The Weans at Rowallan Part 12

Teressa was the next person to arrive, and to Lull's relief she wore her own well-known green plaid shawl. On seeing this Lull took heart again. Mrs Kelly and Anne M'Farlane were both such good-natured bodies, perhaps they would be the only ones to wear the Dorcas Society's gifts. But Teressa was charged with news. She was hardly inside the door before she began. "Man, Lull, woman, but there's the quare fun in the village the day. Ye'd split yer two sides at the people. I niver laughed as many. Thon's the curiosities a' the ould-fas.h.i.+onedest, to be sure. Silks an' satins trailin' round the dours like tip-top quality rared in the parlour." She took a seat by the fire. "G.o.d be thanked, the childer niver come near me; mebby they'd 'a' made a kiltie a' me, like poor Mary M'Cann, the critter."

Before Lull had time to reply the door was once more opened, and old Mrs Glover came in, looking very apologetic in the full-skirted, buff-coloured satin gown that Patsy had made wearable.

"Good mornin' to ye, Lull," she curtsied. "Is that yerself, Mrs O'Rorke?" She was evidently on the verge of tears. Teressa looked pityingly at her.

"Och, but the quality does be makin' fun a' the poor," she said. Mrs Glover's tears brimmed over. "The boyseys has laughed their fill at me, an' me their ould granny," she quavered. "I'd do anythin' to oblige, but I hadn't the nerve to come out in thon fur hat: Geordie said I looked for all the world like an' ould rabbit in it."

"A dacint woman like yerself. I'm sayin', I wonder the childer would do the like," said Teressa sympathetically. Lull felt her temper rising, but she was powerless to reply. Teressa invited Mrs Glover to sit down.

"They're stirrin' weans, an' I'm not aquil for them," Mrs Glover murmured.

Teressa nodded from the other side of the fire. "Families does be terrible like other," she said.

"'Deed ay; that's no lie," said Mrs Glover plaintively. "I mind their ould grandfather afore them; many's the time the people be to curse the Pope for him afore he'd let them have the wee drap a' soup."

Lull rose in wrath. "Is it the weans ye're namin' wi that ould ruffan?" she said fiercely--"an' them st.i.tching an' rippin' for a pack a' crabbit ould women that the saints in glory couldn't plaze."

Teressa and Mrs Glover both got up hastily, full of apologies, but Lull would not be appeased. She gave them their soup, and sent them off.

"People does be thinkin' quare things," she murmured as she watched them go. "How an' iver am I going to tell the childer thon?"

She had no need, however, to tell the children. The news came from an unexpected quarter. Dinner was waiting on the schoolroom table, and the children, standing by the fire, were still discussing their Dorcas Society, when there came a tap at the door, and Miss Rannigan, the rector's niece, walked in.

Miss Rannigan was a little woman, prim and bird-like in her movements.

She came to stay at the Rectory about twice a year, and the children avoided the place while she was there. She had never been to Rowallan before, and they thought she must have come to tell them that Mr Rannigan was dead. Her first words dispelled this fear.

"Fie! oh, fie!" She pointed a black-kid finger at Jane. Jane quickly reviewed her life to see which sin had been discovered. "The whole village is intoxicated, you cruel child." They all stared at her.

"They tell me it was you made such shocking guys of those poor, benighted old women who are now dancing in the street like drunken playactors." A scarlet flame leapt from face to face; the children turned to each other with burning cheeks. "If my uncle had been able he would have come here himself," Miss Rannigan went on.

"We--we--we----" Jane stammered; she could not tell Miss Rannigan about the Dorcas Society.

"Do not try to make excuses," said that lady.

"We make no excuses," said Patsy wrathfully. "We done it a' purpose, just for the pure divilment a' the thing."

"Wean, dear!" Lull remonstrated.

"Their meanin' was good, miss," she began. Andy's head appeared round the door.

"If ye plaze, Miss Jane, wee Cush is here, an' she says for the love of G.o.d will ye come an' take them fancy boots off her ould granny that ye put on last night, for ne'er a buddy else can. The ould woman niver got a wink a' sleep, an' the two feet's burnin' aff her."

"I should like to teach you what a mother is," said Miss Rannigan grimly.

"Do ye think she was tellin' the truth?" said Mick when she had gone.

Jane was putting on her hat. "I'm goin' to see," she said. She departed for the village, and the others went with her, in spite of Lull's entreaties to them to stay and eat their dinner first. Lull put the dinner in the oven, and then sat down and cried. They came back miserably dejected. Miss Rannigan's tale was only too true. "There's hardly wan sober," Jane explained. "Ould Mrs Cush is, 'cause the boots hurted her that much she couldn't put fut to the flure. I had to cut them off her."

"Where did they get the drink?" Lull asked.

"At the Red Lion. John M'Fall had them all in, an' made them drunk for nuthin', 'cause they looked that awful funny in our clothes." Jane put her head down on the table, and cried bitterly. Mick tried to comfort her, while Fly and Honeybird wept on Lull's lap.

"Sure, ye did it all for the best, dear," Lull said. "It's meselfs the bad ould fool not to see how it would be from the first."

Suddenly Patsy began to laugh. "I can't help it if ye are cross wi'

me, Jane, but I wisht ye'd seen ould Mrs Glover in thon furry hat."

Jane raised a wrathful face. "It's awful wicked of ye, Patsy, when mebby they'll all be took up and put in gaol through us."

"They can't be that," said Patsy, "for Sergeant M'Gee's as drunk as anybody."

Jane's face cleared. "Are ye sure?" she demanded.

"Sure! didn't ye see him walasin' round in thon tull bonnet? I heard him sayin' they'd burn tar bar'ls the night." This relieved their anxiety, but it could not do away with the disgrace. The children avoided the village for weeks, and never again mentioned the Dorcas Society.

CHAPTER X

THE CRUEL HARM

Mick had made friends with Pat M'Garvey in the spring, when Jane and the others had measles, and he had been sent to the Rectory to be out of the way. The weather had been fine, and he had gone exploring nearly every day. On one of these expeditions he had come across a tall, red-haired boy setting potatoes in a patch of ground behind a cottage on tfie side of the mountain. The coast road ran below, and Mick must have pa.s.sed the cottage dozens of times, but he had never seen it before. He discovered it now only because he had been up the mountain and had seen a thread of smoke below. Even then it had been hard to find the cottage, hid as it was by boulders and whins. At first Pat had not been friendly. When he straightened his long back up from the potatoes he was bending over he had looked angrily at Mick.

But Mick had insisted on being friends, he was so lonely, and after a bit Pat had invited him into the garden, and allowed him to help to plant the potatoes. The next day Mick went again, and then the next.

He soon discovered that Pat was not like the boys in the village: he knew things that Mick had never heard of, and told him stories of the Red Branch Knights and the time when Ireland was happy. Once when Mick tried to show off the little he knew about the Rebellion Pat took the story out of his mouth, and got so excited that his grey-green eyes looked as though they were on fire. He was twenty years old, and lived alone with his old grandmother.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Michael Darragh! Is that who ye are? Mother a' G.o.d, an' yer father's gun in his han'"]

The first time Mick went into the cottage a strange thing happened.

Old Mrs M'Garvey was sitting by the chimney corner, her hands stretched out over the fire. She looked like a witch, Mick thought. Over the chimneypiece there was a gun that took Mick's fancy. It was nearly six feet long. Pat saw him looking at it, and took it down. He said it had been washed ash.o.r.e the time of the Spanish Armada, and had been found in the sand. Mick took it into his hands to feel the weight.

Suddenly the old woman looked up, and asked Pat what was the young gentleman's name. Mick answered for himself. She rose from her stool with a screech: "Michael Darragh! Is that who ye are? Mother a' G.o.d!

an' yer father's gun in his han'." Mick turned in bewilderment to Pat, but he was leaning against the wall, shaking all over. "In the name of G.o.d," he was saying. Then he took the gun away, and hurried Mick out of the cottage. "I niver knew that was who ye were," he said; "I made sure you were wan a' the young Bogues." He told Mick not to think about it again--the old woman was doting, and did not know what she was saying--but he made him promise never to tell anyone what had happened, and never let anyone know they were friends--they might both get into trouble if it were known, he said. Soon after this Mick went back to Rowallan, and then he was not able to see Pat so often. If the friends.h.i.+p had not been a secret he could have gone, but it was hard to get away from the others without explaining where he was going. Once or twice through the summer he slipped away, and found Pat about the cottage. On one of these days Pat told him he was going away to America soon, to his father. Mick had imagined that Mr M'Garvey was dead. He thought Pat looked very miserable. "Don't ye want to go?" he asked.

"It's not so much the goin' I mind as a terrible piece a' work I have to do afore I go," he said. Then after a pause he added: "But I'll not be goin' yet a bit; I'll wait till I bury my ould granny."

Mick did not go back till one day in November. He could not see Pat anywhere outside, so he knocked at the cottage door. It was opened by Pat himself. "She's dead," he said. He came out, and they sat on the wall. "Then ye'll be off to America," Mick said sadly--he had never seen Pat look so thin and ill; "I'll be quare an' sorry to see ye go."

Pat did not answer, he was looking straight out at the line of grey sea. Mick could hear the waves beating on the rocks below. At last Pat said: "I have that bit of a job to do before I go." Mick thought he meant he must bury his granny. He tried to cheer him up. "Yer father'll be brave an' glad to see ye," he said.

"It's six years the morra since I seen him," said Pat, still looking out to sea.

"Six years the morra; why, that's just as long as my father's been dead," said Mick. Pat did not answer.

"Will ye iver come back any more?" Mick asked.

"Niver," said Pat. "I'll bury my granny the morra, an' then--then I start."

"Well, I'll niver forget ye," said Mick. Now that it had come to saying good-bye for ever Mick felt he could not let Pat go; it was like parting from Jane or Patsy; he was almost crying.

"Ye'll have no call to forget me or mine," said Pat bitterly.