The Outcast
“I am the Good Shepherd” (JESUS CHRIST)
The parish priest returned to the parochial house at Drom-ullen, after a two months’ holiday at the seaside resort of Lisdoonvarna.
He returned fatter than he went, with immense red gills and crimson flakes on his undulating cheeks, with pale blue eyes scowling behind mountainous barricades of darkening flesh and a paunch that would have done credit to a Roman emperor.
He sank into the old easy chair in the library with a sumptuous groan. He was tired after the journey. He filled the chair and overflowed it. His head sank into his neck as he leaned back and the neck-flesh eddied turbulently over the collar of his black coat, toppling down behind in three neat billowing waves. He felt the elbow-rests with his fat white palms caressingly. Great chair! It had borne his weight for ten years without a creak. Great chair! Great priest!
His housekeeper stood timorously on the other side of the table, with her hands clasped in front of her black skirt, a lean, sickly woman with a kind white face, She had followed him in. But she was afraid to disturb the great man so soon after his arrival.
He sighed, grunted, groaned, and made a rumbling internal noise from his throat to his midriff. Then he said “Ha!” and shifted his weight slightly. He suddenly raised his eyebrows. His little eyes rested on the housekeeper’s twitching hands. They shot upwards to her pale face. His mouth fell open slightly.
“Well?” he grunted in a deep, pompous voice. “Trouble again? What is it?”
“Kitty Manion wants to see ye, Father?” whispered the housekeeper.
“Foo!” said the priest. He made a noise in his mouth as if he were chewing something soft. He grunted. “I heard about her,” he continued in a tone of oppressed majesty. “I heard about the slut…. Yes, indeed…. Ough!… Show her in.”
The housekeeper curtsied and disappeared. The door closed without a sound. The white handle rolled backwards with a faint squeak. There was silence in the library. The priest clasped his paunch with both hands. His paunch rose and fell as he breathed. He kept nodding his head at the ground. Two minutes passed.
The door opened again without a sound. The housekeeper pushed Kitty Manion gently into the library. Then the door closed again. The white handle squeaked. There was a tense pause. The parish priest raised his eyes. Kitty Manion stood in front of him, at the other side of the table, two paces within the door.
She had a month-old male child at her breast. His head emerged from the thick, heavy cashmere shawl that enveloped his mother. His blue eyes stared impassively, contentedly. The mother’s eyes were distended and bloodshot. Her cheeks were feverishly red. Her shawl had fallen back on to her shoulders like a cowl, as she shifted it from one hand to another in order to rearrange her child. Her great mass of black hair was disordered, bound loosely on the nape of her neck. Her neck was long, full, and white. Her tall, slim figure shivered. These shivers passed down her spine, along her black-stockinged, tapering calves and disappeared into her high-heeled little shoes. She looked very beautiful and innocent as only a young mother can look.
The priest stared at her menacingly. She stared back at him helplessly. Then she suddenly lost control of herself and sank to her knees.
“Have pity on me, Father.” she cried. “Have pity on me child.”
She began to sob…. The priest did not speak. A minute passed. Then she rose to her feet once more. The priest spoke.
“You are a housemaid at Mr. Burke’s, the solicitor.”
“I was, Father. But he dismissed me this morning. I have no place to go to. No shelter for me child. They’re afraid to take me in in the village for fear ye might… Oh! Father, I don’t mind about mesef, but me child. It…”
“Silence!” cried the priest sternly. “A loose tongue is an ill omen. How did this happen?’
She began to tremble violently. She kept silent.
“Who is the father of yer child, woman?” said the priest slowly, lowering his voice and leaning forward on his elbows.
Her lips quivered. She looked at the ground. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She did not speak.
“Ha!” he cried arrogantly. “I thought so. Obstinate slut. I have noticed you this long while. I knew where you were drifting. Ough! The menace to my parish that a serpent like you … Out with it!” he roared, striking the table. “Let me know who has aided you in your sin. Who is he? Name him. Name the father of your child.”
She blubbered, but she did not speak.
“For the sake of your immortal soul,” he thundered, “I command you to name the father of your child.”
“I can’t,” she moaned hysterically. “I can’t, Father. There was more than one man. I don’t know who…”
“Stop, wretch,” screamed the priest, seizing his head with both hands. “Silence! Silence, I command you. Oh my! Oh! Oh!”
The child began to whimper.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” muttered the girl in a quiet whisper.
The priest’s face was livid. His eyes were bloodshot. His paunch trembled. He drew in a deep breath to regain control of himself. Then he stretched his right hand to the door with the forefinger pointed.
“Go!” he thundered, in a melancholy voice. “Begone from me, accursed one. Begone with the child of your abomination. Begone.”
She turned slowly, on swaying hips, to the door, with the foot movements of one sinking in a quagmire. She threw back her head helplessly on her neck and seized the doorhandle. The handle jingled noisily. The door swung open and struck her knee. She tottered into the hall.
“Away with you,” he thundered. “Begone from me, accursed one.”
The housekeeper opened the hall door. She was thrusting something into the girl’s hands, but the girl did not see her. As soon as she saw the open air through the doorway, she darted forward with a wild cry. She sprang down the drive and out into the road.
She paused for a moment in the roadway. To the right, the road led to the village. To the left, it led to the mountains. She darted away to the left, trotting on her toes, throwing her feet out sideways and swaying from her hips.
It was an August day. The sun was falling away towards the west. A heat mist hung high up in the heavens, around the dark spurs of the mountains.
She trotted a long way. Then she broke into a walk as the road began to rise. It turned and twisted upwards steeply towards the mountains, a narrow white crust of bruised limestone curling through the soft bog-land. The mountains loomed up close on either side…. There were black shadows on the grey granite rocks and on the purple heather. Overhanging peaks made gloomy caverns that cast long spikes of blackness out from them. Here and there the mountains sucked their sides inwards in sumptuous curves, like seashell mouths. Long black fences raced majestically up the mountain sides and disappeared on far horizons over their peaks, with ferocious speed. The melancholy silence of a dead world filled the air.
The melancholy silence soothed the girl. It numbed her. She sat down to rest on the stunted grass by the roadside. She cast one glance at the valley behind her, She shuddered. Then she hugged her baby fiercely and traversed its tiny face with kisses. The baby began to cry. She fed him. Then he fell asleep. She arose and walked on.
She was among the peaks, walking along a level, winding stretch of road that led to the lake, the Lake of Black Cahir. A great dull weariness possessed her being. Her limbs trembled as she walked. Her heart began to throb with fear. Her forehead wrinkled and quick tremors made her shiver now and again. But she walked fiercely on, driven forward towards the lake in spite of her terror.
She reached the entrance to the valley where the lake was. She saw the lake suddenly, nestling cunningly behind an overhanging mossy-faced cliff, a flat white dot with dark edges. She stood still and stared at it for a long time. She was delirious. Her eyes glistened with a strange light.
Then she shivered and walked slowly downwards towards the lake bank, stopping many times to kiss her sleeping child.
When she reached the rocky bank and saw the deep dark waters, she uttered a cry and darted away. The child awoke and began to cry She sat down and fondled him. He ceased crying and beat the air feebly with his hands. She kissed him and called to him strange words in a mumbling voice
She took off her shawl, spread it on a flat, smooth rock, and placed the child in it. Then she tied the shawl into a bundle about the child. She placed the bundle carefully against another rock and knelt before it. Clasping her hands to her breast, she turned her face to the sky and prayed silently.
She prayed for two minutes, and then tears trickled down her cheeks, and she remained for a long time staring at the sky without thinking or praying. Finally she rose to her feet and walked to the lake bank quickly, without looking at her baby. When she reached the brink, she joined her hands above her head, closed her eyes, and swayed forward stiffly.
But she drew backwards again with a gasp.
Her child had crowed. She whirled about and rushed to him. She caught him up in her arms and began to kiss him joyously, laughing wildly as she did so.
Laughing madly, wildly, loudly, she rushed to the bank.
She threw back her head. She put the child’s face close against her white throat, and jumped headlong into the lake.
Selling Pigs
Mrs. Derrane was banging a sod of turf vigorously on the hearthstone. The sod was very hard, and when at last it broke one piece flew up in the air, hit the pot-hooks that hung on the chimney hanger and then descended on the half-baked cake that lay in the griddle.
“My soul from the devil,” said Mrs. Derrane angrily, picking it out of the griddle, “everything is upside down in this house. Poverty, poverty, poverty. Get out of that, you child of misfortune,” she cried, hitting the black cat that lay curled in the ashes with the piece of turf.
The cat me-owed, darted to the dresser, and looked at her viciously while he licked his paw. Then he shook his paw and fled out of the door.
“Phew!” said Mrs. Derrane’s husband, “we are in a temper this morning. Phew! You have a bad heart, my girl. By all the oaths in the Holy Book you have.” “Oh, you lazy lout of a man!” cried the woman, jumping to her feet and arranging her hair furiously. “It’s a pity ye didn’t find that out the day you married me. Troth it is. I wish to God it was on some other finger you put your threepenny-halfpenny ring!”
“Now, Mary-”
“Oh, hold yer tongue, Michael Derrane.”
Mary bustled around the kitchen doing nothing, dusting the dresser, rattling the milk can, throwing clothes about, banging the shovel that stood at the back door. Then she went to the door and stood with her arms akimbo, looking out. She was a handsome young woman, black-haired, red-cheeked and with high cheek-bones. Her dark eyes were flashing like a young colt’s. She wore a check apron over her red petticoat.
Her husband sat by the fire watching her and stroking his brown beard. Now and again he giggled, and his brown eyes sparkled with merriment. He, too, was handsome, and as he giggled his splendid muscles moved rhythmically beneath his blue sweater. Then he jumped to his feet and laughed. His wife took no notice of him, but kept looking out of the door, twitching her shoulders. “Mary, I say.” Mary did not reply. He moved up to her, smiling, and put his arm about her waist. “Go away from me,” she said, bending her head and at the same time turning around to him.
“Yerra, where can I go, Mary?” said Michael, crushing her to his bosom. “Amn’t I tied to you for life; oh, pulse of my heart?”
Mary raised her lips to his and they kissed passionately. The smile faded from his face and he looked into hers tenderly.
“What’s the trouble, my white love?” he said. “Oh, come in from the door,’ said Mary coyly, “the whole village will see us, and we six months married. Oh, Michael.”
He lifted her in his arms and sat on the hearth stool with her in his lap.
“Was it about the pigs, Mary?”
“Yes,” she gasped, fiddling with the breast of his jersey. “You know well I have nothing in the house, and I want to go to the mainland to buy a chair for the room and a warm blanket for the winter, and a stone of wool to make the frieze, and lots of things. And it’s time to sell them, Michael. They say prices are going to fall next week.”
“Well, well, now, and why didn’t you tell me that? Sure I thought it was how you were getting tired of me.”
They both laughed childishly. They were really a foolish couple and a disgrace to Inverara, where people never carry on like that after being married six months.
“Will ye sell them today, Michael?” murmured Mary, and her voice came up from somewhere in his chest.
“Yerra, I’d sell my soul to please you. Although they’d be in better condition in another month, But what the devil is the difference? Get up, you lazy girl, and boil the kettle. We better wash them right away. The jobber, I heard, is on his way over from Kilmurrage. Come on; move, lazybones !”
Michael, holding on to her apron-strings, began to caper around the kitchen.
“Let me go, you fool,” laughed Mary, “how can I do anything while you are hanging on to me? Go on and fix the fire, while I strain the milk. Kiss me first.”
They prepared a tub of hot water and went to the sty at the back of the cabin to wash the pigs. The sty was a little square hut covered with a sloping roof of zinc with a little square yard in front, floored with concrete and surrounded by a high double stone fence. As soon as they entered the yard, three pigs rushed out grunting, with their snouts in the air smelling. Mary emptied a pail of mashed potatoes and sour milk in the trough in the middle of the yard, and the pigs dived into it biting one another. Then she and her husband began to wash them with soapy water.
“They are three fine pigs, God bless them,” said Michael.
“How much are you going to ask for them?” said Mary. The tender tone had left her voice now. It had a businesslike ring.
Michael scratched his beard.
“It would be a mortal sin to take a penny less than sixteen pounds.”
“Say fifteen pounds ten, Michael. He’d never give more than that.”
“I won’t cross yer word, Mary. Fifteen pound ten it is.”
They finished washing the pigs and came back to the cabin. Mary hurried about, sweeping the earthen floor and the hearth, polishing the dresser and tidying the pots that lay against the back door.
Suddenly Michael, who was standing at the door, looking out, said: “Hist, here he is up the road,” “Lord save us,” said Mary. “You better go and have a look at the sheep. It’s always best to pretend not to expect him. Stay away an hour.” She bundled him out of the cabin hurriedly and then sat on a stool by the dresser, knitting.
Presently the pig-jobber came up the yard, shouting loudly to somebody, who was a long way off, about the weather. He walked very fast and with an air of being rushing around all the time, oppressed with business. He was a small man, with grey chin whiskers, a crooked red nose, with a great red knob stuck between his two eyes, on account of a fall from a cliff. His left leg had been broken in the same fall, and it bent outwards in a semicircle as he walked. “God save all here,” he said, coming into the cabin.
“And you, too,” said Mary. “Ye’re welcome, Peter Mullen. Take a seat by the fire here. Well, now, and how’s your family?”
“Splendid, Mrs. Derrane, and how’s Michael?”
“Oh, sure there’s no use complaining, but I’m glad to see ye.”
The jobber sat by the hearth and began lighting his pipe while Mary bustled, filling the kettle with water. When the jobber saw her approaching the fire with it he expostulated.
“Now, Mary, don’t offer me anything, I -”
“Oh, will ye hold yer whist; sure ye wouldn’t think of leaving my house without tasting something, if it were only a mouthful of tea.”
“Well, well, now,” said the jobber with a laugh, “it is kind mother for you to be hospitable.”
There was silence for a mi
nute, while Mary began to lay the table.
“Where is Michael?” said the jobber, at length.
“Oh, he is out somewhere,” said Mary casually. “Ye didn’t want him, did ye?”
“No-o,” said the jobber, heaving a sigh. “I was just passing, so I thought I might look at his slips of pigs. I might need a few shortly. Though your pigs are very young, I hear.”
“Well, we aren’t thinking of selling them for another month or so, but sure you can have a look at them. Or maybe ye’d rather wait for himself. He’ll be in any minute.”
The jobber tapped nervously with his stick, obviously anxious to get away, but Mary kept chattering unconcernedly about everything. The kettle boiled. The tea was made. The jobber supped his tea hurriedly and swallowed an egg and ate some griddle cake. Still there was no sign of Michael.
“I’m afraid I must be going,” he said.
“Oh, sit down, man,” said Mary, “he’ll be in any minute. Sure it’s not afraid you are that he’d think you were courting me.”
They both laughed and the jobber sat down again, and Mary kept chattering, until at last Michael, who had been sitting in a neighbouring cottage, came in.
“Ha, my soul from the devil!” he cried, “I’m glad to see you Peter Mullen.”
“I thought I’d see how your slips of pigs are getting on,” said the jobber.
“Slips d’ye call them, Peter?” cried Michael. “I’ll lay my oath there aren’t three better pigs in the island. But I’m not selling them yet, for all that. But sure you can have a look at them.”
The three of them went out to the pigsty and enterd the yard. The pigs were lying on their sides in the sun. They grunted, but did not rise. The jobber beat them with his stick and they struggled to their feet.
“They’re not bad slips, God bless them,” said the jobber. He walked around them several times. Then he measured the girth of each with his arms. Then he felt their hips, their flanks, their ears, pulled their tails, and laid his stick along their backs measuring them. Then he stood with his arms folded, looking at the ground.
Irish Portraits Page 8
