By beach and bog-land

I

All Abbey Dowling’s neighbours thought she was the very foolish woman to let her good-for-nothing father-in-law establish himself in her house again after his return from America, and many of them told her so frankly, but fruitlessly. This was not surprising, as everybody agreed that the Dowlings were always as headstrong as mules. Everybody agreed, too, that her poor husband’s people were none of them worth much, and that this old Patrick Mulrane, though not without some companionable qualities, was worth as little as any. Drinking and raising rows had hitherto been his constant occupation, and the whole parish of Clochranbeg knew what lives he had led his son and daughter-in-law, until, upon the death of the former, off he had gone to the States, whence nothing had been heard of him for the next dozen years and more, while the young widow was struggling to keep herself and her three sons, and her invalid sister, on their stony little bit of land. “So now, when the boys are grown big, and able to be workin’, back he flourishes wid the notion he’ll have them supportin’ him in idleness, and he after lavin’ all of yous to starve, for any thanks it was to him. Raison you’ll have to repint it, if you take him in. Fightin’ wid the lads he’ll be, and frightenin’ poor Maggie there, and drinkin’ their earnin’s on you, besides learnin’ them all manner of villiny—that’s every hand’s turn he’ll be doin’ for you, ma’am, mark my words!” Her old and respected friend, Mrs O’Hagan, tramped down a long and rough way to exhort her thus. But the words might just as well have been spoken to the sea-gulls skirling about Mrs Mulrane’s door.

If her neighbours’ remonstrances had any effect at all, it was merely to make her the more proudly careful that they should seem uncalled for; and the remoteness of her dwelling, out of the way on the shingly strand, helped her to keep up appearances. Yet she was not so successful but that some signs and many rumours of domestic troubles were soon in existence. Undoubtedly old Mulrane himself was often to be seen in various public-houses, drinking and brawling; his grandsons looked ragged and poverty-stricken, even when they were known to have sold a couple of beasts advantageously, or to have done not too badly at the mackerel fishing; and their mother’s aged and harassed aspect, her beggarly attire, and her miserable marketing, became the veriest commonplaces of local gossip. As for reports of the old man’s violence and intemperance, of screeches and roars heard in the vicinity of the Mulranes’ house, and of raging warfare and patched-up truces within it, they were rife incessantly.

Things had been going on thus, if not quite so ill as some people declared, yet certainly quite ill enough, for six or seven years, when one autumn afternoon the three young Mulranes were away on the shore gathering sea-wrack. It had been washed up by a heavy ground-swell in great rolls all along the shingle reef which spans a gap in the cliff wall, making a rough causeway, for at the end of it next to the Mulranes’ cabin sea-water rushes under a natural rock arch to fill a small, land-locked basin, never empty even at the lowest ebb. To-day a spring tide was flowing, and nearly at its height; in fact the boys had for some time been expecting every minute to see it turn; but the band of foam kept on seething further and further up, and their last bundles were lifted frothy and dripping. They were heaping the dark weed on a little low plateau, covered with rough, tussocky sward, which just there sinks down to the water’s edge, in steep continuation of the pasture land cresting the cliffs; and red Paddy had remarked to his black brothers, Art and Dan, that he thought they had nearly a boat-load in it now, when a woman came rushing straight down the grassy slope. To judge by the silvering of her rough hair, and the intricacy of her wrinkles, she was an old woman, but she moved with youthful agility and vigour as she abruptly set about shovelling up the weed, carrying and piling it, all in silent, breathless haste.

“You’ve no call to be killin’ yourself, mother,” Paddy said presently. “We’ve got our plenty gathered, or very nigh. What kep’ you till now?”

“Nothin’ at all kep’ me,” said Mrs Mulrane, “good or bad.”

“She had to come round along by the high path,” said Art. “It’s drownded she’d be if she was down under the cliffs.” Seldom does it happen that one could not get thither dry-shod, over the shingle and boulders at their base, from the cabin some quarter of a mile away. But that short-cut was clearly impossible now, as waves were tumbling at a height which did not leave footing for a goat. “Quare full tides there are in it to-day,” said Art.

“Turnin’ it is the now, anyway,” said Paddy. “And we might better be loadin’ up, or else we’ll be bothered pushin’ off th’ ould boat. It’s runnin’ out of the channel there this last five minyits.”

“Ah hould your gab talkin’,” said Mrs Mulrane angrily, panting as she shook down a dank armful. “We’ve a right to get a good bit more while we’re at it, and where’s the hurry to be goin’ back there this long while yet?” She turned away with a flounce, while her sons’ three heads nodded together in recognition of her crossness, for which they thought they could account as usual.

But at the same moment a creaking of oars was heard, and a small boat darted into sight from behind a screening rock. As soon as the two men who were rowing her saw the Mulranes, they made for the shore, shouting loudly all the way, but the lads were prevented from listening by their mother’s behaviour. For she instantly sprang to them, and caught hold of Art and Paddy, hooking one arm through Dan’s, so as to include him in the group, and dragging them all as closely together as possible, while she adjured them in a desperate whisper: “Boys—boys dear—let me tell yous first—it’s after findin’ him they are, and they’re come bawlin’ it to us—bad luck to them. For the love of God, don’t be lettin’ on I wasn’t tellin’ yous before. Ay, it’s your grandfather’s drownded on the strand up at our place. He come in a while after yous goin’ out, and was grabbin’ at poor Maggie’s bit of baker’s bread I had in it, put away for her on the dresser, and when I bid him let it be, he made at me wid the knife—troth did he—and swore he’d have me in littler bits than the bread; mad drunk he was. So out I run, thinkin’ I’d aisy get away from him, and he took out follyin’ me, and very prisently down he come wid his foot caught fast between two big stones; ne’er a hit there was on him, only he could’nt wranch it out, and he all the while cursin’ cruel.

“So says I to meself he might better be stoppin’ where he was for a bit, till he got a trifle sinsible, the way he wouldn’t be doin’ murdher on Maggie and me, and ’twould be soon enough for yous to let him up when ye come in to the supper. For there wasn’t a sign of the say next or nigh him then—I swear it. But by-and-by I noticed the unnatural height it was risin’, and I thought belike I had a right to be callin’ yous to him, for ne’er an offer could I make by meself to be liftin’ the weight of him or the stones; and I legged it the quickest I could up behind the house to look was yous on the point here yet; and ’twas then I seen the big waves rollin’ widin a couple of leps of him.

“But says I to meself, they’ll be over him wild agin the lads could git round to him, and God knows the whole of them might be swep’ away into the deep say, and they tryin’ to raich him. And it’s foolish-like I got wid the fright, for I hadn’t the heart in me to be stayin’ or goin’, and I run this way and that way up there in distraction, till I was sartin-sure I might as well hould me whist till doom’s day. So down I come to yous, and I niver said a word. But these Behans are apt to be seem’ me and him below on the strand; for, now that I remimber, they were fishin’ about all day. And if ye let on I niver tould yous, they’ll say I left him drowndin’ a purpose—”

“You did so, bedad,” said Dan, drawing his arm out of hers.

“And the best thing maybe could happen us,” said Art, pressing into his place. Paddy stood passively, as if dumfoundered.

Time failed for further opinions, as the Behans’ boat was already bumping on the shelving, grassy ledges, and Larry Behan’s voice over-bore every other.

“Och, Mrs Mulrane, it’s too late you are now entirely; drowned dead he is, poor ould Paddy. Ne’er a spark of life was left in him by the time we come, and he lyin’ in scarce twelve inches of water; but great work we had gettin’ the foot of him free of the stones, that had him gripped like a rabbit in a trap. Sure we seen him wid you on the strand a while ago, for lurkin’ up and down the bay we are since mornin’, and some roars we heard, but we’d no notion anythin’ was amiss. And when we seen you above on the cliff path, we knew ’twas here you’d be goin’ to, ’cause we noticed your sons workin’. But next time we drew in shore a bit, we heard him shoutin’ woeful, so we pulled up, and near swamped we were among the heavy rollers; and over him they were, and had the breath choked out of him, before we found him, by the one arm crooked up above his head. So we left Johnny Rooney wid him, and come along straightways to tell yous—stone dead he is. There’s no use hurryin’ now. But, och to goodness, ma’am, it’s the very-little-good-for pack them lads of yours are, that you couldn’t get them persuaded at all to thry save their poor ould grandfather, while there was a chance. Afraid of the rough water they were, belike, and waitin’ for the turn of the tide—and lavin’ him there fast by the leg—the cowardly young man-trappers.”

“For pity’s sake whist,” interrupted their mother. It was not clear to which party she appealed; but her sons stood in silence, looking down, as if a wave were actually passing over their heads.

And it was thus that they got the name by which they were to be known for many a long day in Meenaclochran.

II

Even before her favourite son Dan went off to the States on her, some of Mrs Mulrane’s neighbours had been thinking her partly quare in her head, and after that they thought so all the more, for it wasn’t natural, they said, for any reasonable body to go about the way she did, with ne’er a word out of her, looking fit to swally any folks she met, whether they spoke to her or let her alone. This new misfortune did not befall her until three or four years had passed since the tragical end of her father-in-law; and dismal years they were for all the household in her cabin on the strand. Never a happy one at the best of times, a heavier cloud seemed to have settled down upon it, darkening the days for everybody, except perhaps helpless Maggie Dowling, from whose life a recurring violent terror had vanished with the departure of old Patrick. “Not but what the poor man was dacint and good-natured enough, so long as he hadn’t the drink taken,” she said.

Like her sister, Mrs Mulrane, of course, found things quieter, but that was for her a questionable benefit, because it gave her the more leisure for thinking, and her thoughts were poisoned with bitter self-reproaches. As time crept on, these might have been mitigated, if they had sprung only from the manner of old Patrick’s death. She might have argued them down in her own mind with a theory, more or less well founded, that her share in the event was at worst merely an error of judgment, if indeed an error at all; and having thus convinced herself, she would not have deeply considered the neighbours’ view of her proceedings, however unfavourable. But as it was, the panic-stricken impulse, which had led her to cast upon her sons the responsibility for that fatal delay, had in every way worsened her plight. For in addition to the dubious guilt of her hesitation to rescue, she had burdened her conscience with the indisputably criminal act of bearing false witness against her nearest and dearest. That it was also an act of utter folly she speedily learned by the experience which so punctually arrives just too late. By allowing her sons to be accused she had more than trebled her own share of affronts and mortifications; she had opened a threefold inlet to the spears and arrows of disparaging looks and speeches, that flew around her thick and fast.

Old Patrick Mulrane had been one of those people who, though generally disapproved of, are not personally unpopular, and this made everybody feel all the more strongly about the dolefulness of his fate, and the worthlessness of those who had so disgracefully forborne any endeavours to avert it. A tall, gaunt Debby Ashe, who spoke with some authority, declared that it “put her heart across” to think of the poor old man lying there, caught by the leg in the cruel big boulder-stones, and watching the waves rolling in every minute to drown the life out of him, and those three great lumps of grandsons of his all the while standing within a goat’s tether of him, that wouldn’t so much as reach a hand to help him, not though their unfortunate mother went down on her two knees to them—there was that to be said for her. No indeed, not a one of the whole of them would, for fear the water might take them off their good-for-nothing feet. She wouldn’t have thought there were the likes of three such young poltroons in the parish, and they were no credit to it, or to whoever had the rearing of them. Many other persons shared Debby Ashe’s opinion, and expressed it in still stronger terms, which whoever had the rearing of these young poltroons often overheard, sometimes by accident, but more times by design. Often again she saw, or fancied that she saw, the shadow of such comments on the downcast countenances of her sons, which were usually gloomy enough to give her ample scope for conjectures of the kind. Amongst these was predominant a fear that the lads were “thinking bad of her,” grudging and resenting the ill-turn she had done them. Reasonable as the apprehension might seem, there were little grounds or none for it, except in the case of Dan, her favourite, and even he said never a word. In fact the whole household kept an absolute silence upon the subject.

It would be impossible to ascertain exactly how she at length became aware that Dan was thinking of the Jim M‘Evoys’ eldest daughter Rose, and that she wouldn’t have anything to say to him, and that, supposing the girl would itself, her people wouldn’t let her, by reason of the talk about him and his brothers at the time their grandfather got his death, and the bad name it gave them among the neighbours. Perhaps Maggie, the onlooker, may have dropped a hint and supplied her with the key which enabled her to spell out from a cipher of trifles how the matter stood. At any rate it came to her knowledge, and brought keenlier home to her what a dire injury she had done Dan and his brethren. For at this time there was nothing else in the Mulrane’s circumstances to make him a despicable suitor for Rose M‘Evoy. Since their grandfather had ceased to squander their earnings, they had thriven fairly well on their bit of land, where Mrs Mulrane herself worked desperately, and at sea, to which they now put out in a fishing-boat of their own. They sometimes did so in “soft” or “dirty” weather, which daunted their neighbours, whose commentary on such an occasion often ran to the effect that, “Them young Mulranes was mighty ready to be foolin’ off wid themselves in a gale of win’, when they thought they had a chance of grabbin’ a few mackerl. They were a dale more delicate if there was no talk of gettin’ anythin’ better out of the water than a misfortunate ould drowndin’ crathur. Bedad it looked very like as if they’d liefer he stopped where he was that time, and let them be shut of him. Or maybe what made them so hardy now was thinkin’ it wouldn’t be wid drowndin’ the likes of them were apt to get their deaths, no matter where they took it into their heads to streel off to. But sure it was a pity for ould Paddy that they didn’t take up wid the notion of bein’ so venturesome a bit sooner, ay was it—the young poltroons.”

Consequently Mrs Mulrane could not but clearly understand what was implied by the M‘Evoys’ rejection of her son, and in her raging against it she had to include herself. She brooded and fretted over it for several weeks, till one gusty March morning, when the sight of Dan’s haggard face at breakfast had sharpened her two most goading fears, which were that he might make away with himself, or else run off to the States, she formed a difficult resolve, and started up the cliff path to call on Rose M‘Evoy’s grandmother.

The Dowlings and the O’Hagans were friends of very long standing, while Mrs O’Hagan, a somewhat older contemporary, had known her all the days of her life, and was now rather poorer than herself, facts which made her errand less impossibly humiliating. Still, it needed a mighty effort, for she was inwardly furious at the M‘Evoys’ impudence. “Cock up the likes of them to look crooked at Dan,” and sorely perplexed to imagine how she could set about effecting her purpose without compromising the pride of the Dowlings and the Mulranes. Her own, individually, she was prepared to let fall. For a task of the kind her qualifications were but meagre, tact, patience and self-control being by no means her strong points, and even the stubborn will with which she was commonly credited seeming nothing more serviceable than a habit of adhering blindly to any position she might have hurriedly taken up in some access of fear or anger. So now in her interview with Mrs O’Hagan, instead of approaching its delicate object gradually yet steadily, as a skilful diplomatist would have done, she proceeded in a series of abrupt advances and awkward retreats, certain to draw upon her the very suspicions that she wished to shun. That she notwithstanding did never blunder or venture very near to the matter in hand will appear, however, from the part of their conversation which most directly referred to it.

“’Deed now, I often heard an ould woman I knew passin’ the remark,” Mrs Mulrane said, apropos of a reported marriage, “that her sons were well off to have ne’er a sister, the way there was no need to be savin’ up for their linen chests, and bits of fortunes, and sellin’ stock for them, or givin’ it away off the land. It’s a great burden girls do be in a family, ma’am, all the one thing wid the rates and the rint.”

“That’s a bad word you’re sayin’ agin yourself and meself, a while back, ma’am,” Mrs O’Hagan said, with a tinge of severity in her jesting tone.

“Sorra the daughter I ever had, glory be,” Mrs Mulrane said, obtusely missing the point in her preoccupation with her own moral, “and ne’er a drawback me lads have at home, unless their poor aunt, that’s not apt to last much longer, and that’s no great trouble or expinse at all. She has a couple of pounds hid away somewhere this ten or twelve year towards her buryin’, I well know, though it’s not grudgin’ her I’ve a call to be, nor the lads wouldn’t either, if she hadn’t a pinny to her name. We can afford to be keepin’ her. To be sure, you had a daughter to marry, ma’am, and she has a good few girsheachs growin’ up, and two or three of them red-headed; I do be noticin’ them on a Sunday. But Rose is a fine slip of a girl. I suppose they’ll be settlin’ her wid somebody agin next Shrove, ma’am, anyway?”

“Och, they’re in no hurry,” said Mrs O’Hagan. “Did you happen to hear tell what way the Widdy Hefferman’s sick heifer was this morning?”

“I did not. She and I aren’t very great. But as for the hurry, that’s the very thing I do be sayin’ to Dan and his brothers at home. Sorra a bit of a hurry there is on me to be seein’ a daughter-in-law comin’ in; but, all the same, ne’er a word I’d say against it, supposin’ a one of them took the notion in his head. And if by any chance it was a girl out of his own parish belongin’ to very respectable people, that he thought of makin’ up a match wid, all the better I’d be plased.”

“Me daughter wouldn’t be wishful to marry a girl of hers wid any people livin’ down along the strand, that I know,” Mrs O’Hagan said hastily and flurriedly, as if running out from beneath a dangerous roof, “she’d liefer they went to some place inland. People don’t be gettin’ their health so well, she says, livin’ on the edge of the cowld water.”

“There’s more than a few wouldn’t get their healths to suit them, unless they could be takin’ away other people’s characters, and puttin’ an ill name on a poor boy that never done them a hand’s turn of harm,” Mrs Mulrane burst out with bitter emphasis, this obvious evasion inciting her to one of her indiscreet rushes forward; but she pulled herself up with a jerk. “I was thinkin’ of somethin’ I read on the paper a while ago,” she explained, “about a couple of childer got burnt to death in a house, I disremimber where. But the crathurs might ha’ been took out safe enough, for there was them close by that would ha’ gone through fire and water to raich them wid ne’er a thought of drowndin’ or anythin’ else, only nobody seen the house was a-fire, barrin’ a silly, dotin’ ould body, no better than meself, ma’am, and she never had the wit to tell the other people till it was too late altogether. So anythin’ that happint was no fau’t of theirs, ma’am, whatever talk there might be afterwards.”

“Goodness pity us all,” said Mrs O’Hagan, “And was that the story she had? Sure now, it’s the quare woman that wouldn’t be makin’ up lies to rightify her own belongings, if she got the chance; and it’s the quare ignorant people that would be blamin’ the crathur for it. Not that you or me, Abbey, has any call to be considherin’ any such a thing. And it’s like enough your son ’ill be bringin’ home a wife before any great while. Would he be apt to think of gettin’s married up in Dublin? Nannie Dwyer was tellin’ me her sister’s son was intindin’ he would, because they have the name of ownin’ pigs, so it’s a heavy fee Father Hely’nd have to be gettin’ off them. They’d do it a dale chaper in Dublin.”

“As much as to say he’d better go look for a girl in a strange place, where they know naught about him,” Mrs Mulrane said, whirling on her brown shawl, and again her hostess protested: “Musha, not at all, not at all. What ’ud ail anybody to be takin’ up that notion? And sure it’s not runnin’ away wid yourself you are yet a while? Stop now, woman dear, till I get you a sup of thick milk.”

Nevertheless Mrs Mulrane was very soon running away with herself down the steep cliff path, against the bleak March wind; and as she went she realised more fully than she had ever done before the irrevocability of her false step. The druidical mist of untruth which she had raised could not now be dispersed by any spell in her power; confession was of no avail. She had indeed robbed her sons of a jewel, and not only so, but had herself hopelessly lost it; she could never restore it to them again.

And a few weeks later Dan Mulrane was voyaging, a forlorn and listless passenger, in a big liner, across the lonely ocean-plains between Liverpool and Boston. He had departed unbeknownst, wishing to shun a domestic scene of lamentation and remonstrance. Beyond that circle he had no need to apprehend any excessive regrets, for though naturally of a sociable disposition, he had not a single friend. The sentiment of the parish was that “It would be a good job if the other two had went along wid him”; and his mother’s grief was embittered by the reflection that “when the Daly’s two brats of boys set off to New York a convoy as big as a fair saw them as far as Loughard; but her poor Dan might travel away to the well of the World’s End, and no more talk about it than if he was an ould stray saygull.”