the stern natural law of mutability—of ceaseless growth, change and decay—which the big, bustling, preoccupied outside world takes so indifferently, as a matter of course, finds itself reduced to a bare minimum of influence in such small, remote and out-of-the-way places as muirisc. the lapse of twelve years here had made the scantest and most casual of marks upon the village and its inhabitants. positively no one worth mentioning had died—for even snuffy and palsied old father harrington, though long since replaced at the convent by a younger priest, was understood to be still living on in the shelter of some retreat for aged clergymen in kerry or clare. the three old nuns were still the sole ladies of the hostage’s tears, and, like the rest of muirisc, seemed only a trifle the more wrinkled and worn under this flight of time.
such changes as had been wrought had come in a leisurely way, without attracting much attention. the mines, both of copper and of pyrites, had prospered beyond the experience of any other section of munster, and this had brought into the immediate district a considerable alien population. but these intrusive strangers had fortunately preferred to settle in another hamlet in the neighborhood, and came rarely to muirisc. the village was still without a hotel, and had by this time grown accustomed to the existence within its borders of a constabulary barracks. its fishing went forward sedately and without much profit; the men of muirisc only half believed the stories they heard of the modern appliances and wonderful hauls at baltimore and crook-haven—and cared even less than they credited. the lobster-canning factory had died a natural death years before, and the little children of muirisc, playing about within sight of its roofless and rotting timbers, avoided closer contact with the building under some vague and formless notion that it was unlucky. the very idea that there had once been a man who thought that muirisc desired to put up lobsters in tins seemed to them comic—and almost impious as well.
but there was one alteration upon which the people of muirisc bestowed a good deal of thought—and on occasion and under their breath, not a few bitter words.
cormac o’daly, whom all the elders remembered as a mere “pote” and man of business for the o’mahonys, had suddenly in his old age blossomed forth as the o’daly, and as master of muirisc. like many other changes which afflict human recollection, this had all come about by reason of a woman’s vain folly. mrs. fergus o’mahony, having vainly cast alluring glances upon successive relays of mining contractors and superintendents, and of fish-buyers from bristol and the isle of man, and even, in the later stages, upon a sergeant of police—had at last actually thrown herself in marriage at the grizzled head of the hereditary bard. it cannot be said that the announcement of this ill-assorted match had specially surprised the good people of muirisc. they had always felt that mrs. fergus would ultimately triumph in her matrimonial resolutions, and the choice of o’daly, though obviously enough a last resort, did not shock their placid minds. it was rather satisfactory than otherwise, when they came to think of it, that the arrangement should not involve the introduction of a stranger, perhaps even of an englishman.
but now, after nearly three years of this marriage, with a young o’daly already big enough to walk by himself among the pigs and geese in the square—they said to themselves that even an englishman would have been better, and they bracketed the connubial tendencies of mrs. fergus and the upstart ambition of cormac under a common ban of curses.
o’daly had no sooner been installed in the castle than he had raised the rents. back had come the odious charge for turf-cutting, the tax on the carrigeens and the tithe-levy upon the gathered kelp. in the best of times these impositions would have been sorely felt; the cruel failure of the potatoes in 1877 and ’78 had elevated them into the domain of the tragic.
for the first time in its history muirisc had witnessed evictions. half way up the cliff stood the walls of four cottages, from which the thatched roofs had been torn by a sheriff’s posse of policeman during the bleakest month of winter. the gloomy spectacle, familiar enough elsewhere throughout ireland, had still the fascination of novelty in the eyes of muirisc. the villagers could not keep their gaze from those gaunt, deserted walls. some of the evicted people—those who were too old or too young to get off to america and yet too hardy to die—still remained in the neighborhood, sleeping in the ditches and subsisting upon the poor charity of the cottagers roundabout. the sight of their skulking, half-clad forms and hunger-pinched faces filled muirisc with wrathful humiliation.
almost worst still were the airs which latterly o’daly had come to assume. even if the evictions and the rack-renting could have been forgiven, muirisc felt that his calling himself the o’daly was unpardonable. everybody in ivehagh knew that the o’dalys had been mere bards and singers for the mccarthys, the o’mahonys, and other eugenian houses, and had not been above taking service, later on, under the hatred carews. that any scion of the sept should exalt himself now, in the shoes of an o’mahony, was simply intolerable.
in proportion as cormac waxed in importance, his coadjutor jerry had diminished. there was no longer any talk heard about diarmid macegan; the very pigs in the street knew him now to be plain jerry higgins. only the most shadowy pretense of authority to intermeddle in the affairs of the estate remained to him. unlettered goodnature and loyalty had stood no chance whatever against the will and powers of the educated cormac. muirisc did indeed cherish a nebulous idea that some time or other the popular discontent would find him an effective champion, but jerry did nothing whatever to encourage this hope. he had grown stout and red-faced through these unoccupied years, and lived by himself in a barely habitable nook among the ruins of the castle, overlooking the churchyard. here he spent a great deal of his time, behind barred doors and denying himself to all visitors—and muirisc had long since concluded that the companion of his solitude was a bottle.
“i’ve a word more to whisper into your ear, higgins,” said o’daly, this very evening, at the conclusion of some unimportant conversation about the mines.
the supper had been cleared away, and a tray of glasses flanking a decanter stood on the table at which the speaker sat with his pipe. the buxom and rubicund mrs. fergus—for so muirisc still thought and spoke of her—dozed comfortably in her arm-chair at one side of the bank of blazing peat on the hearth, an open novel turned down on her lap. opposite her mother, kate sat and sewed in silence, the while the men talked. it was the room in which the o’mahony had eaten his first meal in muirisc, twelve years before.
“‘a word to whishper,’” repeated o’daly, glancing at jerry with severity from under his beetling black brows, and speaking so loudly that even mrs. sullivan in the kitchen might have heard—“times is that hard, and work so scarce, that bechune now and midsummer i’d have ye look about for a new place.”
jerry stared across the table at his co-trustee in blank amazement. it was no surprise to him to be addressed in tones of harsh dislike by o’daly, or to see his rightful claims to attention contemptuously ignored. but this sweeping suggestion took his breath away.
“what place do ye mane?” he asked confusedly. “where else in muirisc c’u’d i live so aisily?”
“’t is not needful ye should live in muirisc at all,” said o’daly, with cold-blooded calmness. “sure, ’t is manny years since ye were of anny service here. a lad at two shillings the week would more than replace ye. in these bad times, and worse cornin’, ’t is impossible ye should stay on here as ye’ve been doin’ these twelve years. i thought i’d tell ye in sayson, higgins—not to take ye unawares.”
“glory-be-to-the-world?” gasped jerry, sitting upright in his chair, and staring open-eyed.
“’t is a dale of other alterations i have in me mind,” o’daly went on, hurriedly. “sure, things have stuck in the mire far too long, waiting for the comin’ to life of a dead man. ’t is to stir ’em up i will now, an’ no delay. me step-daughter, there, takes the vail in a few days, an’ ’t is me intintion thin to rebuild large parts of the convint, an’ mek new rules for it whereby gerrels of me own family can be free to enter it as well as the o’mahonys. for, sure, ’t is now well known an’ universally consaded that the o’daly’s were the most intellectual an’ intelligent family in all the two munsters, be rayson of which all the ignorant an’ uncultivated ruffians like the maccarthys an’ the o’mahony’s used to be beseechin’ ’em to make verses and write books an’ divert ’em wid playin’ on the harp—an ’t is high time the o’daly’s came into their own ag’in, the same that they’d never lost but for their wake good-nature in consintin’ to be bards on account of their supayrior education. why, man,” the swart-visaged little lawyer went on, his black eyes snapping with excitement—“what d’ ye say to me great ancestor, cuchonnacht o’daly, called na sgoile, or ‘of the school,’ who died at clonard, rest his soul, anno domini 1139, the most celebrated pote of all oireland? an’ do ye mind thim eight an’ twenty other o’dalys in rigular descint who achaved distinction—”
“egor! if they were all such thieves of the earth as you are, the world’s d———d well rid of ’em!” burst in jerry higgins.
he had sprung to his feet, and stood now hotfaced and with clenched fists, glaring down upon o’daly.
the latter pushed back his chair and instinctively raised an elbow to guard his head.
“have a care, higgins!” he shouted out—“you’re in the presence of witnesses—i’m a p’aceable man—in me own domicile, too!”
“i’ll ‘dommycille’ ye, ye blagyard!” jerry snorted, throwing his burly form half over the table.
“ah, thin, jerry! jerry!” a clear, bell-toned voice rang in his confused ears, and he felt the grasp of a vigorous hand upon his arm. “is it mad ye are, jerry, to think of striking the likes of him?”
kate stood at his side. the mere touch of her hand on his sleeve would have sufficed for restraint, but she gripped his arm sharply, and turned upon him a gaze of stern reproval.
“’tis elsewhere ye left your manners, jerry!” she said, in a calm enough voice, though her bosom was heaving. “when our bards became insolent or turned rogues, they were sent outside to be beaten. ’t was niver done in the presence of ladies.”
jerry’s puzzled look showed how utterly he failed to grasp her meaning. there was no such perplexity in o’daly’s mind. he, too, had risen, and stood on the hearth beside his wife, who blinked vacuous inquiries sleepily at the various members of the group in turn.
“and we,” he said, with nervous asperity, “when our children become impertinent, we trounce them off to their bed.”
“ah-h! no child of yours, o’daly!” the girl made scornful answer, in measured tones.
“well, thin,” the little man snarled, vehemently, “while ye’re under my roof, miss o’mahony, ye’ll heed what i say, an’ be ruled by ’t. an’ now ye force me to ’t, mark this: i’ll have no more of your gaddin’ about with that old bag-o’-bones of a murphy. ’t is not dacint or fittin’ for a young lady—more especially when she’s to be a—wanderin’ the lord knows where, or—”
kate broke in upon his harangue with shrill laughter, half hysterical.
“is it an o’daly that i hear discoorsin’ on dacency to an o’mahony!” she called out, ironically incredulous. “well, thin—while that i’m under your roof—-”
“egor! who made it his roof?” demanded jerry. “shure, be the papers the o’mahony wrote out wid his own hand for us—”
“don’t be interruptin’, jerry!” said kate, again with a restraining hand on his arm. “i say this, o’daly: the time i stop under this roof will be just that while that it takes me to put on me hat. not an instant longer will i stay.”
she walked proudly erect to the chest in the corner, took up her hat and put it on her head.
“come now, jerry,” she said, “i’ll walk wid you to me cousins, the ladies of the hostage’s tears. ’t will be grand news to thim that the o’dalys have come into their own ag’in!”
cormac o’daly instinctively moved toward the door to bar her egress. then a glance at jerry’s heavy fists and angered face bred intuition of a different kind, and he stepped back again.
“mind, once for all! i’ll not have ye here ag’in—neither one or other of ye!” he shouted.
kate disdained response by even so much as a look. she moved over to the arm-chair, and, stooping for an instant, lightly brushed with her lips the flattened crimps which adorned the maternal forehead. then, with head high in air and a tread of exaggerated stateliness, she led the way for jerry out of the room and the house.
mrs. fergus heard the front door close with a resounding clang, and the noise definitely awakened her. she put up a correcting hand, and passed it over her front hair. then she yawned meditatively at the fire, and, lifting the steaming kettle from the crane, filled one of the glasses on the tray with hot water. then she permitted herself a drowsy halfsmile at the disordered appearance presented by her infuriated spouse.
“well, thin, ’tis not in mother agnes o’mahony’s shoes i’m wishin’ myself!” she said, upon reflection. “it’s right ye are to build thick new walls to the convint. they’ll be needed, wid that girl inside!”
