The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 26 November 1908, Page 3

The Storyteller

MAGGIE'S DISCONTENT

Until her cousin, Bridie Dempsey', came down ' from the city to pay them a visit the previous summer;- Maggie' Shanahan and t7i h3PPieS? and St COntented of mortals, and mdeed well she might be, since, being the, only child- of good and fond even doting, parents.' the girl seemed to have had from her cradle pretty much everything she' wished for simlV* K re '< he u and desjres had always been of the simplest Her father was gardener to Mr. Langrishe, of Dunalien Manor and the pretty lodge at the entrance gates, in IveUinl, HVed ' ?*** SUCh a daint y - d desirable • dwelling place as often caused much better-off folk than they were to regard it with an envious and longing eye. The little house was with roses and jessamine, woodbine, and V rfhe' ar CC eh c hh p CPer f 7 themSelves in a eha ™"g tangle round !Z f 1 lOW verandah >- and P^ped curiously in by the •edge of. the open latticed windows as if straining their necks to get a glimpse of the sweet little rooms within. -« ' The flower-beds in front were filled with every kind of blossom, some even of the rarest sort, which "Mr. Shanahan, as a h.ghly-prmleged person, was allowed to carry away from the overflow of the manor garden; while behind the house w^ wide plot for vegetables, and a green grassy lawn on which Magg.e might bleach her linen or put her pet lamb to gTaze • and yet further off,- ha.f-hidden by the edge' of the woof Sy' cWk V e r Yn. thC girl k6Pt Va " ed as^tment of chickens and ducklings, rabbits, guinea-pigs, and ofcfen pets. the f l 71 •a " thCSe 3nd aSSistin « her m ° th & with the housework, and helping father with his flowers after tea dinin the long summer evenings,- Maggie never knew whafcit was '^o be lonely or -dull. To be sure it was V€ry quiet especially when 'the family' were away and there^we'e no lodge-gates to be opened, and never a stir broke the stillness of tKe air save the cawing of the crows as they flew ..homeward across he wood each evening to the great rookery that lay in the high home tints rr k y "* *" *~ "™ And then-sometimes he brought Watt Kennedy«,with him and Mrs Shanahan would bid that young man kind* welcW and (while Maggie's eyes shyly seconded the invitation) in*te him to stay to tea. On these evenings, indeed, the "time seS • actually to fly, while the little party laughed and chattTd merrily over a pleasant tea table graced by honey and UltacT^nd oTw «.T ' and genCr ° US PlatCS ° f h ° me - made b -^ - some of Watt s favorite currant cake, which, as if by some strange TTZrSS** never failed to have taked a * ainst S. S Walter Kennedy was tall and strong, blue-eyed and fairhaired, as fine a spec!me n of young Irish manhood „ one need wish to see, and 'a great champion entirely' at aU £J S hurhng and football matches> He und y er - gard a e L manor, and a very special favorite with Maggie's father- "but for that matter Watt was a great favorite with everybody eve, with Mrs. Shanahan, who was never too'easily pleased As for Maggie herself, she was young, and as yet not altogether surVor her own heart; still she should have been sorely disl PP o"nted had Watt failed them in one of his, weekly, visits, for which she never neglected to 'dress up' a .little, and put on * fresh piece of ribbon, feeling as she did so a new and exultant'gladnessXt £* glass reflected back such a fresh and t undeniably winsome ™ B o dle cm P sev ' s visit s had come about quite unexpected^ Mrs Shanahan had received a letter from the girl's mother w h o was her first cousin,. and lived in Dublin. Bridie .hadbeen m and in hospital, .he letter said. She had jusf returned home but was still very delicate; they were doing all they couTd for her but with so many other mouths to 'feed and the fo, of the gurl's wages-Bridie worked in a factory-they were hard set enough to give her the- care and. nourishment' J needed much less send her anywhere for change of air, as the doctor had advised. Between one thing and another, her illness had been a terrible drain on them, etc., etc. Every In" of tht totter said p.ainly, as couid be, 'Perhaps -you wou dask £ down for a while to the country?' and even without such ob vious hmtng, kind-hearted Mrs. Shanahan would have been' only too. willing to come to the rescue.

' God help, any poor girl that has to spend he" days at work in those smoky, unwholesome places ! To be sure, a week or two in the country would do the poor child a pow3r of good,' she reflected, in motherly tones, with a. grateful glance at the rosy cheeks and clear eyes of her own" fair-headed darling. 4 Do you write, Maggie, by the early post, and ask Bridie to come down for a while. She'll be a bit of company i too, fo«yourself, alanna.' A day or two later, with commendable promptness, Mis.-? Bridie duly arrived. She was a slight, dark-haired, pasty-faced girl, her excessive pallor no doubt being partly due to har recent illness. Mrs. Shanahan 's motherly bosom glowed with benevolence at the thought of all the good and pleasure this girl, newly come from the hot and dusty city, must derive from a stay in such pleasant surroundings, amid all the beautiful sigh;s and sounds of f he country With pardonable pride, on the first day of her arrival, Maggie conducted the visitor round her domain, showing her all the beauty-spots of the garden before displaying her multifarious other interests. But her cousin regarded all her treasured belongings with" lack-lustre eyes. ' Them roses and geraniums are very nice to look at,' she admitted, 'but my! they must take a terrible lot of time and care! And then in the winter I suppose they all die on you?' Maggie's lamb, her chickens, and rabbits evoked even less enthusiasm. ' Messy things,' the other declared with a sniff. 4 I don't know how you can bother your head with them, feeding and minding them all so regularly.' Then when evening came, the excessive stillness and quiet annoyed her. 4 Is it always as lonely as this?' she asked with an exaggerated shiver. ' The country is all very well for a day's pleasuring, *but when night comes give me the city and the gaslamps, the life and brightness of the streets. My !it must be terribly dreary here in winter time!' 4 I don't think so. We r.ever find it lonely or dull,' Maggie answered, feeling rather hurt. - ' Don't. you really, now? , Being buried alive, that's what I call it, 1 the other said with a shrug of her thin shoulders. Nothing escaped the town-bred damsel's unfriendly criticism, least of all poor Watt Kennedy when he came into tea with John SHanahan on the following evening. • A regular country bumpkin, with his rough clothes an.i coarse, horny hands,' Miss Dempsey pronounced him. ' But he seems quite smitten with you, Maggie. 'Surely you're never thinking of marrying a great rough creature like that ! ' 4 He didn't ask me to marry him,' Maggie answered stiffly. 4 But he means to, evidently, by the way he looks at you with those great, sheepish eyes of his,' and Miss Dempsey burst into a loud jeering laugh. Maggie blushed hotly. She was very indignant at her cousin's rudeness ; and yet, were Bridie's sneers already puttin" her out of conceit with her lover— if she could call him that? Was he really so rough and uncouth as Bridie pictured' him? for it seemed to Maggie once or twice that Miss Dempsey was herself throwing eyes in Watt's direction. The -thought made her angry ; most of all, and unreasonably, with the innocent Watt himself. And yet, it might be only a jealous fancy 6f hers— for in her frequent confidential moments Bridie was fond of dilating on the many charms of her own young man in town, who held the position of assistant in a provision grocer's shop Maggie, indeed, had already heard so much of her cousin's young man ' that she could easily bring up his picture before her— his curly hair and ' lovely dark eyes,' even down to such details as his gold watch and chain, and the gloves and the brown boots which he wore on Sundays. 'A good-looking girl like you, Maggie, could get a good match any day in Dublin, a nice young man with plenty of money, to.' Bridie had said with unwonted generosity, on the eve of her departure for home. 'If I were you, I'm- sure I'd never be content to end my days here in this dead-and-alive spot. You could easily get a situation in town if you warned one. Look at me, now. I could go into domestic service if I liked, but I'd rather be in the factory, earning six or eight shillings a week, and have my every evening off, and no one o ask any questions as to where I spend my time. I tell you Magic, if once had a week in Dublin, and saw the grand shops, and the theatres, and all the life and fun, you'd think very little of this sleepy, hole-and-corner place down here.' With whatever intention or object in view, her cousin succeeded at last in planting the seeds of discontent pretty deeply :in Maggie Shanahan's heart. In dreaming and pondering on , fairyland scenes and joys of the city, as Bridie had so eloquently

. depicted them, she quickly lost interest in all the daily small duties she had hitherto found so pleasant; with her father, her mother, and with Watt most of all, she grew strangely distant and dull.^ The latter, poor seeing- how coldly she now. treated him, soon ceased to visit the lodge at all, which mad-? Maggie still more discontented and restless. , ' ' The child- is fretting ; maybe 'tis lonely she is for her . cousin,* good Mrs. Shanahan thought, as she- watched b«>r daughter narrowly. • After all, 'tis lonesome here for a young thing like her, without any of her own age to keep her company. I was hoping that Watt and herself— but perhaps a little change to the city would do her good— and .it would' brighten her to be with Bridie for a while.' Before Maggie had time to know what was afoot, it was already arranged between her mother and Mrs. Dempsey that the girl should go up to Dublin to stay for a week or maybe longer with her relatives there. The brightening face with which Maggie received the suggestion made her mother feel sure she had hit on the right cure for ' her "little girl's ' unwonted ' fit of the blues.' Maggie was certainly looking forward eagerly to a joyous time in the city, but that she could ever^ contemplate remaining and possibly taking a situation there was a thing as unsuspected by, as it would have been incomprehensible to/ the loving mother. Maggie, however, got her first set-back as soon as she arrived at the Broadstone Terminus. Instead of finding her aunt and cousins there to meet her, as Bridie had been met by them at Dunallen, with open arms of welcome, she was launched helplessly into a bewildering sea of strange faces, of hurrying porters, and noisy cardrivers, one of whom, after looking in vain for her friends, she was glad to engage at length, though at a very exorbitant fare, to drive her to her aunt's abode. In one of her infrequent fits of boastfulness, Bridie Dempsey had informed Maggie that the house they lived in was a fine one which had at one time been the residence of an Irish lord. This was possibly true; nevertheless Maggie felt sadly disapl pointed when she caught sight of this mansion, whfch was one of a long row of tall, forbidding-looking houses in a narrow back street. To her further dismay, her cousins, she found, only occupied the back rooms, moreover, approached by a dark and ill-smelling staircase, the common property of all the oth°r occupants of the tenement. Bridie was still engaged at the factory, and Maggie was met by Mrs. Dempsey, a red-faced, and rather coarse-looking woman, whom she had never met before, and who laughed loudly and long at the country girl's ingenuous admission that she had sup^posed her cousins to own the whole of the house. ' Bedad, you must think us very rich people entirely,' she said. 'It takes me all my time to pay for the few rooms 'we have, goodness knows,' and she named a sum four times as greai as the rent of decent laborers' cottages near Maggie's home": The girl looked about her curiously, with a surprise and even disgust, which she found it hard to conceal. Grime and smuts lay on everything, .walls, ceiling, floor, and furniture. ' Even the chair which" Mrs. Dempsey brought forward was covered thickly with dust, till the good woman, noticing how quickly Maggie lifted her pretty new navy-blue skirt, suddenly "thought of sweeping the offending particle^ away with a dirty dishcloth. 4 Botheration to it for dirt, its everywhere. I used to be like you when I first came from the country, but sure now we've grown used to it and never notice it,' she said. The windows, guiltless "of curtains and covered only by a stained and ragged blind, could hardly be seen. through for the smoke and dirt that lay heavily encrusted inside and outside the glass. That seemed of less matter, however, since the background on which they looked was surely of the unloveliest. Huge factories with ever-belching chimneys, and the "unkempt backs of tall, but poverty-stricken, houses crowding -closely in together, was all that might be seen, while from several of the open windows long poles stretched out bespread with ill-washed badly-colored rags and tatters of clothes. Not a tree, nor J tendril of ivy, not even a single blade of grass was there to redeem all that broad expanse of one iota of its ugliness. ' Have you no piece of garden, no trees or flowers at allj>' Maggie asked in dismay. ' Not a bit, acushla,' Mrs. Dempsey answered, with a glance • at a broken window-bi.x_filled with .slimy and unwholesomelooking clay in which a few withered stalks of flowers still remained. *We tried to grow some, time and- again, bur sure nothing would thrive for us here without either air or sunshine.-' ' Without air or sunshine.' The words sank- deeply into Maggie's mind. She had been feeling ravenously hungry coming up in the train, but row with three or four younger Demp.

members of the family, who have come back from Europe with all the mannerisms of the English^« fast- set, ' treat her in" a manner which would be resented "by even the humblest menial. It is in passing through this time of probation that the nobility of her character and her beautiful faith enable her to bear the burden. Not only does she come unscathed out of the crucible, but her sweetness and her high moral courage help to bring others to a better sense and knowledge of the real object of life Matters eventually right themselves, and a healthy, old-fashioned termination is reached by the heroine marrying a high-minded friend of her younger days. How all this comes about the reader must find out for himself. The author spares not her pen in scoring those women with domestic ties who squander theirmoney and time at bridge parties, and lavish their affections on pet poodles, whilst neglecting their children. There is a Catholic atmosphere about the story, but the religious side does not obtrude itself. The interest is maintained to the end, and the book is laid down with the feeling that the author has struck a right note in calling attention to the shortcomings of the leaders of society in these new countries-

seys newly come in from school,' and a fragrant and steaming, if somewhat greasy, dish of Irish stew set before her, and all this hideous grime and unloveliness everywhere about her, her appetite . suddenly fled. So far the joys and delights of a city life seemed largely a delusion" and a snare.

Her walk with Bridie through the city that evening to which she had been eagerly looking forward, was even a greater disillusion. The shop-windows were certainly lovely, Jbut they had this disadvantage in Maggie's eyes, that they made her long for money that she had not, and that she could not have afforded to spend even were it hers. . But' as they came through the more crowded and fashionable thoroughfares, the girls saw and heard things which, to Maggie's cheeks at least, brought a flush of shame and embarrassment, making her long to get safely home and as quickly as she could. But Bridie was in no hurry; she was to meet 'her young man ' after'his shop was closed, in the hope that she might induce him to take Maggie and herself to the theatre on his ' night-off.' When they did meet him, however, a sickly and sallow-faced lad, who seamed from his complexion to have already absorbed much of the lard which he handled, Bridie's young man was already in deep and congenial converse with another young person, and had apparently no eyes for anyone else. Bridie went home in tears, and Maggie, greatly disillusioned, made up her mind that she at least did not wish to go to the theatre, or anywhere else, with her cousin's faithless swain.

That night, as she lay awake in bed, trying to forget her sordid surroundings while she listened to the deep breathing of the two grimy-faced younger Dempseys who shared her couch, Maggie thought with a new gratitude and tenderness of her loving father and mother, with an eager desire and longing that amounted to actual hunger, of her own beautiful, immaculate, little blue and white bedroom in the fragrant woodland nestwhich was given her for a home; and she determined that as soon as she could in decency do so, she would bid good-bye to her town-bred cousins and shake for ever from her feet the dust of Dublin and its streets.

Less than a week later she was speeding merrily along the white read that led from Dunallen station to the lodge-gates of the manor, while her father and mother, sitting beside her in the little pony-car, looked at her with eyes full of welcome and gladness. The scent of the pine trees, new-washed by a shower, floated like incense on the air, the birds sang in tlve woods, the sun shone out, and the whole world seemed full of joy and beauty and brightness. And then, as if to make up the one thing wanting, whom should they meet near their journey's enl but Watt Kennedy himself, looking, to Maggie's eyes, oddly grave and wistful.

Her father pulled up the pony with a jerk. ' I've got my little girl back again, you see, Watt. You'll come up, lad, and take a cup of tea with us?'

Watt looked straight into Maggie's face. Something he saw there brought a sudden light in his eyes, a warm glow of pleasure to the honest, sunburnt cheeks.

' I will, and thank you, sir, 1 he said simply. ' There's hardly room in the car for any more of us,' John Shanahan said, debatingly. 'Do you get down, Maggie, my girl, and bring Watt along home with jou. You'll be there near as soon as ourselves. '

So the two young people, with strangely uplifted hearts, went happily home together.