Danny Quin was to be buried that afternoon. It was the third day of the wake, and his house, always dependent for light on its open door, was dark with the crowd of people inside and outside the threshold. In the corner of the kitchen, behind the brute obstruction of human beings, awkward and inert with stale drink, half-a-dozen candles made a garish night-time round the dead man. He lay with the yellow flicker on his steadfast face, a presence of extraordinary refinement and soulful trance among his late fellows. He was an old man, in his lifetime a driver of hard bargains, a teller of old tales in which his own sagacity, uprightness, and power of repartee were unflinchingly set forth. Here his super-{18}natural pallor and tranquil lips spoke of death and resurrection to an audience whose greatest care was to accept in a seemly and gloomy manner as many glasses of whisky as were offered to them. His wife’s eyes were hollow and glazed from want of sleep; she stood in her Sunday gown and white cap, receiving condolences without a tear, and with the invariable reply, “Sure it couldn’t be helped.”
She hardly knew whether it were night or day, or how often the evening light in the doorway had turned to blackness, and the blackness quickened to cold blue-grey dawn since they had pulled the feather-bed from under her husband in order that he might, in accordance with ancient custom, breathe his last on the mattress. Her two married daughters dispensed the whisky and the punch at a table near the door; in the bed-room behind the kitchen the more honourable visitors sat with their hats on, and became sapiently and solemnly tipsy.{19} The room was set out for company; a brand new counterpane covered the mountainous bed, a naked mahogany table stood in the centre, bearing a black bottle, a loaf of bread, and a two-pound lump of butter on a plate. A dazzling three-and-sixpenny hearthrug was placed on the earthen floor in front of a fire-place without a grate.
“I had not the pleasure of the—the—the dead gentleman’s acquaintance,” said one of the visitors, a stout and greasy public-house keeper, who had driven over to the entertainment with a mutual friend, from a town twelve miles away. “But I undherstand he was greatly respected in this neighbourhood, and all his family the same.”
The eyes of the speaker were of a moist redness befitting the occasion; his voice had a husky roll in it, and the raw and tepid reek of bad whisky accompanied the eulogy.
“As for respect,” rejoined the mutual friend, addressing the hearthrug with slow determination, “he had it, the Lord have{20} mercy on him, and more than he’d ax of it. Ye needn’t be talking of respect.”
Several of the party remarked, “that’s thrue,” and the publican felt that he had said the right thing. Danny Quin’s son here rose and went round the circle with the bottle. The attention was accepted with protests, or with groans that betokened indifference to all earthly affairs. Young Quin sat down again. He was not drunk, but he had been drinking and crying on and off for three days and nights, and his big limbs felt tremulous and his brain hot.
“A nice, dacent little man as ever was in the barony,” said an old woman glibly; “the Lord have mercy on him, ’tis he got the death very sudden”—she crossed herself—“and very quare, the Lord save us.”
“I undherstand,” said the publican, conscious of leading the conversation with ability, “that he sustained fatal injuries from a fall.”
“Arrah, what fatal injuries!” returned the old woman with scorn; “no, but to{21} break his neck was what he done. Didn’t he walk out over the brink o’ the big sandpit in Cashel the same as one that wouldn’t have the sighth, an’ he a fine soople man no more than seventy years? ’Twas like a reelin’ in the head the crayture got.”
The tone was that of cautious supposition, and it was easy to discern the desire of contradiction.
“’Twas no reeling,” said Tom Quin, suddenly addressing the company in a loud voice. “I know well what was on him, and so do thim that was lookin’ at him. ’Twas a start he took, the same as if he seen somethin’ followin’ him. And I hope in God I’ll be dead to-morrow if it isn’t thrue what I’m sayin’, that if he didn’t put his hand to the Park-na-Moddhera to sell it he’d be dhrinkin’ his glass in the fair of Letter Kyle this day.”
His auditors exclaimed, groaned, and crossed themselves. All present, except the publican, knew every detail connected with Danny Quin’s death, but they knew{22} even better what was due to the dramatic moments in a story.
There was a stir in the kitchen outside, and Quin’s youngest daughter pushed her way into the room, crying and clapping her hands.
“The priest is come—they’re closin’ the coffin on him—oh, dada, dada!” she wailed, and flung herself half-across the table without an effort at self-control.
The women proffered consolation, and raised her red head from where it lay beside the butter. Swaying and lolling, she was propped against their shoulders, with the light full on her convulsed face, and the whole party crushed forth into the kitchen. There was some delay, while a plate, with a heap of silver upon it, was taken from a table outside the door of the house and handed over to the priest, and many faces peered in a circle round the counting of the money. There was more than eight pounds, subscribed in silver and two half-sovereigns by the visitors to the funeral, as payment{23} to the priest for masses for the soul of the deceased. It is an institution known as “the altar,” and happily combines a politeness to the dead man and his family, with a keen sense of the return that will be made in kind when it becomes the donor’s turn to have a funeral. The sight of the gold was balm to the dazed spirit of the Widow Quin.
“Thank God, they showed that much respect for him,” she said, as congratulations were passed round. “’Twas a great althar.”
A windy sunset of January was set forth that afternoon in cold orange and green behind the bogs near Tully Lake. The new railway line ran across them, away in the north-west, and the rails gleamed along a track that seemed to end against the breast of the evening sky. Coming from the east, the line emerged from a cutting in a wooded hill, where blocks of stone, overturned trucks, and stumps of trees with twisted, agonized roots, littered the yellow sand. The wood ran to the lips of the cutting on either side, and the strong fir-trees on the{24} height could look down the tawny slants upon their fallen comrades.
Standing below, the jaws of the ugly cleft let in the winter sunset and the twin glitter of the rails, while above, the fir-trees strove against the evening wind. It was worth remaining still to look at, in spite of the cold, and Mr. Wilfrid Glasgow, with two long account-books under his arm, and the peak of his cap over his eyes, stood for at least a minute surveying alternately his own handiwork and that of his Creator. He felt a proper admiration for both; impartially he perhaps thought that his own was more deserving of credit. At length, turning his back upon the sunset, he walked along the line to where a road crossed it. As he climbed some bars and swung himself down into the road it could be seen that he was active, with the skilled and wary activity of forty. He was tall and slight; when his hat was on, his fair thin moustache and light figure made short-sighted people place him in the early thirties.{25}
Voices and footsteps were on the road, and groups of people straggled towards him in the twilight. They were the remnant of Danny Quin’s funeral cortége, and even at a distance of a hundred yards the blatant drawl of drunkenness was discernible in their conversation. He passed quickly through them, and walked fast till he was clear of the reek of whisky, tobacco, and stale turf smoke that followed them.
“What swine they are,” he thought, drawing a long breath. He was walking in a bend of the road where trees stood up on either side, and in the shelter the twilight seemed to fall as heavily as dew. A cold, sharp moon came forlornly from behind a wisp of cloud; the road glistened pallidly in its light, and he saw a tall man walking unsteadily towards him.
“Good-evening, Quin,” said Mr. Glasgow, recognizing as he neared him the young man’s white face and dark beard; “I was sorry to hear of your trouble. Only four days ago I was talking to your father, and I{26} was very much shocked to hear how sudden his death was.”
Quin stood still in the middle of the road, with his soft black hat pulled over his brows. He breathed hard, and Glasgow thought he was going to cry. Instead of doing so, however, Quin caught him by the arm.
“How dar’ ye bring up me father’s name to me?” he said, in a loud voice. “If it wasn’t for you and yer railway the stones wouldn’t be over his head this night!”
Glasgow shook his hand off.
“Go home, Quin, go home,” he said, not unkindly. “I’ll talk to you to-morrow.”
“What do I want o’ yer talk when ye have the bad luck dhrew down on us! God knows ye talked enough to me father, blasht ye!” Quin here unloosed his terrified angry soul by the simple channel of bad language. “I’ll have satisfaction out o’ ye, ye English hound,” he raved on, seeing that Glasgow was turning impassively away. “You that laughed when I axed ye to let me father out o’ the bargain! Well I knew that there was{27} none of us’d do a day’s good afther it——” he faltered and sobbed.
Glasgow knew enough of the man to take him quietly. He looked at him as he stood in the moonlight with the tears running down his hairy cheeks, and walked away. He had not gone far when the imperative sting of a bicycle bell made him move to one side with the resentment inevitably roused in the pedestrian by that sound. Looking back he saw Lady Susan French skimming past Tom Quin; a wheeled apparition that must have been as startling to him as an Apocalyptic vision. Glasgow had dined at French’s Court the night before, and, as he took off his cap, Lady Susan recognized him.
“How-de-do?” she called out, and jumped off, “I must take things easy and give my husband a chance. He was pounded by that awful hill outside Letter Kyle. Would you lead my bike? Thanks, awfully.”