Strangers at Lisconnel Part 7

Denis said: "Faith, ma'am, I'd give six months' pay the thing had never happint. Divil a bit of harm I believe there was in poor McInerney; and I spoke to Dr. Hamilton to spake to Mr. Nugent and the other magistrates for him; but they said, after what me cousin Joe let out about the poteen at his place, the polis would be wishful to keep him convanient to thim for a while; and to be sure, they kep' him too long altogether.

I know, ma'am, young Rafferty and the rest had his shanty pulled down before the polis come up next day; but they thought they'd git somethin'

out of him. The little jacka.s.s ought to ha' held his tongue. It was a pity, bedad. Hard lines it is on a man to be losin' his life, you may say, along wid his temper, just be raison of a bit of a joke."

Still as he looked out into the suns.h.i.+ne he could not help thinking that he would have had a greater loss of his life than poor Hugh McInerney, who, it was evident, would always have met with a cold reception from everybody at the Joyces'. Then he said to Mrs. Joyce: "And how's Theresa, ma'am?"

Mrs. Joyce was in the middle of replying that she was grandly, and had just run over to Mrs. Keogh on a message, when Theresa herself came in.

Denis jumped up quickly, saying: "Ah, Theresa, it's a great while since I've seen you."

But Theresa only lifted her head without turning it, and walked straight on as if n.o.body had accosted her.

"Arrah, now, Theresa darlint, don't you see Denis O'Meara?" said her mother, puzzled and rather dismayed.

And then Theresa did turn and look at him. "Yis, I see him," she said--and, indeed, she might as easily have overlooked the red flame in a lantern as the tall scarlet lancer in her mother's little misty-cornered room. "I see him," she said, "and I hate the sight of him." And thereupon she turned again, and walked out of the door, leaving a dead silence behind her.

This was one of the very few harsh sayings that Theresa Joyce has uttered in the course of her long life, and it came like a shock upon her hearers.

Mrs. Joyce at last said blankly: "What at all has took the child?"

And Bessie Kilfoyle said to Denis, who stood dumbfounded: "But indeed now, you may be sure there's not a many up here, at any rate, who do that."

But he replied: "If _she_ does, it's many enough for me, Mrs. Kilfoyle.

And I won't stop here to be drivin' her out of the house. So I'll say good-bye to yous kindly, for I'll be off now to Dublin to-morra or next day."

"And in coorse," Mrs. Joyce remarked ruefully, after he had departed, retreading his steps through the bright fresh morning with so crestfallen a mien that all the neighbours knew things had not run smoothly, "you couldn't raisonably expec' him to stay here to be hated the sight of. And indeed, what wid one thing and another, it's none too good thratement the poor lad's got up at Lisconnel, more's the pity."

Theresa herself never had any explanation to offer of "why she would be that cross wid poor Denis O'Meara." Her mother accounted for it by pique at the Carberys' ill-timed gossip about his imaginary courts.h.i.+p of Mary Anne Neligan; and Mrs. Kilfoyle was for a while inclined to the same opinion, until one day by chance she espied in the little old tin box which contained Theresa's treasures, a roll of bright yellow ribbon wrapped up very carefully; and thenceforward she silently ceased to hope that things might all come right yet, if Denis O'Meara came back again on leave.

So, although Mrs. Joyce may have drawn wrong inferences, the results were much as she had foreseen. Theresa never married, and when her mother died she went to live with her brother Mick at Laraghmena, where she is living still, notwithstanding that it is so long since all this happened--since the fine summer when Denis O'Meara was at Lisconnel, and Hugh McInerney, who luckily left n.o.body to be breaking their hearts fretting after him, died in Moynalone Jail.

The yellow ribbon lies safely in her box, and with it a grimy bit of paper, brought to her one day by a trusty hand, to which Hugh found out a way of committing it "before he was took bad entirely." Theresa herself has never deciphered its wild scrawls, being an unlettered person, but its bearer read it over to her until she knew it by heart every word. "For your own self the yella ribin is," the letter ran, "but don't be wearin' it unless you like it. And I'm sorry the man got hit; but I do be dhramin' most nights that it's you I'm after rapin' the little black head off of; and I'd liefer lose me life than think I'd be after hurtin' a hair of it. But the Divil was busy wid me that evenin'.

And I'm very apt never to get the chance to set fut again out on the big bog. It 'ud do me heart good to see the sun goin' down in it a great way off, for this is a quare small place. It's a long while. But sure, to the end of all the days of me life," it said to her, like an echo beaten back from the walls of the great abysm, "it's of yourself I'll be thinkin' off away in contintmint at Lisconnel."

CHAPTER VII

MR. POLYMATHERS

It was to an accidental circ.u.mstance that Lisconnel owed the prolonged sojourn there of perhaps the most distinguished scholar who has ever visited us. For when he arrived at O'Beirne's forge one misty June evening, the night's lodging only was all he asked or desired. But in those times, now some fifty years since, we had "a terrible dale of sickness about in the country," and next morning the stranger was down with the fever, which, although so mild a case that even Bridget O'Beirne never gave him over more than twice in the same day, brought his journey perforce to a halt. At the beginning he was very loth to believe that he must relinquish his intention of reaching Dublin by a certain date--the first Monday in July; however, having once recognised the impossibility of doing so, he showed no haste to quit his quarters, and his stay with the O'Beirnes lengthened into months as the summer slipped away. At this time the forge was owned by Felix O'Beirne, blacksmith, shebeener, and ex-whiteboy, and with him lived his orphan grandsons, Daniel and Nicholas, his very old, ancient mother, who still drew enjoyment in whiffs through the stem of her black dudeen, and his elderly sister, Bridget, who had taken little pleasure in anything since the redcoats shot her sweetheart in the War. The missing third generation was represented occasionally when Mrs. Dooley, Felix's married daughter, came on a visit. It was conjectured among them that "the fancy the ould gintleman had for larnin' all manner to young Nicholas continted him to stop." And this may have had something to do with it, though less, probably, than the vaguer fact that he from the first "took kindly" to the O'Beirnes, and they to him. His appearance puzzled them a little. He was of a ma.s.sive, large-boned frame, such as nature seems to design for rough uses; but, as Felix remarked, "you could aisy tell be ivery finger and thumb on him that hard work wasn't the handle he'd took a hould of the world by." He wore a very long, grey frieze coat, and a chimney-pot hat so old and tall that it looked as if it must have grown slowly to its great height. When he took it off he uncovered a shock of soft white hair, like the wig of a seeded groundsel, about a face which was furrowed and wrinkled ruggedly enough, in a different pattern somehow from what is commonly seen at Lisconnel, where sun and wind have a large share in the process. His baggage consisted of two bundles, very unequal in size and weight. The contents of the smaller one were mainly a s.h.i.+rt and three socks, knotted loosely in a blue cotton handkerchief; the other was done up carefully in sacking, and he liked to have it under his eye.

Of course the O'Beirnes' visitor was often talked about among the groups gathered of an evening, much as they are nowadays, for gossip and poteen within the broad-leaved forge doors, through which on dark nights the fire still blinks as far across the bog as the amber of the sunset, or the rising glow of the golden harvest moon. Even from Felix's first report it appeared that the stranger was no ordinary person.

"Won'erful fine discoorse he has out of him, anyway," he told the neighbours a few nights after the arrival; "ivery now and agin he'll out wid a word as grand like and big as his Riverence at Ma.s.s--goodness forgive me for sayin' so. Sometimes we've been hardset to tell what he's drivin' at. But that's the way it is wid thim words that has a power of manin' in thim. They're apt to bother you a bit when you're used to spakin plain."

"Belike it's the fever in his head sets him talkin' oddly," said young Barney Corcoran. "I mind me brother Joe when he was bad wid it would be ravin' wild. Sorra the sinsible word there was out of him for the best part of a week."

This way of accounting for his guest's fine language rather affronted Felix, and he consequently said, "Musha now, was there not? And how long might yourself be under that descrips.h.i.+n of fever?"

"Ah sure, what 'ud we do at all if poor Barney was took that way?" said Peter Keogh, "and n.o.body able to tell was it ravin' he was, or settin'

up to be talkin' raisonable for any differ they could see."

Barney cleared his throat disconcertedly, and the old man, recalling his responsibilities as a host, and perhaps not admiring his sarcasm thus elaborated, said conciliatingly, "Och, he'll do right enough if he niver raves any worse than Mr. Polymathers. All that ails him is that we want to git a bit used to his manner of spakin'."

"Polymathers?" said Peter.

"To be sure, Polymathers. Did you say it any better than I?"

"Well, I nivir heard tell of anybody called that way before. It's a quare she-he soundin' sort of name," said Peter.

"Faix, then, there may be plinty quarer in it, we niver heard tell of, if that was all," said Felix. "Anyhow, it's his name, and his people's afore him. Himself tould me his father was the ouldest of all the Polymatherses there was in the counthry he came out of--somewheres down south, I think he said--and the head of the whole of thim forby."

"Ay, he did so," said Dan. "Sez you to him, there was a dale of water run down hill since the time there was...o...b..irnes blacksmiths in this part of the counthry; and your father was a one, sez you. And sez he to you, he couldn't be any manner of manes purtind to be the aquil to what _his_ father was. And sez you to him, what was he? And sez he, it was one of the Polymatherses he was, and well known for his larnin' through the len'th and breadth of the county Sligo. And a name it was, he sez, any man might be proud of ownin'."

"Be jabers, himself has the great consait of it, at all ivents," said Peter. "But he might find people could be tellin' him there's Keoghs as good as any Polymatherses iver was in it--ivery hair."

The stranger's patronymic having thus been ascertained, it was desirable to fix his calling, and, despite his disclaimer of inherited erudition, several circ.u.mstances bespoke him a schoolmaster, even before the question seemed settled by the first act of his convalescence being an inquiry into the amount of book-learning which Dan and Nicholas had ama.s.sed during their sixteen and fourteen years. This was not large, though as much as could be expected, considering that in all Lisconnel there were not just then, I believe, more than four volumes, one of which being merely the index to a non-existent _Encyclopaedia_, can scarcely rank as literature. The boys themselves, and their grandfather, were deeply interested in the examination, and very anxious that it should have a creditable result. For learning and the learned have at all times been held in profound respect among us away on our bogland, where the devotion to something afar springs perhaps the more abundantly because so many things are remote. On this occasion Mr. Polymathers opened his most sizable bundle, and it was seen to be filled with books, not fewer, doubtless, than a score, in leather bindings, ragged and battered, and brownly time-stained all over their margins, as if the river of years had for them run no metaphor, but a russet bog-stream.

They comprised _Homer_, _Virgil_, _Livy_, and other ancients; likewise two Latin lexicons, which looked extravagant until you observed how each did but supplement the other's deficiencies, and this so imperfectly that their owner was still liable to search in vain for words between MO and NA.

These, however, were evidently not the most prized portion of Mr.

Polymathers's library, though he displayed them with some complacency, reading out here and there a sonorous "furrin" phrase, at which his audience said, "More power," and "Your sowl to glory," and the like. It was when he handled the shabbiest of the volumes, with broken backs and edges all curling tatters, that his touch grew caressing. The lookers-on, contrariwise, thought but poorly of them because they set up, seemingly, to be ill.u.s.trated works, and their pictures, mostly of uninteresting round and three-cornered objects, struck Lisconnel art critics as very feeble efforts. To be sure Mr. Polymathers called them _dygrims_, but that was no help to the overtaxed imagination. Only young Nicholas...o...b..irne listened intently to the explanation which he gave of one of them. Nicholas was a long, thin lad, with melancholy grey eyes and a square forehead, whose capacity his grandfather had held in some esteem, since it had been discovered, years ago, that "the spalpeen could make out an account for four sets of shoes, and half a stone of three-inch holdfasts, and a dozen of staples, and two gallon of the crathur, and allow for a hundredweight of ould iron, all in his head, and right to a farthin'." Now the melancholy eyes darkened and brightened with excitement as Mr. Polymathers discoursed of right lines and angles and circles, and expounded the mysterious signification of certain Ah Bay Says. And he had thenceforward an unweariable pupil in Nicholas, companied, albeit with less ardent zeal, and at a slower rate of progress, by his elder brother, Dan.

More general interest, however, continued to be taken in the stranger's cla.s.sical attainments. Everybody--the O'Beirnes themselves, their neighbours in the cabin-row close by, now long since an untraceable ruin, and the people of Lisconnel proper, a couple of miles further on--felt uplifted by the residence among them of a man, who they boasted would talk Latin to you as soon as look at you. But as we never enjoy our own happiness fully until it has been looked at through other men's envious eyes, they could not here remain content with simply possessing this privilege, or even with dilating upon it to their less favoured friends down below and down beyant. They longed to make a parade of it, to give a demonstration of it. And the method of doing so which they came to consider most desirable was the bringing about of a conversation in Latin between Mr. Polymathers and Father Rooney, the Parish Priest.

For if that took place they could easily imagine his Reverence riding home to report in the Town what a wonderful great scholar entirely they had stopping above at Lisconnel. Moreover, the conversation itself would be a rael fine thing to have the hearing of. Terence Kilfoyle, for instance, said that it would be as good as a Play, which, as he had never seen one, was to entertain unbounded expectations. And at last, after they had wished the wish for some weeks, a prospect of its fulfilment came into sight together with Father Rooney's cream-coloured pony jogging along through the light of a fiery-zoned July sunset, in which Mr. Polymathers was basking by the O'Beirnes' door. In those days his Reverence was a youngish man, ruddy, and of a cheerful countenance, a substantial load for his st.u.r.dy nag, and altogether, in his glossy black cloth, a figure very different from their gaunt, sad-visaged, s.h.a.ggily-garbed old guest. He was at the time of Father Rooney's approach seated on a two-legged, three-legged stool, propped precariously against the ray-rosed cabin wall, and was teaching Dan and Nicholas the twelfth proposition of the second book of Euclid. Dan had not yet grasped it, but it all lay as clear as a sunbeam athwart Nicholas's brain, and he was fidgeting like an impatient horse at the slowness of his fellow.

Several of the neighbours chanced to be about, for the forge saw a good deal of company in those long empty days before the potato-digging could begin. They all drew together into a small crowd, and closed in step by step to watch the first meeting between these two notable persons, much admiring the deftness with which old O'Beirne secured it by p.r.o.nouncing one of the pony's shoes in need of tightening, and the felicitous opening he made by a.s.suring his Reverence that "divil a bit need he be mindin' the delay, because Mr. Polymathers there had enough _furrin languages_ to keep thim all divarted, if the baste owned as many feet as a forty-legs, wid the shoes droppin' off ivery pair of thim. That was to say, in coorse, supposin' he got the chance of convarsin' a bit wid somebody aquil to answerin' him back iligant, the way there wasn't e'er a one of thim could make an offer at doin' no more than thim little weevils of chirpin' chuckens."

Yet the interview turned out disappointingly after all. If such a thing had not been, of course, exceedingly improbable, one might have fancied that each scholar stood in awe of the other's reputation, they steered so clear of all recondite subjects; keeping to the merest commonplaces about rain and potatoes and turf--which anybody else could have discussed quite as knowledgably. In vain, whenever there was a promising pause would the bystanders nudge one another, whispering, hopefully, "Whist, boys--they'll be sayin' somethin' now." Only the plainest English followed, and at last, when Father Rooney rode on, his parting joke, which referred to the difficulty his pony would now find in the way of becoming a barefooted pilgrim, left for a wonder solemnly irresponsive faces behind it.

Michael Ryan said, with a touch of resentment, "Ah, well, one couldn't maybe expec' it of thim to be throublin' thimselves talkin' fine for the pack of us, as ignorant as dirt, in the middle of th'ould bog."

And his wife said, "'Deed, now, I wouldn't won'er meself if the raison was his Riverence 'ud think bad of usin' his Latin words for anythin'

else on'y prayers and such. It might be somethin' the same as if he went and took his grand vistments to go dig pitaties in; and that 'ud be a great sin, G.o.d knows."

But old Felix, who was, as we have seen, a rather touchy person, construed this suggestion into an implied censure on his own wishes in the matter, and he said, huffily--

"Sorra the talk of sin I see in it at all, ma'am. 'Tis a dale liker they just couldn't get out wid it convanient offhand. The same way that I'd aisy enough bate out a shoe on me anvil there, when it's bothered I'd be if you axed me to make a one promiscuous here of a suddint on the roadside."

Mr. Polymathers himself meanwhile was perhaps dimly conscious that he had disappointed hopes, and failed to rise duly to the occasion; and this may have been why he slipped indoors, and fetched out a small book he had never produced before, bound in a dingy greenish blue, with a white paper label.

"D'you know what that is, sir?" he questioned, rhetorically, handing it to Felix O'Beirne. "It's the Calendar, let me tell you, of the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, _juxta_ Dublin. There's a print of the Front of the Buildings attached to the fly-leaf. I'm after pickin'

it up this spring at Moynalone. 'Twas new the year before last, and comprises a dale of information relative to terms, examinations, fees, and so forth."

"Begor, then, it looks to be a wide house," said Felix, confining himself to the picture as a comprehensible point. "It's apt to be an oncommon fine place, sir, I should suppose."

"You may say that, me man," said Mr. Polymathers, emphatically. "Not its match in the kingdom of Ireland. The home of literature and the haunt of science. And it's there I'll be, plase G.o.d, next October."