust before God. ‘He’ll ne’er forgie -me my trespasses,’ I said, ‘for I’m a poor miserable sinner.’ I got a -Bible then and read in it mony things that were a consolation and an -upliftin’ to me. And last night I bought one on the streets, Norah. A -man with a barrow was sellin’ them, and I got one for a penny. I thought -that maybe we would read pieces from it together.”</p> - -<p>“The Catholic Church doesn’t allow us to read the Bible,” said Norah.</p> - -<p>“I’ll only read one little bit,” said Ellen, taking a dilapidated volume -from her pocket. “Ye’ll listen to it, Norah, won’t ye?”</p> - -<p>“Anything that pleases yerself, Ellen, will please me.”</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">E</span><small>LLEN</small> laid down her scissors, trimmed the wick of the lamp, resumed her -seat, wetted her thumb and began to turn over the pages of the volume.<a name="page_307" id="page_307"></a></p> - -<p>“Here it is,” she said, and commenced to read in a low voice.</p> - -<p>“ ‘And early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the -people came unto Him; and He sat down and taught them. And the Scribes -and Pharisees’—they were a kind of people that lived in them days, -Norah—‘brought unto Him a woman taken in’—who committed a bad sin; -‘and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto Him: Master, this -woman was taken’—when she was sinnin’—‘in the very act. Now Moses in -the Law commanded us that such should be stoned: but what sayest Thou? -This they said, temptin’ Him, that they might have to accuse Him. But -Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground, as though He -heard them not. So when they continued asking Him, He lifted up Himself -and said unto them: <span class="smcap">He that is without sin amongst you let him first -cast a stone at her</span>. And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. -And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went -out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last, and Jesus -was left alone and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had -lifted up Himself and saw none but the woman, He said unto her: Woman, -where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? She said, No -man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her: Neither do I condemn thee; go, and -sin no more.’ ”</p> - -<p>Tears showed in Ellen’s eyes when she finished reading; then without -giving Norah time to speak, she went on with her own story.</p> - -<p>“I gave up the life on the streets for twa and twa—for nearly four -months, Norah. Then my mither took ill and was like to dee. I nursed her -for a long while, then the siller gaed awa’ and hunger came in its -place. I had never learnt ony trade; there was only one thing to be<a name="page_308" id="page_308"></a> -done, Norah. I went oot tae the streets again, oot to sin knowingly, and -what was before an ignorant lassie’s mistake was then and after a fault, -black in the eyes of heaven.”</p> - -<p>Ellen paused and looked up at the roof. Perhaps she was again seeing -herself as she was on that evening long ago, a wistful and pretty girl, -a child almost, going out into the streets to earn the money that would -buy food and clothing for her ailing mother.</p> - -<p>“I came back the next morn, greetin’ a wee, if I remember right, and twa -pieces of gold in my pocket. When I came into our room I found my mither -lyin’ on her chair by the fire, and she was dead!”</p> - -<p>“Poor Ellen,” said Norah in a low voice. “Ye had a hard time of it from -the beginnin’.”</p> - -<p>“Hard’s not the word,” cried Ellen, and a fierce look came into her -eyes. “It was damnable!”</p> - -<p>There was silence for a moment, when the two women felt rather than -thought. As in a dream, they could hear crowds passing like tides along -the narrow lane outside.</p> - -<p>“Will God ever forgive us for our sins?” asked Norah.</p> - -<p>“Ye have never ceased to be pure in the sight of God, lass,” said Ellen; -“and if baith of us are judged accordin’ to our sufferin’s we needna hae -muckle fear. That’s the way I look at things, Norah!”</p> - -<p>And Ellen, taking up her scissors, restarted her work, a smile almost -angelic in its sadness playing in odd little waves over her face. And in -the poor woman’s soul, glowing brighter even in misfortune, burned that -divine and primary spark which evil and accident could never -extinguish.<a name="page_309" id="page_309"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV<br /><br /> -<small>LONGINGS</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>IME</small> wore on and Norah lived for the most part in a world of fancy, -spoke to imaginary individuals and at moments addressed Ellen as Sheila -Carrol or as Maire a Glan. Sometimes she was gloomy and reserved, made -folds in the sheet, murmured in an almost inaudible voice, and seemed to -be calculating distances. The least movement of the left arm pained her -and caused her to groan aloud. Now and again her eyes were dull, heavy, -and glassy; at other times they were re-lit and sparkled like stars. She -ate next to nothing; wrinkles formed round her eyes, her cheeks were -sunken; she became the shadow, the ghost of her former self.</p> - -<p>After a while the name of Dermod Flynn entered into her prattle; at -first she spoke of him, eventually she spoke to him as if he were in the -room. When her mind resumed its normal state all this was forgotten. -Once Ellen spoke to her of Dermod Flynn.</p> - -<p>“I would like to see him again, just once,” Norah said, then added: “I’m -a heart-break to ye, Ellen; to everybody that I ever met. I’m like a -little useless wean, useless, of no use at all.”</p> - -<p>Acting on Norah’s wishes a priest was called in, heard Norah’s -confession and administered the sacraments.<a name="page_310" id="page_310"></a> This made the girl happy -for many days. Ellen disliked priests, but never gave hint of her -dislike to Norah.</p> - -<p>“Ye’re sic a funny little thing,” she exclaimed more than once. “I took -a fancy to ye when I saw ye for the first time that mornin’ on Greenock -Quay along wi’ Dermod Flynn. He was a comely laddie, and I would like to -see him comin’ here.”</p> - -<p>“I wonder where’ll he be now?” said Norah.</p> - -<p>“I wunner.”</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span><small>PRING</small> was over the town. The sun shone almost daily through the window -and rested on Norah’s bed; the birds twittered on the roof; their songs, -even in the city slums, were filling the air.</p> - -<p>Starvation was very near the two occupants of the room. They were three -weeks behind with the rent, the landlord threatened to evict them; the -grocer grumbled, the coal man would not supply coals. Added to this, -Ellen had lost her job as charwoman in the school. The head-mistress, a -dear old pious soul! had made enquiries into Ellen’s past life, and the -result of the investigations was that the charwoman was told to leave -the premises.</p> - -<p>Ellen was thinking of these things one morning. Norah was tossing -restlessly in the bed, when a knock came to the door.</p> - -<p>“Come in!” Ellen cried.</p> - -<p>A man entered, one hand deep in his trousers’ pocket, a worn cap set -awkwardly on his shaggy head. He was a powerfully-built individual, -broad-shouldered and heavy-limbed. He had not shaved for weeks; his -beard stood out in sharp bristles from his jaw.</p> - -<p>“Moleskin Joe, what d’ye want?” Ellen asked, her voice charged with -resentment.<a name="page_311" id="page_311"></a></p> - -<p>“Did ye know Dermod Flynn?” asked the man, gazing curiously at the woman -tossing in the bed.</p> - -<p>“I kent him.”</p> - -<p>“I’m lookin’ for a wench—for an old sweetheart of his, so to speak,” -said the man.</p> - -<p>“It’s Dermod Flynn that he’s speakin’ about! D’ye know Dermod?” asked -Norah, sitting up in bed and gazing intently at the stranger. Her cheeks -flushed; all her young beauty seemed to have returned suddenly and -settled in her face.</p> - -<p>“It’s like this,” said the stranger, shuffling uneasily. “It’s like -this: me and Dermod’s pals. We did graft together on many’s a shift, -aye, and fought together too. And he can use his fives! Well, Dermod -often told me about an old flame of his, called—her name was——”</p> - -<p>“Norah Ryan,” said Ellen.</p> - -<p>“That’s it,” said the man, looking at the girl in the bed. “Perhaps -you’ll be her. If you are, you buckle on to Dermod. He’s one that any -girl should be proud of; and he can use his fives! But women don’t -understand these things.”</p> - -<p>“<i>Don’t</i> they?” queried Ellen.</p> - -<p>“Some think they do,” said the man. “Well, Dermod went to London and -worked on a newspaper as a somethin’. Graft of that kind is not in my -line, and the job wasn’t in Dermod’s line neither. He came back here to -Glasgow, and he’s lookin’ for his old flame. I’m just helpin’ him.”</p> - -<p>“Well, that’s the lass he’s lookin’ for,” said Ellen, pointing to the -girl in the bed. “Now run awa’, Joe, and bring Dermod.”</p> - -<p>“By all that’s holy! she’s a takin’ wench,” said the man, looking first -at the girl, then at Ellen, then back to the girl in the bed again. -“Well, I’d better be goin’,” he said.<a name="page_312" id="page_312"></a></p> - -<p>“Ye’d better,” answered Ellen.</p> - -<p>“Are ye well off here?” asked the man, who was apparently unperturbed by -Ellen’s remark.</p> - -<p>“Gey poorly,” said the woman; “we’ll soon hae a moonlight flittin’; -that’s when we have anything to flit with.”</p> - -<p>The man dived his hand into his trousers’ pocket, rattled some money, -then as if a sudden thought struck him he went towards the door.</p> - -<p>“Send Dermod at once, will ye?” asked Norah.</p> - -<p>“I’ll do that,” said the man, then to Ellen: “I want to speak to you.”</p> - -<p>She accompanied Moleskin out on the landing and closed the door behind -her.</p> - -<p>“Isn’t she a comely wench!” said the man.</p> - -<p>“I know that. Is that all ye have to say to me?”</p> - -<p>“Why is she in bed at this hour of the day?”</p> - -<p>“She’s waitin’ for the meenit,” said Ellen in a low whisper. “She’ll -maybe no’ last another twenty-four hours.”</p> - -<p>“And she looks the picture of health!” said the man.</p> - -<p>Ellen told of the assault on Norah, her narrative bristling with short, -sharp, declamatory sentences. When she finished the man pulled some -money from his pocket and put it into Ellen’s palm.</p> - -<p>“Dermod’s my matey,” he explained apologetically. “I’ll bring the -youngster here and we’ll be back in a jiffy. He’s lodgin’ near the -wharf. And by heaven! we’ll cure the girl. She’ll be better in next to -no time.”</p> - -<p>Ellen shook her head sadly. “Lungs canna be put back again once they’re -gone,” she said. “But hurry and bring Dermod Flynn here.”</p> - -<p>The man turned and clattered downstairs.<a name="page_313" id="page_313"></a></p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">“M</span><small>OLESKIN</small> <span class="smcap">Joe</span> is an old friend of mine,” said Ellen, coming in and -counting the money as she made her way towards the bed. “Thirty -bob—two—two fifteen—three, three punds nine and sixpence!” she cried. -“And Dermod will be here in a meenit.... My goodness! what’s gang wrang -wi’ ye, child?”</p> - -<p>Norah was lying unconscious on the bed, a stream of blood issuing from -her lips. One pale white hand was stretched over the blue lettering of -the blanket, the other was doubled up under her body.</p> - -<p>“Poor Norah Ryan!” exclaimed Ellen, opening the window and drawing back -the clothes from the girl’s chest. “It’s the excitement that’s done -it.... Wake up, Norah! It’s me, Ellen, that’s speakin’ to ye. Ye ken me, -don’t ye?”</p> - -<p>She placed her hand on Norah’s breast. Although her hand had lost most -of its delicacy of touch she could feel the heart beating faintly, -almost like the wing of a butterfly flickering against the net in which -it is imprisoned.</p> - -<p>“She’ll be better in a wee meenit! There, she’s comin’ to. She’ll ken me -as soon as she opens her eyes!” said Ellen, and she nearly cried with -joy.</p> - -<p>In a little while Norah recovered and looked round with large, puzzled -eyes; then, as if recollecting something—</p> - -<p>“Is he comin’?” she asked eagerly, but so softly that Ellen had to bend -down to catch the words. “He was the kind-hearted boy, Dermod,” she went -on. “I always liked him better than anyone, Ellen.... ’Twas the bad girl -that I was ... and I’m a burden on ye more than on anyone else.”</p> - -<p>“God send that I bear the burden for long and many’s a day yet,” said -the woman. “Ye’ve been a guid frien’<a name="page_314" id="page_314"></a> to me, Norah, and I feel happy -workin’ awa here by yer side. Ye’ll get better too, for when Dermod -comes ye’ll be happy, and the happy live long.”</p> - -<p>Norah put out her hand and grasped that of her friend. “God bless ye, -Ellen,” she said. “Ye’ve been more’n a mother to me. But I’m not long -for this world now. Something tells me that I’m for another place. I’m -not afeared to die, Ellen; why should I? But sorrow is on me because I’m -leavin’ you.”</p> - -<p>The darkness fell; the two women were silent, their hands clasped -tightly and their eyes full of tears. But with them was a certain -strange happiness; one bright thought joined another bright thought in -their minds just as the beams of a newly-lit fire join together in a -darkened room.</p> - -<p>Norah fell asleep. The lamp, which had become leaky, had now gone out. -Ellen lit a candle, stuck it into the neck of a bottle and placed the -bottle on the floor. The place looked desolate and forbidding; dead -ashes lay in the fireplace; a pile of rags—Ellen’s bed—lay in the -corner. There was no picture in the place, nothing to lessen the -monotony save the little crucifix on the mantelpiece, and this relieving -feature was a symbol of sorrow.</p> - -<p>Ellen glanced at the sleeper. How strangely beautiful she looked now! It -seemed as if something spiritual and divine had entered the body of -Norah, causing her to look more like the creation of some delightful -dream than an erring human being bowed with a weight of sorrow.</p> - -<p>“I’ll go out and get some coals,” said Ellen, speaking under her breath. -“Then we’ll have a cheerful fire for Dermod Flynn when he comes. He was -sic a comely lad when in Jim Scanlon’s squad. And poor Norah! Ah! it’s -sic a pity the way things work out in this life. There seems to be a bad -management of things somewhere.”<a name="page_315" id="page_315"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV<br /><br /> -<small>THE FAREWELL MEETING</small></h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">F</span><small>OR</small> the rest of that evening, between short periods of sleep, one bright -vision merged with another in front of Norah’s eyes, and in every vision -the face of Dermod Flynn stood out distinctly clear. She spoke to him; -talked of home, of the people whom both had known, of the master of -Glenmornan schoolhouse, of Maire a Glan, of Micky’s Jim and the squad, -Willie the Duck, and all those whom they had known so well a few short -years before. But for all she spoke, Dermod never answered; he looked at -her in silence where she lay, the life passing from her as a spent -fountain weakens, as an echo dies away.</p> - -<p>The candle threw out a fitful flame in the room, shadows rushed together -on the ceiling, forming and breaking free, dancing and capering in -strange antics. Steps could be heard on the stairs; the tap was running -outside and the water fell with a hissing sound. Ellen was still out; -the room was deserted; nothing there but the shadows on the ceiling and -the sick girl on the bed by the window.</p> - -<p>She was asleep when Dermod Flynn came, and wakened to find him standing -by her bed, looking down at her with eyes full of love and pity. There -was no surprise written on her face when she saw him; to Norah<a name="page_316" id="page_316"></a> for days -he had been as near in dreams as he was now in real flesh and blood.</p> - -<p>“I was dreamin’ of ye, Dermod,” she said in a low voice, sitting up with -one elbow buried in the pillow and her bare shoulders showing white and -delicate under her locks of brown hair.</p> - -<p>“Ye took the good time in comin’,” she went on, but there was longing, -not protest, in her voice. “Ellen told me that ye were lookin’ for -meself.”</p> - -<p>Dermod was down on his knees by the bedside. “ ‘Tis good to see you -again, darling,” he said. “I have been looking for you for such a long -time.”</p> - -<p>“Have ye?” she asked, her voice, tinged with a thousand regrets, rising -a little as if in mute protest, against the shadows dancing on the roof. -Sobbing like a child, she sank back in the bed. “It’s the kindly way -that ye have with ye, Dermod,” she said in a quieter voice. “Ye don’t -know what I am, and the kind of life I’ve been leadin’ for a good lot of -years, to come and speak to me again. It’s not for a decent man like -yerself to speak to the likes of my kind. It’s meself that has suffered -a big lot too, Dermod, and I deserve pity more than hate. Me sufferin’s -would have broke the heart of a cold mountainy stone.”</p> - -<p>“Poor Norah!” Dermod said, half in whispers; “well do I know what ye -have suffered. I have been looking for you for a long while, and now, -having found you, I want to make you very happy.”</p> - -<p>“Make me happy!” she exclaimed, withdrawing her hands from Dermod’s -grasp as if they had been stung. “What would ye be doin’, wantin’ to -make me happy? I’m dead to ev’rybody, to the people at home and to me -own very mother. What would she want with me now, her daughter and the -mother of a child that never had the priest’s blessin’ on its head. A -child without a lawful<a name="page_317" id="page_317"></a> father! Think of it, Dermod! What would the -Frosses and Glenmornan people say if they met me now on the streets? It -was a dear child to me, it was. And ye are wantin’ to make me happy! -Every time ye come ye say the same.... D’ye mind seem’ me on the -streets, Dermod?”</p> - -<p>“I remember it, Norah.”</p> - -<p>He looked at her closely, puzzled no doubt by her utterances. She was -now rambling a little again. Dreams intermingled with reality and her -fingers were making folds in the sheets. Dermod remembered how in -Glenmornan this was considered a sign of death. She began to talk to -herself, her head on the pillow, one erring tress of hair lying across -her cheek.</p> - -<p>“It was the child, Dermod,” she said, a smile playing over her features; -“it was the little boy and he was dyin’, both of a cough that was -stickin’ in his throat and of starvation. As for meself, I hadn’t seen -bread or that what buys it for many’s a long hour, even for days itself. -I couldn’t get work to do. I would beg, aye, Dermod, I would, and me a -Frosses woman, but I was afeared that the peelis would put me in prison. -In the end there was nothin’ left to me but to take to the streets.... -There were long white boats goin’ out and we were watchin’ them from the -strand of Trienna Bay. The boats of our own people. Ah! my own townland, -Dermod!... I called the little child Dermod, but he never got the -christenin’ words said over him, nor a drop of holy water.... Where is -Ellen?... Ellen, ye’re a good friend to me, ye are! The people that’s -sib to myself don’t care what happens to me, one of their own kind; but -it’s ye yerself that has the good heart, Ellen. And ye say that Dermod -Flynn is comin’ to see me? I would like to see Dermod again.”</p> - -<p>“I’m here, Norah,” said the young man, endeavouring<a name="page_318" id="page_318"></a> by his voice to -recall her straying fancy. “I’m here, Norah. I’m Dermod Flynn. Do ye -know me now?”</p> - -<p>There was no answer.</p> - -<p>“Norah, do ye remember me?” Dermod repeated. “I am Dermod—Dermod Flynn. -Say ‘Dermod’ after me.”</p> - -<p>She opened her eyes and looked at him with a puzzled glance. “Is it ye -indeed, Dermod?” she exclaimed. “I knew that ye were comin’ to see me. I -was thinkin’ of ye often, and many’s the time I thought that ye were -standin’ by me bed quiet like and takin’ a look at me. Ye’re here now, -are ye? Say ‘True as death.’ ”</p> - -<p>“True as death!”</p> - -<p>“But where is Ellen?” she asked, “and where is the man that came here -this mornin’, and left a handful of money to help us along? He was a -good, kindly man; talkin’ about fives too, just the same as Micky’s Jim. -Joe was his name.”</p> - -<p>She paused.</p> - -<p>“There were three men on the street and they made fun of me when I was -passin’ them,” she went on. “Then they made a rush at me, threw me down -and tramped over me. I was left on the cold streets, lyin’ like to die -and no one to help me. ’Twas Ellen that picked me up, and she has been a -good friend to me ever since; sittin’ up at night by my side and workin’ -her fingers to the bone for me through the livelong day. Ellen, ye’re -very good to me.”</p> - -<p>“Ellen isn’t here,” Dermod said, the tears running down his cheeks. With -clumsy but tender fingers he brushed back the hair from her brow and -listened to her talk as one listens to the sound of a lonely breeze, the -mind deep in unfathomable reflections.</p> - -<p>Gourock Ellen entered the room and cast a curious look round. Seeing -Dermod kneeling at the bedside the woman felt herself an intruder. She -came forward,<a name="page_319" id="page_319"></a> however, and bent over the girl, her shoulder touching -the head of the young man.</p> - -<p>Norah’s eyes were closed and a pallor overspread her features.</p> - -<p>“Are ye asleep, lassie?”</p> - -<p>There was no answer to her question; the woman bent closer and pressed -Norah’s breast with her hand.</p> - -<p>“Are ye come back, Ellen?” Norah asked without opening her eyes. “I was -dreamin’ in the same old way,” she went on. “I saw him comin’ back -again. He was standin’ by me bed and he was very kind like he always -was.”</p> - -<p>“But he’s here, little lass,” said Ellen, turning to Dermod Flynn. -“Speak to her, man,” she whispered. “She’s been wearin’ her heart away -for you, for a long weary while. Speak to her and we’ll save her yet. -She’s just wanderin’ in her head.”</p> - -<p>Norah opened her eyes; the candle was going out and Dermod could mark -the play of light and shade on the girl’s face.</p> - -<p>“Then it was not dreamin’ that I was!” she cried. “It’s Dermod himself -that’s in it and back again. Just comin’ to see me! It’s himself that -has the kindly Glenmornan heart and always had. Dermod, Dermod! I have a -lot to speak to ye about!”</p> - -<p>Her voice became strained; to speak cost her an effort, and Dermod, who -had risen, bent down to catch her words.</p> - -<p>“It was ye that I was thinkin’ of all the time, and I was foolish when I -was workin’ in Micky’s Jim’s squad. It’s all my fault and sorrow is on -me because I made you suffer. Maybe ye’ll go home some day. If ye do, go -to me mother’s house and ask her to forgive me. Tell her that I died on -the year I left Micky’s Jim’s squad. I was not me mother’s child after -that; I was dead to all the<a name="page_320" id="page_320"></a> world. My fault could not be undone; that’s -what made the blackness of it. Never let yer own sisters go to the -strange country, Dermod, never let them go to the potato squad, for it’s -the place that is evil for a girl like me that hasn’t much sense.... -Ye’re not angry with me, Dermod, are ye?”</p> - -<p>“Norah, I was never angry with you,” said the young man, and he kissed -her. “You don’t think that I was angry with you?”</p> - -<p>“No, Dermod, for it’s yerself that has the kindly way,” said the poor -girl. “Would ye do something for me if ever ye go back to yer own -place?”</p> - -<p>“Anything you ask,” Dermod answered, “and anything within my power to -do.”</p> - -<p>“Will ye hev a mass said for me in the chapel at home; a mass for the -repose of me soul?” she asked. “If ye do I’ll be very happy.”</p> - -<p>These were Norah Ryan’s last words. As she spoke she looked at Gourock -Ellen, and by a sign expressed a wish to speak to her. She sat up in -bed, but, as she opened her mouth, shivered as if with cold, looked at -Ellen with sad, blank eyes and dropped back on the pillow. Dermod and -Ellen stooped forward, not knowing what to do, but feeling that they -should do something. The girl was still looking upwards at the shadows -on the ceiling, but seeing far beyond. Then her eyes closed slowly, like -those of a child that falls into a peaceful sleep.</p> - -<p>Norah Ryan was dead.</p> - -<p> </p> - -<p class="c"><small>THE END</small></p> - -<div class="footnotes"><p class="cb">FOOTNOTES:</p> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Girsha, girl.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Beanshee, a fairy woman. (Bean, a woman; shee, a fairy.)</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> Beansho, “That woman.” (A term of reproach.)</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> Brattie, an apron made of coarse cloth.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> Shorgun, short gown. The uniform of the female farm -servant: the sleeves of the blouse reach the elbows, the hem of the -skirt covers the knees.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> Threepenny piece.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> A pint of beer and a glass of whisky mixed.</p></div> - -</div> - -<hr class="full" /> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rat-Pit, by Patrick MacGill - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RAT-PIT *** - -***** This file should be named 50895-h.htm or 50895-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/8/9/50895/ - -Produced by MWS, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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