WIDOW FARRELL’S WONDERFUL AGE
I
Clochranbeg, the tiny Donegal town, half of which, on the brink of its tall sea-cliff, stands overlooking its other half, set low on the shore, is a place whither we may return after a lapse of years to find not only everything but everybody very much as we left them. And though this is partly because many of the children, whose growth would have been perplexing, will unfortunately have emigrated, it is partly, too, because many of their elders wear so well and change so slowly.
Not that Clochranbeg is a Tir-na-n-og such as one lights on now and then in the soft south, where brows remain strangely unwrinkled by passing Time’s inscriptions. Here in the bleak north, face to face with the roughest weather, we seldom find, as did of yore the Northumbrian king, “beauty that blooms when youth is gone,” and the inhabitants have to be satisfied with vigour and energy continuing unusually long after visages are tanned and furrowed. What they do pride themselves on considerably is the hale old age to which they often attain, and which those of the upper town account for by the airiness of their situation, subject to every wind that blows, whether across the boundless Atlantic or the wide Meenaclochran bog-lands; whereas their neighbours in the lower town ascribe it in their case to the splendid shelter, from all save western storms, enjoyed by them at the foot of the high cliff.
“Sure now, it’s ourselves gets our plenty of the fresh air, one way or the other,” boasts Jim Doyle. “If we had everythin’ else accordin’, we’d be the very rich people entirely;” and he sticks to his opinion even while flakes of his thatch are flying all abroad upon the blast. But Hughey M‘Evoy wouldn’t take a shilling a day to live cocked up there like a windmill bewitched, and he does not abate his terms, though a wild night may bestrew his roof with sea-wrack and fling salt spray hissing upon his hearth-stone. Both, however, agree that there are few places where people are apt to be getting their health as well as at Clochranbeg.
So it is easy to understand what jealous feelings would be roused by an incident which occurred one summer not very long since at Stradrowan, a village several miles inland, away beyond the big bog. The hundredth birthday of one Mrs Julia O’Meara had there been celebrated “with every sort of grandeur you could give a name to,” including an entertainment at the schoolhouse, and a presentation of sundry garments and groceries, organised by Mr Felix Reilly of the parish shop. Highly-coloured accounts of the proceedings had been spread around at fairs and markets, but, more than that, the affair had actually got into the newspaper, being made the subject of a paragraph in the Northern Trumpeter, wherein to details of the ceremony were appended some remarks on the salubriousness of Stradrowan as evidenced by its possession of so hale and hearty a resident centenarian.
In these lurked a sting which moved the Clochranbegians to indignant murmurs about people who thought themselves very fine with their names on the paper; people who were mighty fond of flourishing themselves to the front, and other reprehensible members of society. Mrs Pat Doherty, being “something to” the Stradrowan Reillys, had gone so far as to purchase at Loughmore, twelve miles distant, that copy of the Trumpeter; and when a fortnight old it was still much in request among her acquaintances. Two of them, in fact, were busy with it one warm afternoon when the Widow Farrell looked in on her way to Geary’s.
The Widow Farrell had been living quite alone on a potato-patch in a recess of the sea-cliff ever since most people could remember, though her youth had passed before she came to Clochranbeg. She was one of the Carmodys, whose habitation had been on the townland of Moyloughlin, towards Kilanure, but of whom none now remained on that countryside. At Clochranbeg she had no one belonging to her more particularly than by the vague and intricate cousinships, the tracing and recognising of which may be regarded as a matter of kindness rather than of kindred. Undoubtedly there was nothing in the widow’s circumstances that could tempt anyone to claim affinity with her from interested motives; for her position was as precarious as humble, resting upon the success of her efforts to raise potatoes enough for herself and her few hens, while the utmost she hoped from the future was that “whenever anythin’ bad took her it might be for good and all,” by which phrase she meant to express a wish that no lingering illness should bring her ignominiously to the Union Infirmary. At this time, however, she was still a brisk and active little old woman, who could patter about the deep-sanded boreens with her piled-up creel of turf sods as nimbly as a goat, when “Pather Phelan would be buildin’ her her stack.”
It was a much lighter load she had now as she came blinking out of the July sunshine into Mrs Doherty’s house, perched on the rim of the cliff at the northern end of the straggling street, which forms the higher Town. “Sit ye down, ma’am; is it kilt you are wid the heat?” Mrs Doherty said, hospitably starting up from her end of the fireside form so abruptly that Nannie Phelan was all but tossed off the other.
“Sorra bit, ma’am, am I,” said Mrs Farrell, sitting down quickly, nevertheless, to restore the balance. “It’s a grand, blazin’ hot day, glory be to goodness. Just steppin’ along to Geary’s I am wid me eggs for some oatenmale.”
“Poor Mr Geary, he’s none too well plased wid the way they’re settin’ themselves up over at Stradrowan,” said Nannie Phelan. “Says I to him the other day: ‘Well, Mr Geary,’ says I, ‘Mr Faylix Reilly over yonder’s the great man altogether these times, himself and his prisentations,’ says I. And says he to me: ‘Ah sure, it’s all in the way of business, that’s what it is,’ says he, as much as to make out the same might happen himself any time at all. So he passed it off wid the form of a laugh, but if he wasn’t more than a little put out I haven’t an eye in me head. He never happint to look at the Trumpeter he said. Och, Mrs Hickey, it’s yourself has the strong sight, to be readin’ that quare small little print.”
“Plain enough it is,” Mrs Hickey replied from her stool at Nannie’s elbow; “the only thing that bothers one is how at all they conthrived to reckon up the ould crathur’s age that exact; for ’twould be much if anybody had a notion of it after such a len’th of time, supposin’ ’twas ever in their knowledge. Bedad now, ma’am, if you axed me how ould I was this minyit, that haven’t the sign of a grey hair on me head, you’d ax me more than I could be tellin’ you. Why, one does be losin’ count of the childer’s ages, once they’re over three or four year. It’s somethin’ aisier wid the bastes, because one does be keepin’ them mostly a shorter while. But if you owned a pig or a heifer for fifty or sixty year, you’d be very apt to disremimber what sort of an age was on it before you got shut of it.”
“You would so,” said Mrs Doherty. “But bastes is a different thing. You can’t be countin’ up their ages conformably to what cows and pigs might have a recollection of, as if they were Christians. And that’s the way they manage wid them oncommon ould-aged people.”
“Ay do they, thrue for you,” said Mrs Hickey, “The vener’ble re-ciperant of the prisentation retains a vy-vid remimberance of the fateful year ’98, the landin’ of the Frinch, the battle of Watherloo, and other historiogical evints, which she grapically relates to her interested audithors,” she spelled slowly out of the smudgy column. “But sure there’s plenty here in Clochranbeg could remimber that much, and maybe more, if they gave their minds to it.”
“What ’ud ail them to not?” said Nannie Phelan. “I’ve a good few things in me own recollection, and as for Mrs Farrell, that has a heavier age on her than any of us here, ma’am, she had a right to remimber all manner. But there’s no talk of presintin’ her wid shawls and gowns and chests of tay.”
“Ah, not at all, not at all, why would they?” the widow said disclaimingly. “I’m a dale short of a hunderd yet anyway.”
“Might you happen to mind any talk of the war and the Frinch landin’, ma’am?” Mrs Hickey inquired of her.
“Sure I’m hearin’ talk of it all the days of me life, for that matter,” Mrs Farrell said. “But the war I’ve the most recollection of was an American one, for it lasted a cruel long while, and the prices there did be on everythin’ would frighten you. A shillin’ for a little weeny taste of tay you could put in a half egg-shell. Sorra a sup of it any poor person seen those times, and everybody said ’twas the American war made it so dear.”
“A drop of tay’s a woeful loss,” Mrs Doherty said. “There’s nothin’ to aquil it. But how long back might that be, Mrs Farrell?”
“Och, woman dear, I couldn’t be tellin’ you! It was a good while bedad. Only I remimber as if it was yisterday, Mr Geary’s grandfather sayin’ to me ’twas the war in America riz up the price of the tay.”
“Mr Martin here can tell us very belike,” Mrs Hickey said, wheeling her stool half round so as to reach a small elderly man, who was sitting just behind it at the window, and reading the other sheet of the Trumpeter. He was the National School teacher of Clochranbeg. “Mr Martin,” Mrs Hickey shouted in his deaf ear, twitching him by the sleeve out of his leading article.
“Public opinion—troth, if that’s what all they’re trustin’ to,” Mr Martin said, as if she had jerked off what lay uppermost in his mind at the moment.
“Och, no matter for that,” she said. “I was axin’ you could you tell us what American war there might be a great while ago had somethin’ to say to the price of tay.”
“Oh, ay to be sure,” said Mr Martin, “that ’ud be at the beginnin’ end of the War of Indepindence—the time a mob of people dressed themselves up like wild Injins and stepped on board of all the ships that was lyin’ in Boston Harbour loaded wid tay, and every bit of it they slung into the water—hundreds of tons’ weight.”
“Wisha, wisha,” deplored Mrs Doherty. “Themselves was the lads to go do such a mischievous thing, and to be sure that ’ud make it terrible scarce and dear. It’s grew in them parts, I should suppose. But how long would it be since then, Mr Martin?”
“’Twould be before any of us was born or thought of,” said Mr Martin. “I couldn’t give you the very date out of me head extemporaneous, but ’twas a dozen year or so after George the Third come by the crown of England. If you called it seventeen hundred and seventy you wouldn’t be far astray.” And he hurried back to his leader.
“Siventeen hundred and siventy,” said Mrs Doherty. “Isn’t that ould ages ago?”
Nannie Phelan was adding up on her fingers under her breath. “Tin and tin is twinty, and tin is thirty,” and at the end of her calculations she said: “I declare to goodness it’s better than a hunderd year, forby whatever age she was herself at the time. Is it just a slip of a girsheach you were then, ma’am?”
“’Deed no, Nannie; a widow woman I was then, the very same way I am now,” Mrs Farrell said, glancing anxiously from face to face. Her three neighbours were surveying her with a sort of awe-stricken curiosity, which was not reassuring.
“Well to be sure,” said Mrs Hickey, “she looked to be an ould woman when I come here first, and that’s over twinty year back; but I’d no notion she was that wonderful age altogether.”
“Tellin’ you the truth, I was noticin’ her failed a dale this good little bit,” said Mrs Doherty. “But that’s only to be expected, the dear knows, and she goin’ on for two hunderd.”
“What way are you feelin’ yourself at all, ma’am dear?” said Nannie.
“I do be gettin’ me health very raisonable,” Mrs Farrell said, “glory be to goodness.” But her tone was dejected enough to harmonise with the condolence expressed in Nannie’s inquiry.
“I wonder now might she happen to have e’er a line wrote down anywheres?” said Mrs Hickey. “That’s sometimes a handy way of makin’ out things.”
“There’s a little ould prayer-book I have at home this long while,” said the widow, “and I remimber me poor father sayin’ me own name was on a leaf of it. I scarce think there’s aught else. I niver got any learnin’ to spake of, for I come away from school to help in the house after me sisther—” Mrs Farrell stopped herself suddenly, for she was just stumbling on a bit of family history which she always avoided with care.
“She’s fit to drop wid draggin’ herself up the steep hill, that’s what ails her,” pronounced Mrs Doherty. “I’ll be wettin’ her a cup of tay. It’s much if the crathur overs next winter,” she added in a loud aside to Nannie Phelan.
“I met Pather Doyle and I comin’ along here, and he said I was lookin’ grand,” Mrs Farrell put in wistfully.
“Ah, sure, Pather’s a great talker. If he says a word of truth, of an odd time, it’s mostly because he consaits in his own mind it’s a lie he’s tellin’ you,” said Mrs Doherty.
“But don’t be frettin’, ma’am,” said Nannie Phelan, “you might do finely yet a while. Buryin’ the half of us you might be. And I’ll slip over meself now wid your basket to Geary’s, and fetch you what you was wantin’, the way you needn’t be killin’ yourself trampin’ about. So just sit aisy where you are.”
Nannie would not be gainsaid, but bustled off, eager to communicate their remarkable chronological discovery, and to carry out a benevolent plan of her own. Its result appeared when she returned after half an hour’s gossip and presented to the widow a small, peaked blue paper parcel.
“’Tis just a grain, ma’am, I got you meself; and your oatenmale’s all right in the basket, wid an egg to your credit. Ah, sure, not at all, don’t say a word. ’Deed now, it’s a poor case if the ouldest ould woman in the country couldn’t make herself a cup of tay. When I tould Mr Geary he said ’twas a couple of ould-age pinsions you had a right to be gettin’.”
“Offerin’ to make her a prisint of them he’d be, if only he kep’ them in stock, he would so. Musha, long life to himself,” Mrs Hickey remarked with sarcasm.
The gift made Mrs Farrell very grateful, but failed to raise her spirits, which had sunk low as she sat perplexed, sipping out of Mrs Doherty’s ponderous blue-rimmed cup; and she soon got up, saying it was time she stepped home. Her hostess, though declaring it would be a sin to ask her to stay late, and perhaps catch her death of cold, protested against letting her go by herself and carry down the basket, which she had carried up without a thought, and Nannie Phelan, putting her head out of the door, espied a long-legged, bare-footed little niece trotting by, and bade her come to take home Mrs Farrell’s basket. So the widow set off, escorted by Katty M‘Cann.
It seemed to Mrs Farrell that the lane was unwontedly steep, and that never before had she waded so wearily through the deep sand. Twice she had to bid Katty not “be tatterin’ along at such a rate, fit to jig the breath out of a body.” As they went between the silvery banks, which took lilac and amber hues in the sunset shine and shadow, she was groping among her memories for some way of creeping out from under the huge burden of years so suddenly heaped upon her by the computations of her friends.
“I was growin’ an ould woman, I well knew,” she reflected, “but what they say’s beyond the beyonds entirely. I never heard tell of any of the Carmodys livin’ to one hundred, let alone a couple, nor yet anybody belongin’ to me poor mother aither. People ’ill be wonderin’ what’s keepin’ me in it so long. Onnathural it is.”
Yet she could find no escape from their conclusions. The years that had passed since her early widowhood lay behind her all in a dim mist of monotony, confusingly alike, without any notable events for time-marks. Whatever things she did remember distinctly and consecutively belonged, she knew, to the far-off days before the loss of her elder sister and her own short married life. In the featureless blur of shifting summers and winters it was impossible to fix dates for isolated reminiscences such as the dear tea and the American war; ten years, or twenty, or forty might have elapsed between them. That old prayer-book, the legacy of her father’s brother, alone afforded hopes of a clue, and so impatient was she to follow it up that when she reached her door she bade Katty wait a minute till she fetched out something she wanted read. Katty, tilting the damp-embrowned page to catch the slanted sunbeams, spelt off the fly-leaf, “Norah Carmody.”
“Sure enough, you’ve got it right, that’s me name,” said Mrs Farrell. “But would you try is there any figures on it, honey?”
“Sivinteen hundred and sixty-two there is,” said Katty, peering closer at the faded ink. “That’s a quare long while ago.”
“It is so, God knows,” Mrs Farrell said, relinquishing her last hope. “And it stands to raison nobody’d take and write down me name before I was born. Thank you kindly, Katty.”
As she turned indoors she felt the new, unaccustomed weight of that great old age pressing sadly on both body and mind, and she dropped her basket on the floor and sat down forlorn by the smouldering wraith of a fire. She had not the heart to think even of Nannie Phelan’s tea, which in any ordinary circumstances would have given the evening a cheerful flavour; it seemed such a lonesome fate to be the ouldest ould woman in Ireland.
II
It was early in July when her neighbours discovered the Widow Farrell’s wonderful age, and three months later found her beginning almost to look the character of a bi-centenarian, so bent, wizened and decrepit had she grown. Not that anything definite ailed her: the change was wrought partly by her own melancholy imaginations, and partly by other people’s alarming speeches. She told herself that she needn’t expect to have the use of her limbs any while longer, and everybody she met told her how surprising it was to see her able to be going about at all; and the consequence was that she daily felt herself becoming more feeble and incapable. On Sunday mornings she sometimes cheered up a bit, because she could not help feeling flattered by all the attention she received as she climbed the steep boreen to Mass, among a troop of sympathetic acquaintances, who contended with one another for the privilege of offering so distinguished a personage an arm. But even then she heard and overheard many observations which, however kindly meant, were by no means encouraging, and through the long week, when she lacked any such excitement, she sat brooding and moping, until her strength waned with her spirits. Out of doors she seldom stirred.
One mild autumn afternoon, however, the mellow golden light tempted her to lift her old shawl over her head and creep as far as the John Phelans, who lived close by, just across a loop of smooth firm sand at the mouth of a boreen. Down this a stream of people had been wending on their way back from Rathcroskery fair, and as several of them had turned into the Phelans’ kitchen, the widow arrived amid quite a large party of neighbours. Nannie Phelan, maiden sister to the man of the house, welcomed her kindly, and sat down with her in a quiet corner, noticing that the old woman looked what she would have described as “skeery and desolit like.”
“Sure, I dunno is there one thing amiss wid me more than the other,” Mrs Farrell explained lugubriously, “only I was dramin’ all last night a dale about the little round musheroons we did be gettin’ in the fields at home, and they made me think of me sisther Rose, that had an oncommon fancy for them ever. I’d bring her any ones I could find, and she’d be puttin’ them in among the hot ashes for to broil. I mind the smell of them this minyit, and she pokin’ them out wid a bit of stick, and sittin’ cocked up on the end of th’ ould settle a-nibblin’ of them, the crathur, like a wild rabbit wid a weeny white turnip stole for itself. I’m thinkin’ it’s maybe a sort of sign.”
“She’s away this great while, I should suppose? The Lord be good to her,” Nannie said with interest. It was a new departure for Mrs Farrell to mention this long-vanished elder sister, of whose very existence many of her friends had never heard.
“Ay is she that,” she replied to Nannie, “for what else would she be after all this while? And Christy Dann as well—the back of me hand to him; nobody thought anythin’ of them Danns. But sorra tale or tidings ever I got of what become of her since then. I dunno if any of them did at home, and I question would they let on to me even so, they were that mad about it all. Many’s the time I would be frettin’ and wonderin’, for I always had a great wish for poor Rose ever since I was no size to spake of. As pretty as anythin’ she was, and rael good-nathured. ’Twas twinty-siven pities—But sure it was to be, and belike it’s all one now which of them she took.”
“What happint her, ma’am?” Nannie inquired eagerly; but before she could be answered the open door all at once admitted sounds of such shouting and clattering and trampling that curiosity about the immediate present expelled curiosity about the remoter past, and she rushed out like the rest to see what was going on.
Everybody considered that if Joe Mulcahy had not taken more than was good for him he would never have trotted his horse and car down the steep and deep-rutted boreen; and nobody thought it otherwise than very natural that the result of his rashness was an upset at the foot of the hill. The horse tripped, and Joe and his two fares were pitched off. But they all fell softly, and only the harness was damaged. While it was a-mending with fishing-line the stranger passengers were invited to take a seat at the Phelans’ fire, the circle round which was thus enlarged by the addition of a middle-aged, black-bearded gentleman in light grey, and a little girl in navy blue with a curly-feathered hat.
Elderly Terence Lalor from Moyloughlin, who was visiting his married sister, Mrs Phelan, under-took, as the person of most consequence present, to entertain the new-comer, whose “furrinness” appeared plainly in his accent, even before he remarked, in the course of conversation, that he had had little experience of side-cars, as they were pretty considerable scarce on the streets of New York City, which he had but lately left.
“They’re the quare ould awkward yokes, bedad,” Terence asserted with polite self-depreciation. “’Tis only in a poor, backward counthry people would be bothered usin’ them at all. We ourselves has to make a shift wid them to be gettin’ to fairs and funerals and such. Deed now I mind the big loads there did be on our ould rattlethrap at home of a Sunday mornin’, drivin’ over to Mass at Cranmore; and, by the same token, I mind me poor mother had a sayin’ that a jauntin’-car was a terrible secret-thrap. For, says she, the people sittin’ back to back on the two sates might be talkin’ away about diff’rint things, widout a notion that e’er a word ’ud get across the well from one side to the other. But then maybe all of a suddint the horse ’ud come to a stand, or throt over a soft place, where there wasn’t a sound of his feet or the wheels, and wid that every word they were sayin’ ’ud rise up clear on the air, before they could stop themselves spakin’ loud, like as if they intinded it for the whole of Ireland. Begob, I knew that to happen meself before now. But most whiles, when you’re peltin’ along the hard road, you couldn’t tell what anybody might be sayin’ or doin’ on the far side, more especially if there was e’er a big box, or a couple of sacks, or anythin’ sizeable, sittin’ stuck up between yous on the well. There’s a story I’m hearin’ all the days of me life shows the truth of that same, sir; and morebetoken you was passin’ the very place it happint to-day, drivin’ over here from Moyloughlin, as you was a-sayin’.”
“So we did, sir,” said the stranger, “and I seldom ran across a lonelier-looking prospect than you have lying around most of the way.”
“Well, sir,” said Terence, “it was before me own recollection altogether, but I wisht I had a pound-note for every time I heard tell of it. ’Twas when the Carmodys of Moyloughlin, very respectable, dacint people, that are all gone now, were after makin’ up a match for the eldest daughter wid a strong farmer of the name of Lawrence M‘Nelis, that owned a good bit of land, and was a warm man. But this Rose Carmody couldn’t abide the thoughts of him at all. The work of the world they had gettin’ her persuaded, and in the end nothin’ ’ud suit her but she’d be married away over at Carrick, where her grandmother lived. So to satisfy her they settled it that way, and the day before the weddin’ she and her father set off drivin’ to Carrick on their car, wid herself on the one side and a big box of new clothes beside her, and her father on the other sate, and the well between them piled up high wid a cartload of things belongin’ to Rose that they were bringin’ over. Well and good, sir, they come as far as a cross-roads you might remimber, where the Carrick road turns off the bog, and there’s a collection of quare big lumps of boulder-stones scattered just in the corner. And thereabouts ould Carmody and the driver seen another car standin’ a bit down the Kilanure road wid nobody mindin’ it; so they passed the remark that that was no way to be lavin’ it; and that was all they noticed then. But when they got to Carrick, sorra a bit of Rose was on the car, and sight nor light they ever seen of the girl agin. For what did she do, if you plase, but took and slipped herself off unbeknownst there at the cross corner, where Christy Dann was waitin’ for her, lurkin’ behind the big stones—a young rapscallion widout a brass bawbee to his name that she took a fancy to—and away wid the pair of them to the States before man or baste could purvint it. Finely distracted her people were, that’s sartin. But what become of her nobody knows from that good day to this—Any more than I know what the mischief you’re riefin’ the sleeve out of me coat for, Kate. Is it wantin’ anythin’ you are?”
“If you had aught better than a pair of ould owl’s eyes in the ass’s head of you, ’tisn’t makin’ a fool of yourself you’d be tellin’ stories agin the Carmodys and ould Widdy Farrell sittin’ fornint you listenin’ to the whole of it,” his sister remonstrated in an indignant whisper.
But his attention, and indeed everybody else’s, was diverted to the American gentleman, who had jumped up and stood facing the semi-circle of neighbours with an air of no small importance and excitement.
“I’ll tell you what’s become of her, sir—you and all your friends,” he said. “She’s alive and well this day in her son’s house on Congress Avenue, Corneliusville, the widow of a highly-respected citizen, and the grandmother of myself, Christopher P. Dann. I was named for my paternal grandfather. Yes, sir, he mayn’t have been very flush of cash at the time when he carried off Rose Carmody from the folk who were for buying, and selling, and breaking her heart among them all, but he made his pile out West, and left a good business to his children and his children’s children. Often she’s told me how she slithered off the car and crawled on her hands and knees through the furze bushes, afraid of her life that her father might look behind him before she got to the shelter of the big stones. And she’s never regretted it, she claims, not for half-an-hour. But now I’ll trouble you to present me to the Widow Farrell that good lady mentioned, for it was to look her up that I’ve driven over from Moyloughlin, where I called at the Carmody house and could get no information relating to any member of the family, except the Widow Farrell of Clochranbeg—my great-aunt Norah, I take it, born Carmody.”
“Well I declare to goodness if that doesn’t bate anythin’ ever was! And here’s Mrs Farrell herself—step along, woman alive,” Nannie Phelan said, pushing forward the widow.
“Musha then, you done well, sir, to not be delayin’ any longer, if that’s what you’re after,” said Matt Caffrey. “When a body comes to be goin’ on for a couple of hunderd year ould it stands to raison them that’s intendin’ to visit her has a right to set their best foot foremost.”
“Indeed it’s a very ould, ould crathur I am, sir,” the widow said in her tremulous high piping; “a hunderd and fifty year’s a quare great age for a lone widdy woman to be lastin’ to, wid ne’er a one left in this world. And it’s true for them that I’m apt to quit very prisently. Sure I’m scarce able to stand on me two feet these times, let alone walkin’. But what talk have you about me sister, Rose Carmody. Och, but that was the notorious young villin to entice her away from us. How-an-e’er, it’s oulder agin than meself she was, and in her clay she is this many a long year, God save us all; ay is she, for sure.”
“You’re wrong there, ma’am,” said Mr Christopher Dann, beginning to shake hands with her vigorously. “As I stated, she’s alive and well; has never had a day’s sickness since I knew her, and that’s over forty years. But as for the advanced age you claim, Aunt Norah, you’re mistaken there again; you put it at too large a figure by a very long chalk. Why, it’s some seventy odd years since my grandfather and grandmother Dann crossed the fish-pond, and she says she left the sister Norah, that she’s talking about all the time, only a little slip of a girl of ten or eleven. So if you’re eighty-five, ma’am, this day, it’s the very most you can total up to. Grandmother Dann herself’s something just short of ninety, and a fine woman still. If you’ll excuse the remark, I think she’s better preserved than yourself—fresher and robuster looking. But there’s considerable of a family likeness all the same. Rosette, come here and tell me whether this old lady reminds you of anyone at home.”
The little girl, who seemed to be about seven years old, came and stared hard for a moment with very large dark blue eyes, which were overcast occasionally by a drift of soft black hair. “Why, certainly,” she said with confidence, “if she had a red shawl, and not such wide ruffles to her cap, she’d be a little like great-grandma Dann.”
“That’s so. What Miss Rosette Dann misses seeing correctly don’t amount to a lot,” her father said with pride. “But, talking of the shawl, don’t you feel like fetching it out of the strap on the brown handbag over there by the door?”
As Rosette ran off Mrs Farrell said: “Woman dear, I give you me word she’s the livin’ moral of me sisther; the very eyes of her, and the toss of her head to keep the hair out of them. Me brothers would be sayin’: ‘Way there, Captain,’ to her, and biddin’ her stand steady, lettin’ on ’twas our ould plough-horse she was like. Well now, to think of me behouldin’ such a thing, and gettin’ news of Rose, after all the frettin’ I had and wonderin’ what was become of her, and if it’s drownded she was crossin’ over the water, or starved dead maybe rovin’ about the world wid that young miscreant—beggin’ your pardon, sir, if he was somethin’ to you, but it’s dog’s abuse we did always be givin’ Christy Dann. And so Rose is all this while livin’ grand in the States, and no such outlandish ages on the two of us whatever. They had me torminted here, sir, addin’ up this way and that way till they found out I’m the ouldest ever was. Scarce the heart I’d have to be as much as throwin’ their bit of food to me poor hins, when I’d be thinkin’ of the show I was makin’ of meself livin’ that onnathural len’th of time. But now—it’s as surprisin’ as can be.”
Yet she considered it a degree more surprising a moment afterwards when Rosette returned with an ample shawl overflowing her short arms, and was helped by her father to wrap her great-grand-aunt in the soft, scarlet cashmere folds. They made of the little old woman an object more brilliant than the red sods’ glimmer through the dusky room, as her friends clustered round her, testing the fabric with finger and thumb, exclaiming and conjecturing about price and material. Rosette, however, planted herself in front of the widow, and looked fixedly at her for a minute or two. “Was it you really that used to bring great-grandma the cunning little musheroons?” she said at last. “I wish you’d show me where they grow, I’d like to find some myself.”
“There, that’s me drame,” said Mrs Farrell, clapping her hand impressively on Nannie Phelan’s arm. “Didn’t I tell you it was a sign of somethin’? ’Deed, jewel, I’m afeard it’s a trifle late in the saison for musheroons, but there might be an odd few yet in the high fields up above me house. I’ll skyte up wid you to thry is there, and welcome.”
“Is your house near by?” said Rosette, “for I guess we might go round there and have tea. We’ve brought it in a hamper, because father said we didn’t know what circumstances the Carmody family might be in. And I think these circumstances are real poky and smoky. Father can carry the hamper; it’s heavy.”
Miss Rosette Dann was a young person whose wishes were complied with as a rule. She might presently have been seen crossing the curved sweep of sand towards Mrs Farrell’s cottage, walking hand-in-hand with her great-grand-aunt, at a brisk rate, enlivened by skips and hops, to which the old woman adapted her paces quite nimbly and cheerfully.
Towards dusk that evening Mrs Doherty called on Mrs Hickey in a state of serious perturbation. “I’m after gettin’ a quare turn,” she said, “for I looked in just now at the Widdy Farrell’s door on me way up here, thinkin’ she might be apt to be after takin’ a wakeness. And if I did, there was the ould crathur dressed out in I dunno what sort of deminted red rags, dancin’ her steps like a three-year-ould—a jig, if you plase—in the middle of the floor, wid a couple of strange people, as well as I could see, sittin’ inside and laughin’ at her; tinker tramps belike. It’s daft entirely the poor ould body’s gone.”
“Sorra a bit daft is she,” said Mrs Hickey. “Didn’t you hear tell? Sure there’s some people belongin’ to her just after landin’ over here from the States, and they as rich as Jews; and accordin’ to what they say the sisther of her that run away from her own weddin’ this great while back’s livin’ out there yet as fit as a fiddler; and it’s all a mistake about the widdy herself bein’ any wonderful ould age to spake of. The American gentleman says ’twas her grandmother owned the prayer-book wid her name in it, and he knows the Widdy wasn’t so much as born for better than forty year after the war about the tay. She’s raison to dance jigs bedad. They brought her the iligantist shawl you ever witnessed.”
“It’s well to be her,” said Mrs Doherty. “But here am I braggin’ away this day to everybody at the fair that we had the wonderfulest ould ancient woman at all livin’ here in Clochranbeg. And now it seems she’s no oulder than plinty of other people.”
“Ah well, she won’t be so one of these days,” said Mrs Hickey, “if she lives long enough.”
And with that consideration Clochranbeg has so far had to remain content.