ON THE RISE OF THE HILL.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 88, 15 April 1911, Page 10

ON THE RISE OF THE HILL.

(By Seumas CKelly.) -All Rights Reserved. "Say you'll have me," said Johnny Claffcy. . ; "I will not, Johnny Claffey," Maria Cooney made answer. "I'll say I' won't have you, I like to tell the truth." "What prospects have you beyond mjself?" Johnny Claffey persisted. . "You're a grand prospect surely I A Big ugly-looking pike of a man! !And you without as much as a cabin. Go, out of, my sigbt." "You'll rue it, Maria Cooney." "I won't, Johnny blaffey. I may as well tell you I' have bigger game in. view. My grandmother is on *for seeing me settled before she dies. She has made my maich with a lovely 3ooking lad over near her own place. If you were to see the grand house he has, j and it- upon the rise of the hill ! "What good is a man without a house*! anyhow? What good are you, Johnny Claffey? You sleep in a loft o*rer a kitchen, and the loft iself is nab your own. You have a big cheek to bd asking any girl's promise. Clear out of this now !" Johnny Claffey seized Maria Cooney in his brawny arms. She struggled vainly. His face swooped down, upon heir face. Maria Cooney .had only had time - to drop her head suddenly on 3& hinges. The next moment Johnny Gtefiey had planted his lips fervently upon, the knot •of black hair tied tightly at tie back of her poll. It was not- w&afc he in- ! tended or expected, of course. He was j out in his j^eography, had struck the ,wrong Conti&ent on the mtap, so to speak. When he realised this he walked heavily oot of the homse, a cloud gathering across the breadth of his face. Maria Coooey followed him to the door, and as he •went her mocking voice followed him down, the road. /'Johnny Claffey!" she cried, "come back here with ray hairpins F° After this incident Jobamy Qafiey avoided Maria Cooney as much as possible. 1 It was not possible to cut her altogether, for Johnny Claffey was a farm hand in the employment of the Byrne family, and Maria Cooney a housekeeper in the Glennon family. The Byrne homestead adjoined the Glennon homestead, and there was constant communication between the families. " What do yoni say to Jctemy Claffey if he hasn't made a representation," Pat Glennon said one day, shortly after, coming into hi* house. "A what?? Mrs Glennon asked, while Maria Cooney's eyes went wide openShe had an 'idea that, Johnny Claifey was about to- supply some", extraordinary sensation... And so .he was. "A representation' is am application; ,of a tentative nature for a labourer's cottage," Pat Glennon, said, talking like a leading article.. , "Johnny Claffey!" Maria Cooney; ezqlaimed under her breath. "We have a scheme of cottages on hand at the rural council. Each, will cost up to one hundred .and thirty pounds, and will have* an acre of ground attached." Maria Cooney had to hold on to the table. A cottage and an acre of ground for Johnny Claffey! Were the district councillors all gone mad? - "And where is all this- money to come from?" Mrs. Glennon demanded. ' "Prom the oul' cow that everyone who can lay hands on Trifling known as the public ratepayer," Pat Glennon answered ,with a gnn. "What's more," he went on, "Johnny Claffey is going to marry lor the inspector put him the qaestion, 'Are you married V says he. 'JST-o, I'm not,' says Johnny, 'but L have a nice* one in the corner of me eye! You give~ me the cage, I'll chirp, and the bird will hop on to her perch! 1 , He yut the .whole place into" a roar.", , : / / Maria Cooney , found .herself .suffering from insomnia for the ftcst-tima in her life that night. Johnny Claffey w€nt ■between! her a<nd. her rest, for she re^ membered, with ' horror,- ihjit,- Johnny; Claffey, since he lad left off .proposing Jjoarriage to her, had been in. the ha'pit of disappearing every .Sunday.. - . ..--, Next day she waylaid one of ,■ the young Byrnes and bribed hsn into confidence by the pressure of a penny upon, ■his little palm. "Tell me, pet," Maria. Cooney said, •"where does that Johnny Claffey be meandering to every Sunday?" This young Byrne had a cute face and he looked up at Maria. Cooney with .quick grey eyes. " Off over after a girl he do be going," he replied promptly. "How do you know that?" " 'Cause I saw him a Sunday. We t were driving back from the chapel." "Wheßo was it you saw him?" " Iji Eaiclooney, near a gate they were. Johnny Claifey was leaning over the gate, avod she was leaning over the gate. , Tjhe two of -them was leaning over it." "And who- was the girl, now?" "I dunno." " And was she a young one or an puT one?" "I dunno." "Well, what was she wearing?" " She was wearing a dress." " What sort of a dress?" "1 .couldn't say.' "Was it a black dress or a white Hress?" "It was." "A black dress maybe it was?" " Maybe." "Or it might be a white one!" 1 "It might." "Was it black?" "It was." "Are you sure, now, it wasn't a j Jh'hite dress?" "It was a white dress." j " Sure it couldn't be a white dress if it was a black one?" "It could." "It could not, child ; think well." "Sure amn't I after telling you? It Jwas a black dress and a white dress — white at the top and black down below," The child ran away, apparently tired of the argument. "Be hell," Maria Cooney cried, "she iwas wearing a white blouse and a black skirt, the whipster ! Wait until I lay my two hands on you, Johnny Claffey !" But Maria Cooney kept her hands off 'Johnny Claffey, mostly because he aban-t doned any further proposals of marriage, partly because all was not plain sailing for Johnny Claffey and hie cottage. The Byrne family objected to the cottage at once. All his life Johnny Claffey had slept in their loft over the, kitchen. Every night he carried in a ladder from the stable, and mounted to this unlighted apartment. The Byrnes said that if Johnny Claffey got a cot : tage and an acre of ground he would become too independent, tco big a man for them. When old Byrne heard that an acre of his ov;n ground would be command eered fc-r the person who slept in his loft he purple in the face with •Tage and nwrrf lie' -would defend his property v, ith his life lie appealed to Johnny Claftev. but Johnny Claftpy only scratched the ci'wn of hie "b^ad and said he wss at thf :revcv. of 'the district council. He insinuated that' if the district t,ounr-il ira :°t"fl on building him a col Ja go theie nae nctlvme - iov at but to deseit ib? 1. ft. "O'd Byrne had to submit. His f.-rniilv explained thai- tlio law was a<rri'-^t " him and in favour of Johnny Clan'«>\— a very wrong and rotten thing of the la".', of course, but there ••■on are ! The f'-uiidationi rf .Johnny Claffey s cottage \\«re X.d in due c-j-ui'sc, and while the work went on it was 'the

object of both admiration and envy to tile parish. Maria Cooney, however, ,held aloof as long as she could. One night, however, the longing to behold Johnny Claffey's cottage became too ■ .jnuch for her. She threw a shawl over her head and sneaked out of the house. It was a moonlight night. Maria Cooney kept a. watchful eye about her, and reached the cottage in a roundabout ' w/ay. She wished to keep her mission a secret. She had worked herself up to a high pitch of excitement by the time she put her arms over the wall facing the cottage and had a good square look at it. The cottage at first blush had a peculiar effect upon her. The rafters were shining like ribs on • the roof, the doorway gaped, the windows were vacant, and the light of the moon was playing through them. It gave the structure a queer effect — it looked as if it were grinning down at her. She had an unaccountable feeling that it grinned like Johnny Olaffey. She thought she "had often seen that sort of a settled, half-spectral gape on his face. She felt inclined to say some words of cutting disparagement up at it. Her hand went out in an impatient little gesture. "Tell me, Maria Cooney, how do you like the looks of it?" Maria Cooney gave a startled bound, then pulled herself together. She saw the bulk of Johnny Claffey's ngure seated against the wall under her. He had his eyes upon the cottage, drinking in its proportions in the romance of the moonlight. "I was not thinking of it ai all," Maria Cooney said. Johnny Claffey made jo comment, and his silence was eloquent. "And what brought you down here this hour of the night?" Mafia- demanded, some of her old domineering tone returning. "Same thing as yourself — the cottage there. I do like to come down in the quietness of the night to look upon it." "You're well employed, then." . "I _do be pondering over many a, thing in me mind. I was saying to meself a while back when I saw you waltzing about the hill that you'll have a grand view of the cottage from Pat Glennon's door above." - "I'll have some other occupation for me eyes, with tha help of God." "1 was saying for one thing that it's a comfort to see the smoke coming up a chimney. That'll be one addition to the scenery for yon. Then for that again I was saying that the light of the two back windows will be shining in front of you the length of the winter's night." . "I'm giving you great concern from all accounts." i "And when I'm rightly settled down, there you'll have a view of the garden and. the sight of me crops coming up out of the ground, or maybe the scent of me lock of flowers blown up the hill upon the wind a*nd going in about the kitchen to tickle your fancy." Johnny Claffey rose up and leaned against the wall close to Maria Cooney, his face still to the cottage. . Maria Cooney rubbed the tip of her nose against his shoulder 1 } Johnny Claffey was no more conscious of it than if a fly had lit upon him. Maria Cooney knew she was\ a show, but in the subdued light, and while Johnny went on with his talk, she seized favourable moments to Tub her. nose against his shoulder, drawing great and growing satisfaction from the exercise. , "I'll have a little rose bush growing there* in front of th* porch. ' When you come down an odd evening maybe I'll b« plucking a choice one for you. There over by the wall to the west I'll have me little clamp of turf. It'll be well in your view at the pond above. At the fall o' the leaf you'll see me pit of potatoes rising up at the head ot the acre. j When Pat Glennon's cock crows on his ' roost you'll hear the voice of my cock answering him back from tie tidy fowl- - house! there in, the corner beyond. Me hsns will -be scratching -about the field up- to -your door. If you have the mind ;to listen you'll hear the wind when it whistles through the few perch of corn and it growing ripe before your eyes. 1 The pla<ie Won t bis so lonesome for you. Herself will be- moving about the house^ in and out, if it was only she came out -for a can of water or stepped out on the road to meet'meself the time I'll be drawing a creel of turf from the bog." At these words the nose of Maria Cooney withdrew from the neighbourhood of Johnny Claffey's shoulder. If it gave a little snort at mention of "herself" he did not notice it. Neither did he concern himself that it perked up, rigid and unlovely, in the pale light as ha went on — "You can be coming down to herself, or she can be going up to you, bringing hither and thither the news of the parish or the alarms that come out of the newspapers. Later on you'll see the childer climbing up over the fence, they to go chasing about the hill, screeching in front of you, everyone of them carrying about a big head on him like the head of Johnny Claffey. And I wouldn't put it beyond the woman that'll be in that house to give them the elegance of fine manners so as they'd be trained to call you Aunt Maria." There was a convulsive movement under Maria Cooney's shawl, but no blow was struck. "As to these sights and wonders you're going to provide ior me, Johnny Claffey," she said, "you needn't go to any great rounds. It wouldn't do me good to see a miserable, spare, delicate woman, worn with hardship, striving to bring up in the face of poverty a houseful of bighpaded children bawling like a pack of beagles about her with the dint of hunger. Don"t be cocking yourself up at. ail, Johnny Claffey. There's more than on© house on the rise of a hill, and I'm not going to spend me life in this nlace watching your capers." "The house over near your grandmother's you're hinting at, is if:" Johnny Claffey asked, his eyes steadily on his unroofed cottage. "The same." , "And Ihe match your grandmother is making up with that nice boy you" re alluding to?" "The came." "There's no such house. There's only a bare hill swept by the edge ol the four winds of the world. 1 " Maria Cooney gasped. The voice of Johnny Claffey was impartial but teirible. "And there's no such boy. There's only a grandmother, an old creature, hobbling on her stick about a little rookery of a place in the bog." "'There is!" Maria Cooney cried, hitting the wall with her fist. "There is. Johnny Claffey I tell yon there if ! There is such a house and' there is such a boy. I -.raß looking at the house, 1 wns speaking- with the boy ! How dare you, Johnny Clatfey !" Like Hamlet's whip,ster of a mother, Maria Cooney protested too much. Johnny Claft'ey wailed until she had done. '•There's only that grandmother, "' he Kajd serene!/. "I made it my busine«» to f-ee her the day I ivab going past minging a luad of seeweed from the sea. .'Mrs. (Jconev,* wiys I, '1 come in to ask you for the hand of Maria." 'Did you, indeed?' says Khe. 'Well, you come in to ask a great lot. You can have her.' 'Lsn'l thei'e another fellow after her?' says* 1. 'Is there:' hays she. ''There is, ma'am,' K-.y» J. 'If there is,' she .«ays, 'iC's the ihst, L.heaid of it. J3nt if there it, thai v.ould make tuu iellows after Mantt. Well, }<.» can both have her and mo blesbirii; !' 'That'. 1 - what year grandmother 5-uid, Maria Cooney." *Marit (.'soney't smpvJeJ head v.-ent illm.ji Oii ih" '.\ all betide Johnny Claifey. Il wilt di £0 s.iiockingly like what her «4h

grandmother would say ! She felt she had been criminally slack in not having warned her grandmother, but who would ever have dreamt of the lumbering Johnny Claffey turning out such a terror? Maria Cooney felt she was disgraced for ever. All* the fight was knocked out of her by this blow. Johnny Claffey thought he heard some sniffling on the top of the unsympathetic wall, but he made ~ no enquiry. "'l'd like to see the wooden paling there painted," he went on. "I was between two minds as to whether I'd like v, dark green or a bright red. A lively red ©oat should look elegant on it when viewed from your kitchen door above." "Ask the one over at Kilclooney," Maria Cooney said, raising her head and speaking in a voice that wavered between resignation and resentnfent. "It's she that will have the trouble of the concerns." "That one at Kilclooney?" Johnny Claffey asked without turning round. "The on% with the white blouse." "What white blouse?" "The white blctose and the black skirt. She that used to be mooning over the gate with you like a cow." "Who told you this?" "Young Byrne, young Paddy Byrne." " 'Twas I told him to tell you that," Johnny Claffey announced calmly. "I gave him an oul' penknife for telling you. I knew you'd be making enquiries. Playing cards I used to be in Kilclooney." Maria Cooney's lips parted as she heard the announcement, a sort of ecstatic- thrill lighting her face. She looked as if she had seen a vision in a white blouse winging to the skies, leaving her with a clear field ' with Johnny Claffey in front of his cottage. I Then a doubt overcast her features, swift as a cloud that runs over a clear sky. " And where is she coming from so? Where is the bird that will hop on to the perch when you chirp?" she asked, unable to suppress a note of tragedy in her voice. "It's hard to say," Johnny Claffey said carelessly. " There's no hurry on me. I have the whole country in front of me. When the daisies deck the fields I'll take down an ash plant, spit on me fist, and go out to seek me fortune like the King's son in the stories. '{ Maria Cooney felt that if Johnny Claffey turned around and proposed marriage there and then she should burst out crying. But Johnny Claffey only took a step forward towards the cottage with the air of a man who had dismissed a frivolous subject. A little halo was beginning to grow about his big stupid head in the eyee of Maria Cooney. She could scarcely believe that he was the despised one who had slept in a lof-t and proposed marriage on various occasions und-er the auspices of her dishcloth. He led the way towards his cottage, striding like the hero in melodrama. " Come on until I show you the inside of the premises. Maria Cooney. I can't say how it will be inside. I'll have to lea-ve that to the woman thai will be coming back with m-e the time, of the daisies. I'm not much of an ornament in the inside of a house. Me legs don'f feel as if they were intended for it. They kick things and they always kick the things that can't stand nothing only admiration. I'll get my good woman to leave me as much space as I can steer through without going on the rocks. She can float about herself where she Kkes " He had stepped into the doorway when he felt something happening behind. He paused. Two hands were groping about his back. A face seemed t<> be smothering itself in the folds of his coat at- the small of his back. "Johnny!" A smile broke over Johnny Claffey's face at the sound of his name. He h.a<d measured the thing to an inch ! At the porch of his cottage on tho rise of the hill Maria Cooney had surrendered. He had brought the aggressive girl who had called him a big ugly-looking pike 'of a man, who had tendered her poll to his devouring lips, to her knees. Johnny Claffey turned around to behold his triumph. The shawl had slipped from Maria Cooney's ehould-ers. Her face was white, her eyes shone liks stars seen through a mist, hei* arms were reaching out to him. She looked magnificent and dramatic in the moonlight. "Johnny .'" There was an appeal in the voice, as seductive as the first note of the cuckoo in the woods of Kilclooney in the springtime. It struck Johnny Claffey haid and all over. He> saw, in a dim way, the whole landscape on the hillside transformed into a place of wondrous magic. Then he had lifted Maria Cooney off the ground. And he was not out in his geftgraphy this time. It too-k a good while to furnish the cottage in imagination that night on the rise of the hill. It was a process over which there was a delightful procrastination. The discreet moon moved down the sky and threw long shadows under the walls. When Maria Cooney and Johnny Claffey came forth again things had adjusted themselves. The note of surrender had died out of MariaCooney's voice, Johnny Claffey was not so full of himself. He'h?d had his little innings. Maria Cooney stood before the stumps and Johnny 'Claffey had gone out to field for ever. "Up ye come now until we be telling Pat Glennon the day is fixed," Maria Cooney was s^yillg as they came out. "I'd sooner leave it to yourself, Maria. I'm kind of " Johnny Claffey did not like to say — so soooi — that he was kind of ashamed, but that's what he meant. "You jusi put your legs under you," Maria Cooney commanded briefly, and they w-ent up the ri&e of the hill together. Their marching order was symbolical of the way they were to travel through life. Maria Cooney. brisk of step, active of frait, direct of beaming, was leading. Jolmy Claffey ploughed faithfully behind her.