when john regained the house he saw that his father's boots had disappeared from their accustomed place beside the fire. no doubt he had gone away in them to garradrimna. he had not met him on the road, but there was a short way across the fields and through the woods, a backward approach to three of the seven publichouses along which ned brennan, some rusty plumber's tool in his hand and his head downcast, might be seen passing on any day.
he did not go straight into the sewing-room, for the door was closed and he could hear the low murmur of talk within. it must be some customer come to his mother, he thought, or else some one who had called in off the road to talk about the concert. immediately he realized that he was wrong in both surmises, for it was the voice of marse prendergast raised in one of its renowned outbursts of supplication.
"now i suppose it's what you think that you're the quare, clever woman, nan byrne, with your refusing me continually of me little needs; but you'd never know what i'd be telling on you some day, and mebbe to your grand son john."
"sssh—sssh—sure i'll get it for you when he goes from the kitchen."
this last was in a low tone and spoken by his mother.
"mebbe it's what you're ashamed to let him see you[pg 118] giving to me. that's a grand thing now, and i knowing what i know!"
"can't you be easy now and maybe 'tis a whole shilling i'll be giving you in a few minutes."
this was altogether too generous of his mother. it gave scope to marse prendergast to exercise her tyranny. her threat was part of the begging convention she had framed for herself, and so it did not move him towards speculation or suspicion. his mind drifted on to the enjoyment of other thoughts, the girl he had just walked with down the valley, the remembered freshness of the morning road. he came out to the door. the little kitchen garden stretched away from his feet. an abandoned spade stood up lonely and erect in the middle of the cabbage-plot. around it were a few square feet of freshly-turned earth. it was the solitary trace of his existence that his father had left behind.... as the mind of john brennan came to dwell upon the lonely spectacle of the spade the need for physical exertion grew upon him.
he went out into the little garden and lifted the rude implement of cultivation in his hand. he had not driven it many times into the soft clay of the cabbage-bed when a touch of peace seemed to fall upon him. the heavy burden that had occupied his mind was falling into the little trench that was being made by the spade.
he had become so interested in his task that he had not heard his mother go upstairs nor seen marse prendergast emerge from the house some moments later.
the old shuiler called out to him in her high, shrill voice:
[pg 119]
"that's right, john! that's right! 'tis glad myself is to see you doing something useful at last. digging the cabbage-plot, me sweet gosoon, and your father in garradrimna be this time with his pint in his hand!"
mrs. brennan had followed her to the door, and her cruelty was stirred to give the sore cut by reviving the old dread.
"that's the lad! that's the lad! but mind you don't dig too far, for you could never tell what you'd find. and indeed it would be the quare find you might say!"
he laughed as she said this, for he remembered that, as a child she had entertained him with the strangest stories of leprecauns and their crocks of gold, which were hidden in every field. the old woman passed out on the road, and his mother came over to him with a pitiful look of sadness in her eyes.
"now, john, i'm surprised at you to have a spade in your hand before marse prendergast and all. that's your father's work and not yours, and you with your grand education."
the speech struck him as being rather painful to hear, and he felt as if he should like to say: "well, what is good enough for my father ought to be good enough for me!" but this, to his mother, might have looked like a back-answer, a piece of impertinence, so he merely stammered in confusion: "oh, sure i was only exercising and amusing myself. when this little bit is finished i'm going down to have a read by the lake."
"that's right, john!" she said in a flat, sad voice, and turned back to her endless labor.
he stopped, his hands folded on the handle-end of the[pg 120] spade, and fell into a condition of dulness which even the slightest labor of the body brings to those unaccustomed to it. all things grew so still of a sudden. there seemed to come a perfect lull in the throbbing, nervous realization of his brain from moment to moment.... he felt himself listening for the hum of his mother's machine, but it was another sound that came to him—the desolating sound of her lonely sobbing. she was crying to herself there now in the sewing-room and mourning forever as if for some lost thing.... there were her regular sobs, heavy with an eternal sadness as he listened to them. into such acute self-consciousness had his mood now moved that he could not imagine her crying as being connected with anything beyond himself. he was the perpetual cause of all her pain.... if only she would allow him, for short spaces, to go out of her mind they might both come into the enjoyment of a certain freedom, but sometimes the most trivial incident seemed to put her out so. this morning she had been in such heart and humor, and last night so interested in the concert, and here now she was in tears. it could not have been the visit of marse prendergast or her talk, for there was nobody so foolish, he thought, as to take any notice of either. it must have been the digging and the fact that people passing the road might see him. now was not that foolish of her, for did not father o'keeffe himself dig in his own garden with his own two blessed hands ...? but he must bend in obedience to her desire, and go walking like a leisured gentleman through the valley. he was looking forward to this with dread, for, inevitably, it must throw him back upon his own thoughts.
[pg 121]
as he came down past the school he could hear a dull drone from among the trees. the school had not yet settled down to the business of the day, and the scholars were busy with the preparation of their lessons. john stopped by the low wall, which separated its poor playground from the road, to gaze across at the hive of intellect. curious that his mother should now possess a high contempt for this rude academy where he had been introduced to learning. but he had not yet parted company with his boyhood. he was remembering the companions of his schooldays and how this morning preparation had been such a torture. still moving about the yard before his formal entrance to the school, was master donnellan. as john brennan saw him now he appeared as one misunderstood by the people of the valley, and yet as one in whom the lamp of the intellect was set bright and high. but beyond this immediate thought of him he appeared as a man with overthrown ambitions and shattered dreams, whose occasional outbursts of temper for these reasons had often the effect of putting him at enmity with the parents of the children.
master donnellan was a very slave of the ferrule. he had spent his brains in vain attempts to impart some knowledge to successive generations of dunces of the fields. it had been his ambition to be the means of producing some great man whose achievements in the world might be his monument of pride. but no pupil of his in the valley school had ever arisen as a great man. many a time, in the long summer evenings, when the day would find it hard to disappear from ireland, he would come quietly to the old school with a step of[pg 122] reverence, and going into the moldy closet, where all the old roll-books and register-books were kept, take them down one by one and go searching through the lists of names. his mind would be filled with the ringing achievements of men who had become notable in the world.... not a trace of any of those famous names could he find here, however far he might search in all the musty books until the day had faded.... then he would rely upon his memory in a further aspect of his search. he had not even produced a local great man. in his time no priests had come out of the valley. there was a strange thing now—no priests, and it was a thing that was always said by angry mothers and fathers when they called at the valley school to attack him for his conduct towards their children—"and you never to have made a priest or a ha'porth!" it was not the unreasonableness of their words that annoyed him, but rather the sense of impotence with which they filled him.... if only it would happen that he could say he had produced one famous man. a priest would be sufficiently fine to justify him in the eyes of the valley. it was so strange that, although he had seen many young men move towards high attainment, some fatality had always happened to avert his poor triumph. he thought of young brennan as his present hope and pride.
john went on towards the lake. when he came to the water's edge he was filled with a sense of peace. he sat down beneath one of the fir trees and, in the idleness of his mood, began to pick up some of the old dried fir-cones which were fallen beneath. they appeared to him as things peculiarly bereft of any sap or life. he[pg 123] gathered until he had a handful and then cast them from him one by one on the surface of the water. it seemed a surprising thing that the small eddies which the light splashes of them made rolled distantly to the shores of the little lake. he began to wonder would his life come to be like that—a small thing to be flung by the hand of fate and creating its little ripple to eddy to the far shores of time.
"me sound man, john!"
it was the voice of shamesy golliher coming from behind a screen of reeds where he had been fishing.
"'tis a warm day," he said, pushing back his faded straw hat from his brow, "glory be to the son of god!"
this was a pious exclamation, but the manner of its intonation seemed to make it comical for john brennan laughed and shamesy golliher laughed.
"now isn't them the clever, infernal little gets of fishes? the divil a one can i catch only the size of pinkeens, and i wanting to go to garradrimna with a hell of a thirst!"
"and is that all you have troubling you?" said john.
"is that all? begad if it isn't enough after last night. if the priests knew all the drink that bees drunk at concerts in aid of temperance halls you wouldn't see a building of that kind in the country.
"now down with me last night to the concert with me two lovely half-pints of malt. well, to make a long story short, i finished one of them before i went in. i wasn't long inside, and i think it was while harry holton was singing, when who should give me a nudge only hubert manning: 'are ye coming out, shamesy?' says he. he had two bottles of stout and a naggin, and[pg 124] we had them finished before harry holton had done his first song. i was striving for to crush back into me place when who should i knock against only farrell mcguinness? he had a lot of bottles in his pocket. he seemed to have about four dozen of stout on his person, according to the noise he made: 'for the honor of jases,' says he, 'will you not spill me porter?' but then when he saw it was me he had in it: 'come to hell oura this,' says he, 'into the night air.' i was so glad to see that he hadn't broken his bottles, i introduced th'other half pint. sure he nearly swallowed it, bottle and all. then we fell to at the porter, and such a bloody piece of drinking never was seen. and it wasn't that we had plenty of drink of our own, but strange people were coming running through the wood putting half-pints and naggins into our mouths just as if we were little sucking childer. i fell a corpse under a tree about eleven. i don't know how long i was insensible, but when i came to i had a quare feeling that i was in hell or some place. i wasn't able to move an inch, i was that stiff and sick.... somewhere near me i could hear two whispering and hugging in the darkness. they were as close as ever they could be. i couldn't stir to get a better look for fear they'd hear me. but there was quare goings on i can tell you, things i wouldn't like to mention or describe. whisper, i'm near sure it was ulick shannon and the schoolmistress, miss kerr, or whatever the hell her name is——."
shamesy's sickening realism was brought to an abrupt end by the ducking of his cork, which had been floating upon the surface of the water. there was a short moment of joyous excitement and then a dying[pg 125] perch lay on the grass by the side of john brennan.
he viewed with sorrow that clean, shining thing wriggling there beneath the high heavens. its end had come through the same pitiful certainty as that of the rabbits which had aforetime contributed to the thirst of shamesy, who presently said with delight:
"now i have the correct number. i can sell them for sixpence in 'the world's end,' and you'd never know the amount of good drink that sixpence might bring."
he prepared to take his departure, but ere he went across the hill he turned to john and said:
"that was the fine walk you were doing with ulick shannon's girl this morning! she was in great form after last night."
he said it with such a leer of suggestion as cast john, still blushing, back into his gloom.
