Brennan

“ And there was sure to be something else happening before he was through the college at Ballinamult. A priest, how are ye?
The whiskey had gone to his head, but, as he listened, John Brennan felt himself grow more sober than he had ever before been.... So this was the supplement to the story he had heard a while ago. And now that he knew the whole story he began to tremble. Continually flashing across his mind were the words of the man who was dead and silent at the bottom of the lake—"You could never know a woman, you could never trust her; you could not even trust your own mother." ”

“ Mrs. Brennan took her seat again at the sewing-machine by the window. She sighed as she turned her tired eyes in search of some inducement to solace down the white road through the valley of Tullahanogue. The day was already bright above the fields and groups of children were beginning to pass through the morning on their way to school. Mrs. Brennan beheld their passage, yet now as always she seemed to miss the small beauty of the little pageant.
"God help them, the poor little things!" ”

“ If they are in any way unsatisfactory to your mind, you may feel at perfect liberty to withhold your services. I am now, and always have been, opposed to duelling; I believe it wrong in principle, and a travesty upon justice; but it is a custom of the South, a requirement among officers of our army, and after what has just occurred between Major Brennan and myself I cannot honorably refuse any longer to go out. Major Brennan has deliberately placed me in a position where I cannot avoid meeting him without losing all standing in my corps. ”

“ He knew little of these things, for he knew little of the ways of life, but instinctively he felt that Rebecca would now cling to Ulick and that Ulick would be a great scoundrel if he spurned her from him. And what, he asked himself, would he, John Brennan, do in that case?
No answer would spring directly to his thoughts, but some ancient, primeval feeling was stirring in his heart—the answer that men have held to be the only answer from the beginning of the world. ”

“ She could see that he had not noticed her dress or what he was eating, and it was irritating to see him sitting there with his spoon full of soup telling her how the Irish people would have to reduce their expenditure and think a little less of priests—for a while, at least—unless they were minded to pass away, to become absorbed in America.
"I like Brennan," he said, throwing himself back in his chair. "He is a clever man. Brennan knows as well as I do there's too much money spent upon religion in Ireland. ”

“ John blamed Brennan's cynicism for preventing him from viewing Gibson as he did.
At a word from the man beside him the driver of their car slowed down the machine and brought it to a stop. They could hear the creaking of brakes on the other machines following them as they stopped close behind.
"Here we are," said the man, leaving the front seat of the car. "Duck that cigarette, Brennan. Remember, no smoking or talking. You boys follow me and do what I tell you. One misstep and you're liable to get the commissioner killed. ”

“ Brennan dragged himself to his feet and went to explore.
Food he must have; he had it there, in the load he’d let fall as he fell. But before that, before anything, he had to explore the house. Hunger was urgent. But there was something around him more urgent still. What?
He found no answer for a long time in the ghost of that little native-built house fading away into grass and green and mould—a visible sort of transubstantiation, going on, to go on, for how long? Who had built it? Who had deserted it? Why? ”

“ Next day Ulick Shannon made a call upon John Brennan and invited him for a drive. Outside upon the road Charlie Clarke's motor was snorting and humming. Ulick had learned to drive a car in Dublin, and had now hired Mr. Clarke's machine for the day.
"You see," he said airily, "that I have dispensed with the sanctimonious Charlie and am driving myself. Meaning no respect to you, Brennan, one approach to a priest is as much as I can put up with at a time." ”

“ Late one afternoon, two weeks after his last meeting with Consuello and Gibson, Brennan and John were gossiping at the office, speculating on Gibson's next move.
"He'll pull another stunt soon," Brennan declared. "When he does it's up to us to dig in and find out what's behind it. If we can get a little more evidence like that you stumbled on to when he raided the Spring street bookmakers, we'll be on the trail of the biggest story that's broken here in years." ”

“ Brennan remarked to John later. "If there ever was a man who knew how to keep his mouth shut, it's Ben. Whenever the district attorney's office or the police or the sheriff have something really big, something that must be kept absolutely secret, they call him in and he never has failed them."
"What about the machine and the driver?" John asked.
"That's what has me stumped," Brennan admitted. "Most all of the taxi drivers are lined up with the 'Gink' in some way or another. ”

“ Brennan could not restrain her vanity of her son.
"And to think of all that being before you now and still you keep up your mean refusals of the little thing I ask," said the old woman with the pertinacious unreasonableness of age.
"I haven't got the money, Marse, God knows I haven't."
"God knows nothing, Nan Byrne, only your shocking villainy. And 'tis the great sin for you surely. And if God knows this, it is for some one else to know your sin. It is for your son John to know the kind of a mother that he loves and honors." ”

“ How peculiarly the mind often operates in such moments of exciting suspense! I recall remarking a very slight stoop in Brennan's shoulders which I had never perceived before, I remember wondering where Moorehouse had ever discovered a tailor to give so shocking a fit to his coat, and finally I grew almost interested in two birds perched upon the limb of a tree opposite where I stood. ”

“ By some extraordinary process the can that was empty is found to be filled. It is the miracle of the porter.... When the sergeant and his colleagues come on the scene some hours later, an empty can with slight traces of froth upon the sides, "like beaded bubbles winking at the brim," constitutes the remaining flimsy evidence of the great thing that has happened.
The mind of John Brennan was more or less foreign [Pg 37] to this aspect of life amongst the fields. He would be the very last to realize that such were essential happenings in the life of his native village of Garradrimna. ”

“ Brennan and Mr. Birdsall change into an evident readjustment of their ideas concerning my husband and Grace Draper. But I did not relax my iron hold upon myself. I knew if I dared let myself down for an instant angry tears would rush to my eyes.
"When did you say we could move in?" I turned to Mr. Brennan, determined to get away from the subject of Grace Draper as quickly as possible.
"Today, if you want it."
"No," returned Dicky, "but we will want it soon. When do you think we can move?" He turned to me. ”

“ John Brennan was uncertain in what way he should confirm this, but at last he managed to stammer out:
"Ulick is very clever!"
"He's very fond of Garradrimna, and I think he's very fond of the girls."
"It's so dull around here compared with Dublin."
John appeared a fool by the side of this man of the world, who was searching him with a look as he spoke again:
"It's all right for a young fellow to gain his experience as early as he can, but he's a bit too fond of his pleasure. He's going a bit too far." ”

“ He was now a drunken old cur whom Sergeant McGoldrick caused to spend a fortune in fines.
"Just imagine the people who do be left the money!" said Mrs. Brennan, as she told the story.
John Brennan passes on. He meets the bill-poster, Thomas James. His dark, red face displays an immense anxiety. He is going for his first pint with a pinch of salt held most carefully in his hand. His present condition is a fact to be deplored, for he was famous in his time and held the record in Garradrimna for fast drinking of a pint. He could drink twenty pints in a day. ”

“ It was the day of the June Races in the town of Mullaghowen, and most of the valley-dwellers had gone there. The winding, dusty road through Tullahanogue was a long lane of silence amid the sunlight. It appeared as an avenue to the Palace of Dreams. So it was not at all strange that Mrs. Brennan was dreaming forward into the future and filling her mind with fancies of the past. She was remembering herself as Nan Byrne, the prettiest girl in the valley. ”

“ Brennan assembled the dictograph rapidly, attaching to it three head-pieces with receivers clamping over the ears.
"We'll test it," he said to John. "Scoot upstairs and say something in a natural tone in all parts of the room. Try to talk at about the pitch you believe they will speak and drop your voice to a whisper occasionally. Ben and I will listen."
While Brennan and Smith waited with the headgears John followed orders, returning to the basement when he believed he had talked to himself long enough to make the test accurate. ”

“ By their God, there was John Brennan and Ulick Shannon coming into Garradrimna in the middle of the day. To drink, they at once supposed. Their tongues had been finding fine exercise upon Ulick Shannon for a considerable time, but it was certainly a comfort to have the same to say of John Brennan. A clerical student coming up the street with a Dublin scamp. That was a grand how-d'ye-do! ”

“ Gunning reflected that by this time the grey mare had extended herself once for all in Brennan’s back-yard: he had done nothing to be ashamed of, but he felt abjectly guilty.
“If I go with Maudie to Connemara again next year,” continued Fanny, “I must look out for another. You’ll come too, I hope? A little opposition is such a help in making up one’s mind! ”

“ This he said with an affectionate but choked utterance. “Tell her,” he added in a stronger voice, “I’m sorry I shall not see Sebastopol fall.”
“Why not? there’s plenty of skill in the camp to cure you,” returned Brennan in a tone of mingled sympathy and confidence.
But McQueen had become absorbed in his thoughts, and his agonies giving him but little disposition and energy to hear with attention anything that Brennan might say, the latter proposed to reconnoitre in the hope of discovering some means of bringing in succour or of escaping. ”

“ She kept him in comfort and in ease, and yet when his body had been contented she must needs apply herself to the welfare of his soul. For, although he spent many a penny of her money in the village of Garradrimna, was he not the father of John Brennan, who was going to be a priest of God? ”

“ Brennan was applauded for his bravery at the storming by Captain Robert Thomson, and his subsequent exertions and constancy in the restoration of the defences of Antwerp and Ypres, where he had large parties of Hanoverian troops and Dutch peasants under his superintendence, led to his promotion first to lance-corporal and then to corporal. ”

“ He knows that he will be attacked viciously by the element he is seeking to drive from the city. I believe in him. I think it is such a splendid thing he is doing. I knew that you would feel the same."
Brennan's words, "Some of them are out for glory and some of them play a deeper game, sometimes it's a girl," came back to him. If it was for her, to win her commendation and respect, that Gibson was fighting, then, John thought, Gibson was a modern knight-errant riding into battle against the forces of evil, a twentieth century Sir Galahad. And what a "lady fair" to battle for! ”

“ I like see a man stan’ up to Terry Brennan. Just one man he is—son of old Larry Brennan, but he not need no one else. If he do need it is a woman—sacré, that is a man for a woman! It would make no difference at him if she was a woodcutter’s girl—no, bagosh. ”

“ Brennan? Only I'm married, I'd be thinking this very minute of giving up motor, shop, land and everything and going into a monastery. I would so."
"Now aren't you the fine, noble-minded man to be thinking of the like?"
"I am so.... Well, I'll drive you, Mrs. Brennan. On Thursday, you say, to Kilaconnaghan. The round trip will cost you fifteen shillings."
"Fifteen shillings?"
Charlie Clarke had already re-started the car which was again humming dustily down the road. Mrs. Brennan turned wearily into the sewing-room and seated herself once more by the machine. ”

“ John Brennan felt a certain amount of reserve spring up between them as they shook hands.... For a moment that seemed to lengthen out interminably the two young men were silent. The lake was without a ripple in the intense calm of the summer day.... Suddenly it reflected the movement of them walking away, arm in arm, towards the village.
It was high noontide when they reached Garradrimna. The Angelus was ringing. Men had turned them from their various occupations to bend down for a space in prayer. ”

“ There does be safety in numbers, they say, so ye needn't be afeard."
"Afeard is it?" responded Brian, with simulated jocularity, though his countenance still wore an expression of dismay. "Troth! it 'ud be a poor lookout if I was that easy frightened. 'Faint heart,' ye know."
But, though Mr. Brennan was very gallant and witty, the entertainment was felt by every one to be somewhat flat, and the relief was general when the young man proposed to go outside and smoke a bit of a pipe. Mrs. McNally, however, considered it her duty to protest. ”

“ Why he lets him do what he likes?"
"Control, is it? It doesn't look much like control indeed to see him encouraging his dead brother's son to keep the company he favors. Indeed and indeed it gives me a kind of a turn when I see him going about with Nan Byrne's son, young John Brennan, who's going on to be a priest. Well, I may tell you that it is 'going on' he is, for his mother as sure as you're there'll never see him saying his first Mass. Now I suppose the poor rector of the college in England where he is hasn't a notion of his antecedents. ”