MATT SWEENY’S PENANCE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18832, 21 March 1931, Page 9 (Supplement)

MATT SWEENY’S PENANCE

By NINA CONDRON.

Brigid Roche was a neighbourless woman when the old Sweenys died. The two farms stood together on a wild sweep of stony land five miles from Carrocullen, the main town on the Island of Inishoole.

On a cold March morning, after a winter of storms and loneliness, Brigid set out for Carrocullen determined to abandon her lonely home and seek shelter with her married daughter. Tears rained down her cheeks as she battled against the east wind, and the limestone road was hard under her feet. For twenty years of wifehood and fifteen years of widowhood she had ruled her own house and land. Now, she supposed, the cow, the pig, and the few cocks and hens would have to be added to the stock of her son-in-law. The bed, the kitchen table, the holy pictures, and the dresser with its bright collection of delf jugs would be divided up between all the members of her family. Henceforth she would be a portionless old woman idling away her days on a cold hearth of charity without comfort or honour. By the wishing well she sat down to rest. The sobs shook her as she thought of her misfortune and she prayed in her heart to the Blessed Virgin to lighten her sorrow.

At the post-office in Carrocullen she heard news that was a direct answer to her prayers. The tears dried on her firm red cheeks and her eyes began to sparkle with hope. In the street a stranger was talking to a group of Island people. He was dressed in a fine grey suit. There was a gold chain across his stomach- His hat was wide and elegant in shape. He had a little pointed Yankee beard, grey as his suit.

Looking at this stout, proud man it was hard to believe he was Matt Sweeny, the son of the old Sweenys who were dead. It was forty years since he went from Inishoole, a slip of a lad, to make his fortune in America. By all appearances there was no doubt about the fortune. Brigid was awed by his magnificence. She came fluttering out of the post office, and drew near to the group fingering the tassels of her shawl.

Somebody said, “Here is Brigid Roche, sir, your near neighbour.” Matt Sweeny took off his hat and bowed to Brigid, saying in a grand American voice, “Good day, ma’am. I’m surely proud to meet you.” Brigid said, shyly, “Indeed, then, and you’re welcome; but I’m thinking it’s a poor place you’ll find Carrocullen after the grandeur you would be getting in New York.”

Matt hooked his fingers in his waistcoat and thrust out his belly. “Poor enough, poor enough now. But when I heard the old people were^gone —God rest them —and the land left desolate there was nothing for me to do but come back and tend it. Isn’t the farm beyond in the hands of the Sweenys as long as the memory of mankind?”

There was a profound murmur of agreement from the bystanders and Brigid wagged her head wisely. Then she said, “The place is empty and neglected on you, sir; if there is a thing at all you would be wanting let you ask me for it. Let you take turf from my own stack for kindling until such time as you cut your own from the bog.” Two women near by began to giggle, and the one said to the other, “Isn’t it well for her to say that when the whole world knows she lifted every bit of turf from the fine stack old John Sweeny left after him last autumn!” A third woman whispered, “Isn’t it well for her entirely to make up to Matt and him home with a fortune and likely looking for a housekeeper. Let her scheme rightly now and we will be dancing at a wedding before so long.”

There is no doubt the same thought came to Brigid- as she went lightly over the road homo. She smiled to herself thinking of the foolish tears she had shed in the morning. She could go back to her house now in peace; sure of the consolation of a good neighbour. Let her daughter keep her charity yet awhile. She wourd be mistress of her own farm still, and maybe another body’s farm along with it; w'asn’t she young, after ail, not a day over fiftyfive, and straight and strong as the mast of a hooker? Matt was a fine man, God bless him; but any man alone in a house is a poor, thing. There would be many a thing she could do for him. When she baked a white cake she would take half of it, hot and steaming, in to Matt. When she churned, she would offer him sweet butter. When she spun out the wool

she would keep back enough to make a pair of socks, or even a gansy itself, for the lonely man. The lovely days of spring came to Inishoole. The air was soft and full of the scent of new grass and quickening soil. White clouds tossed about in the high, blue sky, and white spray tossed up along the cliffs from a blue Atlantic. There was a music of larks and of young lambs and of hens calling to their chickens. Matt Sweeny worked slowly and deliberately on his patch of land, sowing late oats and potatoes. His fine grey suit was put away. He wore the homespun trousers of an Islander and the white flannel bawneen. Only his Yankee beard and his stylish hat marked him out for the travelled man he was. As he moved about the upturned earth he sang snatches of the old songs of his boyhood; soft Gaelic lilts like the sound of the sea that beat eternally round Inishoole. The years of his exile became unreal to him before the strong influences of the life that now lay before him. The harsh twang of foreign speech faded from him and be spoke with the tongue of his own people. His neighbour was good to him, but he took her kindness calmly, as he had taken the kindnesses of all the women he had known, giving nothing in return. It did not occur to him that there was anything he could give. The habit of celibacy was strong in him. It is easy enough to remain a bachelor at the age of fifty-seven. Brigid was disappointed. In the long, light evenings he would stand and talk to her by the low wall which divided their land. But he always kept to his own side of the wall, and always it was of the crops or the beasts he would talk. He did not, tell her of the richness and ease of his life abroad or of its glittering strangeness. Likely enough there had been no ease or richness, but Brigid did not suspect that, and watched anxiously for some sign of his wealth and experience that would satisfy her. He did not invite her to cross the threshold of his house, though he was ready to give her his socks to mend or his white flannel coat to wash. Brigid performed these tasks eagerly, but Matt remained casual and distant.

un a cool July night Matt Sweeny’s sow littered. It was a fine litter. There were nine fat bonhams. On the same night Brigid stayed up to her sow, who was also with young. In the early dawn she called over the wall to Matt to come to her aid. Unless something could be done quickly the sow would die. Panting with anxiety, she told him there were three dead bonhams already. Matt left his sty with a backward glance and followed her. The sow was saved, but of all the litter only one bonham survived. Brigid wept. Sl}e was tired, and it was terrible, to think of the twenty pounds of good money lost to her by the night’s failure. She was angry with the sow and angry with Matt, who told her she

had only herself to thank. “Didn’t you half starve the animal,” he reminded her, “and wasn’t it myself urged you to give her hot mash night and morning? And sorra bit of you heeded me.”

Now Matt’s fine pigs could be seen wandering away towards the grassy cliffs every day, and Brigid’s lean sow and one little bpnham went along with them. Every time Brigid looked at the pigs together her disappointment hurt her. When Matt looked at them he swelled with a farmer’s pride. Any fortune or success that had come to him in his life abroad was nothing to this brave show of young pigs growing up under his hand. He calculated to the last penny the sum of money they would bring when the time came to sell them.

On an autumn evening he went to the cliffs to drive the animals home. One of his pigs was missing. Peering over the cliff edge, he found it, a dead thing, two hundred feet below, rising and falling with the green water. He was bitterly dismayed. Then an evil impulse seized him. The lean sow was rooting away by herself, a stupid, good-for-nothing creature. Her bonham ran before him with his own pigs. As like as nine peas in a pod they were, not even Brigid would be able to pick it out as her own if he bluffed her a bit. He picked up stones and threw them at the lean sow, driving her far away. Then he hurried his herd home and locked them in the sty.

With brazen face he told Brigid her bonham was fallen over the cliff and the mother was still seeking it and refused to be driven in. Brigid ran out without her shawl, crying her bad luck wks too great to be borne and that it would be well .is herself were to follow the bonham- 4 over the cliff and put an end to it. She found the sow coming quietly down the road with a small wound in its side, and her thoughts grew dark. All night she lay awake brooding on her misfortune. Her disappointment

at Matt’s coolness towards her and her sorrow for the lost pig rose and mingled together, swamping her at last in a blind hnd baffled sort of fury. The wound on the sow was a mystery. It might be the blow of a stock or stone. If Matt did it, w’hat spite had urged him? Maybe he had taken her one pig and the lost bonham was his own. The suspicion came to her in such a passion of evil temper that in her heart she did not seriously believe it. But is was a good enough vent for her misery. In the morning she rushed out at Matt and hurled at him the accusation, piling tirade after tirade upon it. He was a dirty, scheming graball; taking what he could lay hands on, be it bread or turf or labour, and giving nothing in return. Now he had doubtless taken her pig. Let the law come and judge between them; she had suffered from him as much ks she could bear. She left him speechless and went runnings towards Carrooullen.

She came back with the Sergeant of the Garda, still riding triumphantly on the crest of her anger. The Sergeant said he could not arrest a decent strong farmer like Matt without some evidence. The long story of unneighbourly conduct that Brigid had already told him three times was of no use, but he would see what he could do. Right enough it was hard on Brigid to have no pig whatever and her neighbour to have nine.

The people of Carrocullen heard of the dispute and hurried along the road to the farms to see what would happen.

The Sergeant bade Matt bring out the pigs, and asked Brigid to identify her own. Squealing, the little pigs ran round, and Brigid, beginning to feel ashamed of herself, ran round after them. She tired to catch first one and then another. Their yells were ear-splitting. They tangled themselves in her skirts and ran between her legs, trippiTTg her up. She fell sprawling, and the people from Carro-

cullen laughed and applauded. Then the Sergeant, being a chivalrous man, came to her aid, and between them they cornered the smallest of the bonhams.

Now the Sergeant ordered Matt to drive the remainder back to the sty and to bring forth the two sows. “Put the bonham a good distance from the mothers and see to which one it will run,” he said. Matt carried the bonham to a far corner of the yard and released it. With a last indignant cry it ran for Matt’s sow and began to suck. There was a cheer from the onlookers. Brigid ran into her house and slammed the door. Her shame was unbearable. There was but one small satisfaction left to her. She would live at enmity with Matt Sweeny to the end of her days. She would speak no word to him, nor offer him any comfort, if he was lying at the door of death itself. Anything she could do to harm him that she would do.

As for the Sergeant, his reputation was made. Even the parish priest was moved to praise him, and declared his judgment was wise as the Judgment of a Solomon.

It was a consolation to Matt to hear this. If Father Walsh said the Sergeant was right, the Sergeant must be right. It was nearly the same as though he had not stolen the pig at all. For days he hugged this idea to himself to ease his conscience. Beside that, the lean sow was a bad mother. The pig with her could have done no good. With Matt’s sow it was flourishing. In a way, h© was making the pig, and surely he had every right to it. But he had to remind himself of these arguments many times, for at the back of his mind there was fear of the evil he had done. Winter fell upon the two isolated farms. Side by side Matt and Brigid went about their tasks in silence. Twice Matt made an effort to bring back the old friendly relationship, for he missed the cakes and the mending and the neighbourly days. It was Brigid’s delight on these occasions to turn her back on him and to pretend not to hear his voice as he called to her over the wall. “Let him go to hell out of that and bad cess to him!” she would mutter. All the time he was nearer to hell than she suspected. The pig was preying on his mind. One night in January he sat by his fire, a broken man. His fears could no longer be overcome by specious argument. They swarmed about him like so many little devils with red-hot pincers nipping him here and there until he writhed. There was a New Year mission in Carrocullen. In the chapel that morning he had cowered for an hour and a half under the denunciations of a Carmelite Father. The subject of the sermon was the sin of bad confessions. It was a mortal, soul-eating sin, meriting the just punishment of eternal agony. Was it not Matt’s sin on top of that other sin of theft? Every confession made during

the last four months had been an incomplete, a bad confession, omitting the telling of the theft of the pig. Every mass of which he had partaken was a mass unto his condemnation. The piled-up accumulation of his guilt staggered him. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. If he died tonight he would go straight to hell—and how could he be sure he would not die to-night? A great desire for truth and forgiveness came over him; a greater desire for spiritual safety. He looked at the clock. It was just six. There would be time to go into Carrocullen and make full confession now. It would not be so bad after all, for he could tell his sins to the strange priest, and Father Walsh would not know a word about it. He would be able to hold his head as high as ever. All the way to Carrocullen he was shaking with fright. In every shadow along the road he could see the outline of Satan waiting for his soul. In every rustle of the wind he could hear deathly wings beating about his head. In the dim light of the chapel he knelt gasping for breath. There were six penitents to go before him. He prayed that they might be quick. He found himself in the dark, safe, little box and the voice of the strange priest blessed him. He began to recite his sins, wondering for the first time what penance would be given him. Ah, it was an ordinary penance, a matter of prayers and offerings. But the voice of the priest went on. He must return the pig to the wronged woman this very night. Matt protested. He had fattened the pig all this time; was it not partly his? But there was no mercy for him. The Carmelite Father rebuked him, talking of the sin of material greed and the awful poverty of his soul. Let him attend now to the healing of his weak and evil morals by faith and prayer and restitution. Matt Sweeny went away with bowed head. He was free and forgiven, but he had a heavy price to pay. To lose the pig would be deep sorrow, but to tell Brigid of his sin would be more than his manliness could bear. He pondered long. If he could think of some way out of this part of his penance it would not be so bad. It would be an awful thing to have a woman crowing over him.

He reached home. The fire was out; the house desolate. There was nothing to eat. In his preoccupation he had forgotten to buy bread and tea in Carrocullen. There was little oil in the lamp. The light flickered and threatened to go out. He sat in the gloom with his head in his hands in an agony 6f thought. An idea glimmered before him; he seized it. He could give the pig to Brigid as a present. He could do that, and save his shame. The priest had not said he was to tell her he had stolen it; he had only said he was to give it back. He rose up and then sank down again. His head drooped down between his hands. It was no use; he couldn't give up the pig. He couldn’t bear to see Brigid trumphing over him, getting top price for it at the market, and it stuffed out with his own good feeding. In the silence he heard the clattering of fire-irons. There was only the thickness of the wall between himself and Brigid. No doubt she had a good fire ■within, and every comfort. A woman has the knack of making comfort wherever she it. She was singing. Bad cess to her, what right had she to be so gay? He felt weak with the hunger after his long walk. That was good bread she made, and now he dare not ask her for the loan of a loaf, much less expect the gift of one. It was a poor thing for a man to be eating shop bread all the time. It was a mean thing for a man to have to wash out his own clothes and hang them out to dry. It was a shame before the world. God help him, he was

lonely and neglected. In the urgency of his self-pity a new thought was born to him. Why in God’s name had he no wife to perform these menial duties? There was Brigid, the width of a stone away. Why in God’s name had he never thought of it before? The pig now—there would be no need tp part with it altogether. If he married Brigid, what was hers would be his. Wasn’t that the solution of the whole trouble, and of every trouble in heaven or earth? Feverishly he searched for pencil and paper. Slowly he wrote. At the end of an hour he wiped his face and read in a low tone to see how it would sound, “Dear Ma’am, —The pig parted us. Let the pig bring us together again. I send him as a gift. I send him as a peacemaker and a matchmaker. Will you marry me now

and there will be no call for us to be fighting?” He went to the sty and by the light of a match chose out the fattest young pig. He brought it into the house and laboriously tied the note to its neck, then he lifted it across the wall. Lightly he tapped at Brigid’s door. She opened it to the extent of a small crack. He pushed the pig into the crack and ran back to his own house, leaving the door open. F&gerly he listened. The lamp had gone out now and he w-as in darkness. It was half an hour before anything happened and his heart was tightening in despair. Then he heard Brigid undo the latch and call his name. There w r as a lovely soft sound in her voice. He ran out.

A PERSIAN RUG. i— ; What right has my profane young foot to tread Upon the work of ancient men? The thread Of sacrificial fire creeps through, and smoke Of incense calls the faithful to invoke Forgotten gods. Here all the paths of life Are interwoven, roads of sorrow, strife; Of glamour there; conflicting forces vie, Led on by mystic scrolls and haunting eye Of sacred beast. I stand amazed to hear The Moslem chant of long-robed priests severe; I see dark slaves obeisance silent make. No, no! I would not for great Allah’s sake Disturb my rug. A Hindu ghost lies there. I’d rather leap a spaace to reach the stair! —Marcia Lewis Leach.