Her tongue still clacking in soliloquy, Marse Prendergast hobbled out of the house, and Mrs. Brennan went to the small back window of the sewing-room. She gazed wistfully down the long, sloping fields towards the little lake which nestled in the bosom of the valley. Within the periods of acute consciousness which came between her sobs she began to examine the curious edifice of life which housed her soul. An unaccountable, swift power to do this came to her as she saw the place around which she had played as a child, long ago, when she had a brow snow-white and smooth, with nice hair and laughing eyes. Her soul, too, at that time was clean—clean like the water. And she was wont to have glad thoughts of the coming years when she had sprung to girlhood and could wear pretty frocks and bind up her hair. Across her mind had never fallen the faintest shadow of the thing that was to happen to her.
Yet now, as she ran over everything in her mind, she marveled not a little that, although she could not possibly have returned to the perfect innocence of her childhood state, she had triumphed over the blight of certain circumstances to an extraordinary extent. She was surprised to realize that there must have been some strength of character in her not possessed by the other women of the valley. It had been her mother's mark of [Pg 13]distinction, but the dead woman had used it towards the achievement of different ends. Ends, too, which had left their mark upon the lives of both her daughters.
It struck her now, with another lash of surprise, that it had been an amazingly cheeky thing to have returned to the valley; but, as the shining waters of the lake led her mind into the quiet ways of contemplation, she could not help thinking that she had triumphed well.
To be living here at all with such a husband, and her son away in England preparing for the priesthood, seemed the very queerest, queerest thing. It was true that she held herself up well and had a fine conceit of herself, if you please. The mothers of the neighborhood had, for the most part, chosen to forget the contamination that might have arisen from sending their daughters to a woman like her for their dresses, and, in consequence, she had been enabled to build up this little business. She asserted herself in the ways of assertion which were open to the dwellers in the valley. She attended to her religious duties with admirable regularity. It was not alone that she fulfilled the obligation of hearing Mass on Sundays and Holydays, but also on many an ordinary morning when there was really no need to be so very pious. She went just to show them that she was passionately devoted to religion. Yet her neighbors never once regarded her in the light of a second Mary Magdalene. They entered into competition with her, it was true, for they could not let it be said that Nan Byrne was more religious than they, and so, between them, they succeeded in degrading the Mysteries. But it was the only way that was open to them of showing off their souls.
[Pg 14]
On a Sunday morning the procession they formed was like a flock of human crows. And the noise they made was a continual caw of calumny. The one presently absent was set down as the sinner. They were eternally the Pharisees and she the Publican. Mrs. Brennan was great among these crows of calumny. It was her place of power. She could give out an opinion coming home from Mass upon any person at all that would almost take the hearing out of your ears. She effectively beat down the voice of criticism against herself by her sweeping denunciations of all others. It was an unusual method, and resembled that of Marse Prendergast, the shuiler, from whom it may probably have been copied. It led many to form curious estimates as to the exact type of mind possessed by the woman who made use of it. There were some who described it as "thickness," a rather remarkable designation given to a certain quality of temper by the people of the valley. But there was no denying that it had won for her a cumulative series of results which had built up about her something definite and original and placed her resolutely in the life of the valley.
She would often say a thing like this, and it might be taken as a good example of her talk and as throwing a light as well upon the conversation of those with whom she walked home the road from the House of God. A young couple would have done the best thing by marrying at the right age, and these long-married women with the queer minds would be putting before them the very worst prospects. Mrs. Brennan would distinguish herself by saying a characteristic thing:
"Well, if there's quarreling between them, and[Pg 15] musha! the same is sure to be, the names they'll call one another won't be very nice for the pedigree is not too clean on either side of the house."
No word of contradiction or comment would come from the others, for this was a morsel too choice to be disdained, seeing that it so perfectly expressed their own thoughts and the most intimate wishes of their hearts. It was when they got home, however, and, during the remaining portion of the Sunday, their happy carnival of destructive gossip, that they would think of asking themselves the question—"What right had Nan Byrne of all people to be thinking of little slips that had happened in the days gone by?" But the unreasonableness of her words never appeared in this light to her own mind. She was self-righteous to an enormous degree, and it was her particular fancy to consider all women as retaining strongly their primal degradation. And yet it was at such a time she remembered, not penitently however, or in terms of abasement, but with a heavy sadness numbing her every faculty. It was her connection with a great sin and her love for her son John which would not become reconciled.
When she returned to the valley with her husband and her young child she had inaugurated her life's dream. Her son John was to be her final justification before the world and, in a most wondrous way, had her dream begun to come true. She had reared him well, and he was so different from Ned Brennan. He was of a kindly disposition and, in the opinion of Master Donnellan, who was well hated by his mother, gave promise of great things. He had passed through the National School in some way that was known only to[Pg 16] Mrs. Brennan, to "a grand College in England." He appeared as an extraordinary exception to the breed of the valley, especially when one considered the characters of both his parents.
Mrs. Brennan dearly loved her son, but even here, as in every phase of her life, the curious twist of her nature revealed itself. Hers was a selfish love, for it had mostly to do with the triumph he represented for her before the people of the valley. But this was her dream, and a dream may often become dearer than a child. It was her one sustaining joy, and she could not bear to think of any shadow falling down to darken its grandeur. The least suspicion of a calamity of this kind always had the effect of reducing to ruins the brazen front of the Mrs. Brennan who presented herself to the valley and of giving her a kind of fainting in her very heart.
Her lovely son! She wiped her tear-stained cheeks now with the corner of her black apron, for Farrell McGuinness, the postman, was at the door. He said, "Good-morra, Mrs. Brennan!" and handed her a letter. It was from John, telling her that his summer holidays were almost at hand. It seemed strange that, just now, when she had been thinking of him, this letter should have come.... Well, well, how quickly the time passed, now that the snow had settled upon her hair.
Farrell McGuinness was loitering by the door waiting to have a word with her when she had read her letter.
"I hear Mary Cooney over in Cruckenerega is home from Belfast again. Aye, and that she's shut herself up[Pg 17] in a room and not one can see a sight of her. Isn't that quare now? Isn't it, Mrs. Brennan?"
"It's great, isn't it, Farrell? You may be sure there's something the matter with her."
"God bless us now, but wouldn't that be the hard blow to her father and mother and to her little sisters?"
"Arrah musha, between you and me and the wall, the divil a loss. What could she be, anyhow?"
"That's true for you, Mrs. Brennan!"
"Aye, and to think that it was in Belfast, of all places, that it happened. Now, d'ye know what I'm going to tell ye, Farrell? 'Tis the bad, Orange, immoral hole of a place is the same Belfast!"