Strangers at Lisconnel Part 19

Upon this people looked ruefully at her and at each other, as if the question had given them a glimpse into the darkness in which she was sitting.

"Ah, no, ma'am," said Mrs. Doyne, "that's on'y the sedge-laves in the win' round the big pool just back of the house. Few days of the year there is, summer or winter, but they'll be shoosh-sooin' that way. A dhrary sort of noise it is to my mind. I do be tired listenin' to it in the night sometimes."

"Sure there's ne'er a dhrop of say-wather nearer us, ma'am, than the place you're after quittin' out of," said Judy Ryan, "it's the quare whillaloo it 'ud have to be risin' before we'd hear it that far."

"Well, well," said the blind woman, "yous are the very lucky people, I'm thinkin', all of yous, that see the s.h.i.+nin' of the sun, and live beyond the sound of the say."

Her remark was followed by a short silence, during which her hearers were, perhaps, questing for consolatory rejoinders rather than congratulating themselves upon their own luckiness. It was Big Anne who broke the pause, saying, with the best intentions, "Ah, sure, ma'am dear, plase G.o.d, _you_ won't be so, and _we_ won't be so;" a sentiment which apparently did not meet with the approval of Ody Rafferty, as he frowned bus.h.i.+ly at her and said in a testy undertone, "Musha, good gracious, woman, what talk have you out of you at all?"

Just at this moment sounds, the nature of which could not easily be mistaken, rose up close by--shouts and laughter and thumps and trampling of feet. People who ran quickly to the door were in time to see a knot of youths fall confusedly out of the house over the way--the Quigleys'--obviously, to judge by their subsequent proceedings, for the purpose of continuing a scuffle with ampler elbow room. But it was only for a very brief s.p.a.ce that their wrestling and skirmis.h.i.+ng among the puddles held anybody's attention. That was speedily diverted to the far more extraordinary and astonis.h.i.+ng behaviour of their visitor, Mrs.

Morrough. For she suddenly sprang up off her chair, exclaiming, "Saints above--it's Paddy--that's Paddy's voice--him that I haven't set eyes on for nine year next Easter--and there's Felix yellin' too! The both of them's come back, glory be to G.o.d!" And so saying out of the house she ran, and across the road as straight as a dart, she who not an hour before had been led gropingly in, and would have put her foot among the glowing hearth-sods, if her guides had not pulled her away.

The neighbours could at first look on in only mute amazement, but in any case the two boys and she were for some time so intricately entangled that any attempt to elicit any explanation would have been futile. When at last questions and answers were possible, no very lucid account of the matter was forthcoming. To the many voices that demanded: "Is it seein' you are, woman alive? Is it seein' you are?" all Mrs. Morrough could answer was: "Ay, bedad am I, and as well as iver I done in me life--praise be to goodness. Sure I dunno what way it was, but me sight came back to me all of a flash, the same as it went, just the very minyit I was hearin' the lads shoutin'. Och, Paddy, avic, but you're the grand man grown; and Felix, och now, to be seein' you agin, and everythin' else as clear as clear. It's meself's the lucky woman this day--glory be to G.o.d and Mary."

In short, the marvellous restoration of her sight is to this day a miracle, very freshly in remembrance at Lisconnel and Laraghmena, where the inhabitants know little about paralysed optic nerves, and might perhaps continue to wonder none the less even if they knew more. Beside it the unexpected reappearance of the two young Morroughs seemed almost a commonplace incident, though Paddy's fine new suit and gold watch-chain were, indeed, very exceptional things at Lisconnel. His story ran that he had prospered highly of late out in California, having made enough to set him up grandly on a good bit of land in the old country, and give Felix a fair start, and keep the old mother in comfort all the rest of her life. With which objects in view they had landed at Queenstown, he and his wife, a girl belonging to very respectable, decent people in the county Wicklow. "So next mornin', walkin' along the Quay, who should I see but me gintleman there, and another chap along with him, and both of them lookin' as wild as if they'd been caught. And says I to Sally, 'You bet, that's Felix from our place at home;' and right I was, and just slick in time to stop him goin' on board." Paddy had then left his wife with her family in Wicklow, where he had seen a promising farm; and he and Felix were now on their way to fetch their mother thither.

"And it's in the quare consternation you'd ha' been," said Theresa Joyce, "if you'd landed up at Laraghmena, and found her quit out of it the way she was."

"And that would ha' happint us," said Felix, "if it hadn't been for young Dan Ryan in there just now pa.s.sin' the remark that we couldn't expec' Father Martin to be sendin' us notices all the way to the County Cork, and supposin' I'd very belike missed the right day for the stamer be raison of it. For if we hadn't got fightin' and tumblin' out of the house, you might aisy ha' gone along wid yourselves, and niver known we were in the place at all. 'Twas great luck entirely."

Fortune, in truth, had seemingly taken Mrs. Morrough and her affairs into the highest favour. Even the luck-insurance of a trivial loss was not wanting to her, as in her hasty exit she had dropped her new teapot, which broke into many pieces on Mrs. Doyne's floor. So that, as has been said, she never beheld it in its beauty. But the very skies had cleared above her head, swept by a waft of wind that scattered the clouds faster and further than a drift of withered leaves, and the sinking sun broadened in splendour before the eyes that had lost sight of him through ten interminable days. The wet stones on the road glistened like jewels, and the shallowest pools between them held unfathomed deeps of blue, when the Morroughs set off for Laraghmena, where they intended to sleep the night, and bid their friends farewell. "And if it's themselves won't be in the fine astonishment when they set eyes upon you, woman dear!" said Theresa Joyce, "for if you'd been twenty year away thravellin' the world crooked and straight, you couldn't ha' come back a diff'rinter crathur from what you were, and we settin' out this woeful mornin'. Little notion you had what was comin' to you, and it all the while runnin' up your road, so to spake, like the sun racin' the shadows on a windy day. 'Deed now, I'd be goin' along wid you to hear what they'll say to it, but I'm ould you see, and ivery step I've thramped I have the feel of in ivery bone of me body; so I'll stop this night up at Brian's."

"And bedad, ma'am, it's well off you are, if you've the feel of nothin'

worse in them," said the querulous voice of old Peter Sheridan, whose acquaintances describe him as being "terrible gathered up with the rheumatism this great while," so great, in fact, that everybody except himself has by this time become accustomed to his condition.

For the most part, however, they were rather pleased faces that watched the three strangers out of sight, the last long beams from the sunset making blink the eyes of nearly all Lisconnel. The west dispread its fiery golden bloom wider every moment as the swelling scarlet disc wheeled lower, burning with orbed flame a hollow path through the kindled haze. One laggard cloud, a great, soft nest of snow, drifted into the heart of it, and out of it again, flushed and glistering, and sailed on, a radiant shape, to meet and eclipse the misty white ghost-moon, faint and dim in the east. Far away over the level bog the light was stealing about in streams like water spilt on a floor.

"Well now, I declare," said Mrs. Brian, "it does one's heart good to see a bit of luck like that happenin' to a body."

"Ay, does it," said Judy Ryan, "the crathur to be gettin' back her sight just in the right minyit of time to see her son comin' home to her. Sure now one might take a plisure in plannin' such a thing, if one had the managin' of them."

"Ah, dear, but I wish somebody 'ud be conthrivin' a bit of good luck for us then," said Mrs. Quigley.

"Maybe there's plinty more where that's comin' from," suggested Brian Kilfoyle, hopefully.

"It's apt to stay there, then," quoth Mrs. Quigley, "for any signs I can see."

"Ay, ma'am, that's me own notion," said Peter Sheridan, bitterly; "I'm thinkin' we'll have to be goin' there, wheriver it is, and lookin' after it for ourselves, if it's good luck we're a-wantin'."

"And I dunno what better we could be doin'," said Theresa Joyce, "than goin' where it is, when we get the chance. Ah, there's the last of the sun," she said, as a quivering red shaft shot up suddenly, and trembled away into nothing on the air. "Ay, for sure, he goes down a great way off out on the bog; the crathur 'ud ha' been plased to see it. 'Deed no, I dunno anythin' better we could be doin' than goin' after our good luck."

So all through that gathering twilight Mrs. Morrough and her two sons were journeying away with their high fortune to Laraghmena. They were still on the road long after the clear moon had filled the air with s.h.i.+mmering silver, and sent their shadows stretching darkly far over the frosted gra.s.s. But Lisconnel had gone to seek, for the time being, its good luck in the land of dreams.