Patrick MacGill

“ In that moment a soul feels the wordless pleasure of a memory that drifts lightly by; a memory to which only the accents of the heart can give life. Old scenes are brought up again and are seen in the delightful haze of transient remembrance; there are waters running to a sea; waves sobbing on a shore; voices speaking softly and low, and trees waving like phantoms to a wind that is merely the ghost of a wind. In these dreams there is a joyful melancholy, a placid acceptance of sorrow and happiness that might have only been realities of an earlier existence of long past years. ”

“ Society, sated with the labour of her hands, asked for her soul, and society, being the stronger, had its demand gratified.
But over it all, over the medley of pain and sorrow, over the blazing crucible of existence in which all fair dreams and hopes of the woman were melted away, greater and more powerful than anything else in Norah’s life, intense and enduring, unselfish and pure, shone the wonderful flame, the star of passionate love shining in the holy heaven of motherhood. ”

“ Outside on the open deck Micky’s Jim lay prostrate, his head on the lap of Maire a Glan, who was also asleep, her two remaining upper teeth, tobacco-stained and yellow, showing in the moonlight. All over the deck men and women lay curled up like dogs. Near the rail a woman’s bare arm showed for a moment over a bundle of rags, then twined snakelike round the neck of a sleeping child. On a bench astern Norah Ryan sat, her shawl drawn tightly over her head and her eyes fixed on the moon-silvered sea that stretched out behind. ”

“ If ever you think that the earth is asleep, Norah, be careful. Maybe when you grow up some man will say to you: ‘I like you better than anyone else in the world.’ That will be very nice to listen to, Norah. Maybe you’ll walk with the man on a lonely moor or on the strand beside the sea. It will be night, and there will be many stars in the sky, and you’ll not say they’re cold then as you said this morning, Norah. All at once you’ll stop and listen. You’ll not know why you listen for everything will be so quiet. ”

“ She spoke in her delirium of many things, prattling like a child about the sea and curraghs of Frosses going out beyond Trienna Bar in the grey dusk of the harvest evening. She held conversation with people visible to none but herself: with Fergus, with Dermod Flynn, with her mother, with the dead child. The girl’s whole history for the last three years was thus disclosed to Gourock Ellen. Days came and went; the patient became no better. A doctor was called in; he applied his stethoscope to Norah’s chest and shook his head gravely. ”

“ He felt full of the importance of a man who knows that everybody around him trembles under his eyes. Three or four young fellows were digging the grave and joking loudly as they worked; a crowd of men stood round them, puffing white clouds of smoke up into the air. Many of the women were kneeling beside graves that held all that remained of one or another near and dear to them. Norah Ryan stood alone with the priest, her dark shawl drawn over her white forehead, and a few stray tresses, that had fallen over her face, shaking in the breeze. ”

“ Micky’s Jim, now doubly drunk with liquor and excitement, paced up and down the deck, challenging all aboard to fight, to put up their “fives” to him. Presently the quarrel became general.
All along the deck and down in the steerage cabin a terrible uproar broke forth; men fastened on to one another’s throats, kicking, tearing, and cursing loudly. The darkness had fallen; the buoys, floating past, bobbed up and down in the water, their little bright lights twinkling merrily. The pale ghost of a moon stole into the heavens and a million stars kept it company. ”

“ In Norah’s heart welled up this incomparable love, in which are blended all human affections and all hopes of heaven, the love of a mother. The great power of motherhood held her proof against all evils; dimly and vaguely it occurred to her that if that restraining power was withdrawn for a moment she would succumb to any temptation and any evil which confronted her.
She found now a great joy in working with Sheila: both talked lovingly of home and those whom they had left behind. Sometimes Norah mingled tears with her recollections. Sheila Carrol never wept. ”

“ Norah wore a soft grey tweed dress that became her well. She had bought it in Greenock a week before, and when Dermod looked at the dress with a critical eye she wondered why she had put it on. But his look turned to one of admiration when his eye fell on the sweet face of the young girl, the eyes gentle and wistful, the white neck and the pure brow half hidden by the brown ruffled tresses. Something leapt into the heart of the young man, a thought which he could not put into words flashed through his mind, held him tense for a moment and then flitted away. ”

“ All night she lay awake, listening to the noise of the dust-carts on the pavement outside, the chiming of church clocks, the deep breathing of the sleepers all around her, and the sudden yells from Maudie’s bunk as the woman started in her sleep protesting against some grievance or voicing some ancient wrong.
The daylight was stealing through the grimy window when Norah got up and proceeded to dress. A deep quietness, broken only by the heavy breathing of the women, lay over the whole place. ”

“ On the evening preceding the twelfth, Norah heard of Dermod’s intended departure and that night she was long in falling asleep. Her bed was made on the floor beside the fire; a grey woollen blanket served a double debt to pay, and was used as a blanket and sheet. But the sleeping place was not cold; the heat of the fire and the breath of the kine kept it warm.
The first bird was twittering on the thatch and the first tint of dawn was tingeing the sky when Norah awoke, sat up in bed and threw part of the blanket aside. ”

“ The fear that she had had of becoming a mother was past and the supreme joy of motherhood now was hers. She knew that she would be jealous of the father if he was with her at present; as matters stood the child was her own, her very own, and nothing else mattered much. Sometimes she would sit for an hour, her discarded scissors hanging from her fingers, gazing hungrily at the saffron-red downy face of the child, anticipating every movement on its part, following every quiver of its body with greedy eyes. In the child lay Norah’s hopes of salvation ”

“ The hooligans who stood at the street corner soon knew her by repute, for an ill name flies far and sticks fast. Little Tommy Macara looked in at her door no more; the boy’s mother had warned him against the woman. Life was now to Norah one vast intolerable burden that crushed her down. If only the child were dead things would be clearer; then she would know what to do. If Dermod died everything would be simplified; one easy plunge into the river where it swirled under Glasgow Bridge would for ever end all heartbreak and sorrow. ”

“ This was the only thing to be done; under the steady look of the eyes a ghost is powerless. So her mother had told her, and the girl, knowing this, never lowered her gaze; but her bare feet got suddenly warm, her heart leapt as if wanting to leave her body, and the effort to restrain the tremor of her eyelids caused her pain. The ghost spoke.
“Who is the girsha [A] that is out so early?” came the question.
“It’s me, Norah Ryan,” answered the child in a glad voice. “I thought that ye were the Lone Woman of the Mist or maybe a beanshee.” ”

“ And often on a clear night, when the moonbeams filtered through the ragged blind, Norah would dream of Frosses, and the sea, the old home, with the moon rising over the hills of Glenmornan and lighting up the coast of Donegal.
“I have been a great trouble to ye, Ellen,” Norah said one evening, turning round in the bed and looking earnestly at her friend. “I seem to be only a trouble to everyone that I meet, and now to yerself most of all. Ye have been the great friend to me, Ellen.” ”

“ The daughters of Donegal are splendid knitters. But how difficult to make are those wonderful stockings when there is nothing but the peat fire or the rushlight to show the women the dreary and countless stitches that go to make the whole marvellous work. How quick those irons flash in the firelight, how they tinkle, tinkle one against another as the nimble fingers wind the threads around them, but alas! how wearying the toil! And the time usually taken to make a pair of socks was sixteen hours, and the wages paid for sixteen hours’ work was a penny farthing. ”

“ The streets, houses, and landscape which you have gazed on for years become in some way very remote, like objects seen in a dream, but under this guise every familiar landmark becomes dearer than ever it has been before. So Norah Ryan felt as she was leaving home in the June of 1905 bound for the potato fields of Scotland.
“Is this the road to Greenanore, the road that our feet took when goin’ to the town for the stockin’ yarn?” she asked herself several times. “It is changed somehow; it doesn’t seem to be the same place, but for all that I like it better than ever. ”

“ But ye’ll be tired, child, listenin’ to me clatterin’ here all night.”
“I’m not tired listenin’ to ye at all, but it’s sorrow that’s with me because life was so hard on ye,” said Norah. “Everything was black again’ ye.”
“One gets used to it all,” said Sheila with the air of resignation which sits on the shoulders of those to whom the keys of that delicious mystery known as happiness are forever lost. “One gets used to things, no matter how hard they be, and one doesn’t like to die.” ”

“ Dermod assured him that he had had many a hard, gruelling fight; knocked down a man twice his size with one blow of his fist and blackened the eyes of a youth who was head and shoulders taller than himself.
“And who have ye with ye, Jim?” he asked. “Any of the Glenmornan people?”
“Lots,” answered Jim. “Willie the Duck, Eamon Doherty, Judy Farrel, Maire a Glan, Norah Ryan—but she’s not from Glenmornan, she’s a Frosses girsha.” ”

“ You might as well be slaves; you are slaves, slaves to the very middle of your bones! How much does Farley McKeown get for the stockings in the big towns away out of here? Four shillings a pair, I am after hearing. You get a penny farthing a pair; a penny farthing! If you read some of the books that comes home with the harvestmen you would not suffer Farley McKeown for long.”
“That is it,” said the mother, winding the thread round her knitting-irons. “That is it! It is the books that the harvestmen take home that puts the boy astray. It is no wonder that the priest condemns the books.” ”

“ A strong, unhealthy odour pervaded the whole building; the tap at one end was running, and as the screw had been broken the water could not be turned off. Micky’s Jim sat in a cattle-trough sewing bags together with a packing needle; these were to be used as a quilt. Dermod Flynn, who was undressing, slipped beneath the blankets with his trousers still on as Norah Ryan came in, but Willie the Duck, stripped to the pelt, stood for a moment laughing stupidly, the guttering candle lighting up his narrow, hairy face and sunken chest. ”

“ The cough which the little boy had contracted on the night of Sheila Carrol’s death, ten months before, had never gone wholly away, and now it was worse than ever. The mother herself was not feeling very well; the sharp pain in her chest troubled her a great deal at night.
“Ye’re a good sorter, I hear,” said the master, licking his lips, and Norah noticed the hairs of his nostrils quivering as if touched by a breeze. “Ye’ll not live well on seven shillin’s a week, will ye?” he asked.
“One must live somehow,” said Norah, bending down and picking up a handful of rags from the floor. ”

“ Eamon Doherty remarked that Ireland would have Home Rule presently, and a loud discussion mingled with many jokes was soon in progress.
“The Irish will never agree,” said old Oiney Dinchy, a one-eyed ancient who had just risen from his knees by the bedside. “That is the worst of the Irish; they never agree. Look at them now in the House of Commons; one member is always fighting against another member, and it was ever the same, for contrairiness is in their blood to the very last drop of it.”
“There is always bound to be two parties,” said Master Diver with dogmatic assurance. ”

“ One chair, a bed, a holy water stoup, a little black crucifix from which the arms of the Christ had fallen away, an orange box on which lay a pair of scissors and a pile of cloth: that was all the room contained. A feeble fire burned in the grate and a battered oil-lamp threw a dim light over the compartment.
“I once had thoughts that were like that, meself,” said Sheila. She placed a little tin pannikin on the fire and fanned the flame with her apron. “People face a terrible lot in body and in soul before they face death. That’s the way God made us, child. ”

“ It will start, the great war, when the nights lengthen and the year grows brown, between the seasons of scythe and sickle; murder and slaughter, madder than cattle in the heat of summer, will run through the land, and the young men will be killed and the middle-aged men and the old. The very crutches of the cripples will be taken out to arm the fighters, and the bed-ridden will be turned three times three in their beds to see if they are fit to go into the field of battle. Death will take them all, for that is how it is to be ”

“ Can one love two people?” she asked herself. “But I’m not in love and never was. I like Dermod, but all the girls in the squad like him.... Why did Alec Morrison kiss me, and him a gentleman? It wasn’t my fault, was it?” She looked round and addressed an imaginary person, a look of bewilderment settling on her face.
“Did I go out to meet him this evenin’? Did I like his kisses? Is Dermod Flynn angry? I couldn’t help liking Dermod; he is so good, so kindly. But I’m a bad girl, very bad; all my life was full of sin. Pride and vanity, what the Catechism condemned, are my two sins. ”