by George Moore
“I heard your reverence wouldn’t marry them,” the woman said.
“I am going to bring them down to the church at once.”
“Well, if you do,” said the woman, “you won’t be a penny the poorer; you will have your money at the end of the week. And how do you do, your reverence.” The woman dropped a curtsey to Father Stafford. “It’s seldom we see you up here.”
“They have gone towards the Peak,” said Father Tom, for he saw his uncle would take advantage of the occasion to gossip. “We shall catch them up there.”
“I am afraid I am not equal to it, Tom. I’d like to do this for you, but I am afraid I am not equal to another half-mile up-hill.”
Father Maguire strove to hypnotize his parish priest.
“Uncle John, you are called upon to make this effort. I cannot speak to these people as I should like to.”
“If you spoke to them as you would like to, you would only make matters worse,” said Father John.
“Very likely, I’m not in a humour to contest these things with you. But I beseech you to come with me. Come,” he said, “take my arm.”
They went a few hundred yards up the road, then there was another stoppage, and Father Maguire had again to exercise his power of will, and he was so successful that the last half-mile of the road was accomplished almost without a stop.
At Michael Dunne’s, the priests learned that the wedding party had been there, and Father Stafford called for a lemonade.
“Don’t fail me now, Uncle John. They are within a few hundred yards of us. I couldn’t meet them without you. Think of it. If they were to tell me that I had refused to marry them for two pounds, my authority would be gone for ever. I should have to leave the parish.”
“My dear Tom, I would do it if I could, but I am completely exhausted.”
At that moment sounds of voices were heard.
“Listen to them, Uncle John.” And the curate took the glass from Father John. “They are not as far as I thought, they are sitting under these trees. Come,” he said.
They walked some twenty yards, till they reached a spot where the light came pouring through the young leaves, and all the brown leaves of last year were spotted with light. There were light shadows amid the rocks and pleasant mosses, and the sounds of leaves and water, and from the top of a rock Kate listened while Peter told her they would rebuild his house.
“The priests are after us,” she said.
And she gave a low whistle, and the men and boys looked round, and seeing the priests coming, they dispersed, taking several paths, and none but Ned and Mary were left behind. Ned was dozing, Mary was sitting beside him fanning herself with her hat; they had not heard Kate’s whistle, and they did not see the priests until they were by them.
“Now, Tom, don’t lose your head, be quiet with them.”
“Will you speak to them, or shall I?” said Father Tom.
In the excitement of the moment he forgot his own imperfections and desired to admonish them.
“I think you had better let me speak to them,” said Father John. “You are Ned Kavanagh,” he said, “and you are Mary Byrne, I believe. Now, I don’t know you all, for I am getting an old man, and I don’t often come up this way. But notwithstanding my age, and the heat of the day, I have come up, for I have heard that you have not acted as good Catholics should. I don’t doubt for a moment that you intended to get married, but you have, I fear, been guilty of a great sin, and you’ve set a bad example.”
“We were on our way to your reverence now,” said Mary. “I mean to his reverence.”
“Well,” said Father Tom, “you are certainly taking your time over it, lying here half asleep under the trees.”
“We hadn’t the money,” said Mary, “it wasn’t our fault.”
“Didn’t I say I’d marry you for nothing?”
“But sure, your reverence, that’s only a way of speaking.”
“There’s no use lingering here,” said Father Tom. “Ned, you took the pledge the day before yesterday, and yesterday you were tipsy.”
“I may have had a drop of drink in me, your reverence. Pat Connex passed me the mug of porter and I forgot myself.”
“And once,” said the priest, “you tasted the porter you thought you could go on taking it.”
Ned did not answer, and the priests whispered together.
“We are half way now,” said Father Tom, “we can get there before twelve o’clock.”
“I don’t think I’m equal to it,” said Father John. “I really don’t think—”
The sounds of wheels were heard, and a peasant driving a donkey cart came up the road.
“You see it is all up-hill,” said Father John. “See how the road ascends. I never could manage it.”
“The road is pretty flat at the top of the hill once you get to the top of the hill, and the cart will take you to the top.”
It seemed undignified to get into the donkey cart, but his nephew’s conscience was at stake, and the Vicar-General got in, and Father Tom said to the unmarried couple: —
“Now walk on in front of us, and step out as quickly as you can.”
And on the way to the church Father Tom remembered that he had caught sight of Kate standing at the top of the rock talking to Peter M’Shane. In a few days they would come to him to be married, and he hoped that Peter and Kate’s marriage would make amends for this miserable patchwork, for Ned Kavanagh and Mary Byrne’s marriage was no better than patchwork.
IV
Mrs. Connex promised the priest to keep Pat at home out of Kate’s way, and the neighbours knew it was the priest’s wish that they should do all they could to help him to bring about this marriage, and everywhere Kate went she heard nothing talked of but her marriage.
The dress that Kate was to be married in was a nice grey silk. It had been bought at a rummage sale, and she was told that it suited her. But Kate had begun to feel that she was being driven into a trap. In the week before her marriage she tried to escape. She went to Dublin to look for a situation; but she did not find one. She had not seen Pat since the poultry lecture, and his neglect angered her. She did not care what became of her.
On the morning of her wedding she turned round and asked her sister if she thought she ought to marry Peter, and Julia said it would be a pity if she didn’t. Six cars had been engaged, and, feeling she was done for, she went to the church, hoping it would fall down on her. Well, the priest had his way, and Kate felt she hated him and Mrs. M’Shane, who stood on the edge of the road. The fat were distributed alongside of the lean, and the bridal party drove away, and there was a great waving of hands, and Mrs. M’Shane waited until the last car was out of sight.
Her husband had been dead many years, and she lived with her son in a two-roomed cabin. She was one of those simple, kindly natures that everyone likes and that everyone despises, and she returned home like a lonely goose, waddling slowly, a little overcome by the thought of the happiness that awaited her son. There would be no more lonely evenings in the cabin; Kate would be with him now, and later on there would be some children, and she waddled home thinking of the cradle and the joy it would be to her to take her grandchildren upon her knee. When she returned to the cottage she sat down, so that she might dream over her happiness a little longer. But she had not been sitting long when she remembered there was a great deal of work to be done. The cabin would have to be cleaned from end to end, there was the supper to be cooked, and she did not pause in her work until everything was ready. At five the pig’s head was on the table, and the sheep’s tongues; the bread was baked; the barrel of porter had come, and she was expecting the piper every minute. As she stood with her arms akimbo looking at the table, thinking of the great evening it would be, she thought how her old friend, Annie Connex, had refused to come to Peter’s wedding. Wasn’t all the village saying that Kate would not have married Peter if she had not been driven to it by the priest and by her mother.
“Poor boy,” she though
t, “his heart is so set upon her that he has no ears for any word against her.”
She could not understand why people should talk ill of a girl on her wedding day. “Why shouldn’t a girl be given a chance?” she asked herself. “Why should Annie Connex prevent her son from coming to the dance? If she were to go to her now and ask her if she would come? and if she would not come herself, if she would let Pat come round for an hour? If Annie would do this all the gossips would have their tongues tied. Anyhow she could try to persuade her.” And she locked her door and walked up the road and knocked at Mrs. Connex’s.
Prosperity in the shapes of pig styes and stables had collected round Annie’s door, and Mrs. M’Shane was proud to be a visitor in such a house.
“I came round, Annie, to tell you they’re married.”
“Well, come in, Mary,” she said, “if you have the time.”
The first part of the sentence was prompted by the news that Kate was safely married and out of Pat’s way; and the second half of the sentence, “if you have the time,” was prompted by a wish that Mary should see that she need not come again for some time at least.
To Annie Connex the Kavanagh family was abomination. The father got eighteen shillings a week for doing a bit of gardening. Ned had been a quarryman, now he was out of work and did odd jobs. The Kavanaghs took in a baby, and they got five or six shillings a week for that. Mrs. Kavanagh sold geraniums at more than their value, and she got more than the market value for her chickens — she sold them to charitable folk who were anxious to encourage poultry farming; and now Julia, the second daughter, had gone in for lace making, and she made a lace that looked as if it were cut out of paper, and sold it for three times its market value.
And to sell above market value was abominable to Annie Connex. Her idea of life was order and administration, and the village she lived in was thriftless and idle. The Kavanaghs received out-door relief; they got two shillings a week off the rates, though every Saturday evening they bought a quarter barrel of porter, and Annie Connex could not believe in the future of a country that would tolerate such a thing. If her son had married a Kavanagh her life would have come to an end, and the twenty years she had worked for him would have been wasted years. Thank God, Kate was out of her son’s way, and on seeing Mary she resolved that Pat should never cross the M’Shane’s threshold.
Mrs. M’Shane looked round the comfortable kitchen, with sides of bacon, and home-cured hams hanging from the rafters. She had not got on in life as well as Mrs. Connex, and she knew she would never have a beautiful closed range, but an open hearth till the end of her days. She could never have a nice dresser with a pretty carved top. The dresser in her kitchen was deal, and had no nice shining brass knobs on it. She would never have a parlour, and this parlour had in it a mahogany table and a grandfather’s clock that would show you the moon on it just the same as it was in the sky, and there was a glass over the fireplace. This was Annie Connex’s own parlour. The parlour on the other side of the house was even better furnished, for in the summer months Mrs. Connex bedded and boarded her lodgers for one pound or one pound five shillings a week.
“So she was married to-day, and Father Maguire married her after all. I never thought he would have brought her to it. Well, I’m glad she’s married.” It rose to Mary’s lips to say, “you are glad she didn’t marry your son,” but she put back the words. “It comes upon me as a bit of surprise, for sure and all I could never see her settling down in the parish.”
“Them that are the wildest before marriage are often the best after, and I think it will be like that with Kate.”
“I hope so,” said Annie. “And there is reason why it should be like that. She must have liked Peter better than we thought; you will never get me to believe that it was the priest’s will or anybody’s will that brought Kate to do what she did.”
“I hope she’ll make my boy a good wife.”
“I hope so, too,” said Annie, and the women sat over the fire thinking it out.
Annie Connex wore an apron, and a black straw hat; and her eyes were young, and kind, and laughing, but Mrs. M’Shane, who had known her for twenty years, often wondered what Annie would have been like if she had not got a kind husband, and if good luck had not attended her all through life.
“We never had anyone like her before in the parish. I hear she turned round to her sister Julia, who was dressing her, and said, ‘Now am I to marry him, or shall I go to America?’ And she was putting on her grey dress at the time.”
“She looked well in that grey dress; there was lace on the front of it, and everyone said that a handsomer girl hasn’t been married in the parish for years. There isn’t a man in the parish that would not be in Peter’s place to-day if he only dared.”
“I don’t catch your meaning, Mary.”
“Well, perhaps I oughtn’t to have said it now that she’s my own daughter, but I think many would have been a bit afraid of her after what she said to the priest three days ago.”
“She did have her tongue on him. People are telling all ends of stories.”
“Tis said that Father Maguire was up at the Kavanagh’s three days ago, and I heard that she hunted him. She called him a policeman, and a tax collector, and a landlord, and if she said this she said more to a priest than anyone ever said before. ‘There are plenty of people in the parish,’ she said, ‘who believe he could turn them into rabbits if he liked.’ As for the rabbits she isn’t far from the truth, though I don’t take it on myself to say if it be a truth or a lie. But I know for a fact that Patsy Rogan was going to vote for the Unionist to please his landlord, but the priest had been to see his wife, who was going to be confined, and didn’t he tell her that if Patsy voted for the wrong man there would be horns on the new baby, and Mrs. Rogan was so frightened that she wouldn’t let her husband go when he came in that night till he had promised to vote as the priest wished.”
“Patsy Rogan is an ignorant man,” said Annie, “there are many like him even here.”
“Ah, sure there will be always some like him. Don’t we like to believe the priest can do all things.”
“But Kate doesn’t believe the priest can do these things. Anyhow she’s married, and there will be an end to all the work that has been going on.”
“That’s true for you, Annie, and that’s just what I came to talk to you about. I think now she’s married we ought to give her a chance. Every girl ought to get her chance, and the way to put an end to all this talk about her will be for you to come round to the dance to-night.”
“I don’t know that I can do that. I am not friends with the Kavanaghs, though I always bid them the time of day when I meet them on the road.”
“If you come in for a few minutes, or if Pat were to come in for a few minutes. If Peter and Pat aren’t friends they’ll be enemies.”
“Maybe they’d be worse enemies if I don’t keep Pat out of Kate’s way. She’s married Peter; but her mind is not settled yet.”
“Yes, Annie, I’ve thought of all that; but they’ll be meeting on the road, and, if they aren’t friends, there will be quarrelling, and some bad deed may be done.”
Annie did not answer, and, thinking to convince her, Mary said: —
“You wouldn’t like to see a corpse right over your window.”
“It ill becomes you, Mary, to speak of corpses after the blow that Peter gave Pat with his stick at Ned Kavanagh’s wedding. No; I must stand by my son, and I must keep him out of the low Irish, and he won’t be safe until I get him a good wife.”
“The low Irish! indeed, Annie, it ill becomes you to talk that way of your neighbours. Is it because none of us have brass knockers on our doors? I have seen this pride growing up in you, Annie Connex, this long while. There isn’t one in the village now that you’ve any respect for except the grocer, that black Protestant, who sits behind his counter and makes money, and knows no enjoyment in life at all.”
“That’s your way of looking at it; but it isn’t mine
. I set my face against my son marrying Kate Kavanagh, and you should have done the same.”
“Something will happen to you for the cruel words you have spoken to me this day.”
“Mary, you came to ask me to your son’s wedding, and I had to tell you—”
“Yes, and you’ve told me that you won’t come, and that you hate the Kavanaghs, and you’ve said all you could against them. I should not have listened to all you said; if I did, it is because we have known each other these twenty years. Don’t I remember well the rags you had on your back when you came to this village. It ill becomes—”
Mrs. M’Shane got up and went out and Annie followed her to the gate.
The sounds of wheels and hoofs were heard, and the wedding party passed by, and on the first car whom should they see but Kate sitting between Pat and Peter.
“Good-bye, Annie. I see that Pat’s coming to our dance after all. I must hurry down the road to open the door to him.”
And she laughed as she waddled down the road, and she could not speak for want of breath when she got to the door. They were all there, Pat and the piper and Kate and Peter and all their friends; and she could not speak? and hadn’t the strength to find the key. She could only think of the black look that had come over Annie’s face when she saw Pat sitting by Kate on the car. She had told Annie that she would be punished, and Mrs. M’Shane laughed as she searched for the key, thinking how quickly her punishment had come.
She searched for the key, and all the while they were telling her how they had met Pat at Michael Dunne’s.
“When he saw us he tried to sneak into the yard; but I went after him. And don’t you think I did right?” Kate said, as they went into the house. And when they were all inside, she said: “Now I’ll get the biggest jug of porter, and one shall drink one half and the other the other.”
Peter was fond of jugs, and had large and small; some were white and brown, and some were gilt, with pink flowers. At last she chose the great brown one.
“Now, Peter, you’ll say something nice.”