The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 5 June 1913, Page 5

The Storyteller

(By Alice Dease.)

THE BANK RECEIPT

There was one missing—the spotted heifer that Maureen had petted all the summer through. Hugh frowned as he counted his little herd again. Why must women needs go pet the beasts, taking from them the fear that God Himself gave for their protection ? But in a moment the frown was chased away by the remembrance of the girl followed everywhere by her pet, its ungainly limbs stumbling over banks and walls in valiant efforts to keep near the mistress that it loved.

‘ Take them home, Rory,’ he said, turning to the thin-coated sheep-dog who crouched behind him in the heather. ‘Home, I say as Rory’s eyes questioned wistfully whether the task was to be carried out alone: then, very unwillingly, he lurched up towards the cattle, intimating with a short snapping bark that they were to continue their homeward way along the mountainside. Far below, the outlines of the farm buildings showed as dark blotches against the grey expanse of

rough pasturage. The light had failed too much for the yellow of the thatch or even for the white walls to be distinguished, and Hugh realised that he must hurry if he was to reach the boggy lake, where he guessed the foolhardy beast had been trapped, before the night came on. A cutting wind from the north-east swept on him as he breasted the hill, and a heavy cap of clouds hung on the heights above him. He had the track of the other cattle before him. They had wandered far that day in search of herbage, , but all except the truant had come back before night to their usual haunts. Hugh knew the place they had been to, well: a little lake, sunk down in the heart of the mountain, with a treacherous band around it where the grass was green above, even in the winter-time, but underneath the bog made no foothold for the unwary; and, clambering at last to the topmost spur above him, Hugh was just able to make out a, shapeless form on the green, held prisoned just as he expected. It was a steep climb down, for he chose a more direct path than that by which the cattle had come, but once beside the lake he did not take long to free' the heifer. She was a small, light beast, and active enough to help .herself as soon ,as - her' legs were partially freed, but she stood quite still, partly from fright, partly, perhaps, as an effect of the petting which Hugh considered had helped her disaster, whilst he wiped the bogstuff off her with handsful of reeds and bracken. It was not only from seeking cattle that Hugh was familiar with the track along which he now hurried his rescued charge. Far as it was from the road, or even from any other dwelling, this mountain-top had been chosen by a lone old woman as her home, and Hugh was a frequent visitor in the cabin where Katty Duggan lived, with her pair of goats and half a dozen of long-legged hens. They were both solitary beings, and maybe that was what had drawn them together. Hugh was a fever orphan. His parents had gone the same day to their long rest, and the boy, left behind, had never known any home but the corner of whatever farmhouse he happened to be working in.. He had always looked forward to going to America when he came to be twenty years of age, for it is considered useless in Drinagh and around for lads to face the hard climate and harder work of the States any younger. But at nineteen Hugh had gone as - servant, boy to the Carmoclys, just for a few months he had said; but the months had lengthened, and he had come to be twenty, and twenty-two, and soon he would be twentyfive, and yet he had not gone away. And, meanwhile, Maureen Carmody had grown to womanhood. It was summer-time when Hugh came across old Katty Duggan. Every sod of turf for all her winter’s firing had to be carried on her back from the turf banks far below right up the mountain to her cabin. He had taken the creel from her the first time they had met, for it went against him to see a woman, and an old woman worse than all, with her back bent over such a load. After that her turf-reek grew apace, for it was seldom an evening passed that he did not take up a basket or two, until all the lot was carried. Then he found that the water on the mountain was too brackish for the tea, and if ever the sheep or cattle brought him that way there was always a tin can in his hand with sweet fresh water in it, drawn from the well in the hollow. At first he had talked of the time when he’d be going, but soon that dropped, though Katty knew ho had his passage paid, for she’d seen it in his hand the day he bought it with his hard-earned savings, and the old woman counted on having him till the end. And he was all she had now— but for Paddy, so she maintained, in spite of everything; though the neighbors knew well that Paddy, too, had gone home, for hadn’t he the two feet already in the grave when nothing would do him but to go off back to the States, and he only after coming home a few months ; but there’s no man so restless as he that has the wasting sickness on him, so Paddy had gone off £ to put the winter oyer him, beyond,’ as he said. But that winter and . twenty others had gone by, and no word had come to the old mother who still waited. Hugh found her very ailing when, opening her

he drove the little heifer before him into the - widow’s kitchen. There was place for the beast beside the goats, and it was too dark now to get her home to-night. , Katty had been crouching over the turf sods that smouldered redly on the hearth, but his hand; upon 'the latch had made her start, as though after all these years it were still possible that her own Paddy was come back. * God save you kindly !’ said Hugh. ‘ Why, Katty, what ails you? Did you think it was a thief you had, cornin’ to steal all your big fortune?’ and he laughed as he laid his hand on the shrunken shoulder. ‘Faith, what would a thief be wantin’.wid the likes o’ me?’ retorted the old woman querulously. ‘What, indeed?’ repeated Hugh with another laugh at finding his jest so seriously taken. ‘ I’ll be in town to-morrow,’ he went on. ‘ls there e’er a thing I can be doin’ for you in it?’ The road to town was too long now for Katty’s old limbs, and it was Hugh who brought her whatever little wants the man coming round with the egg-car could not supply. It sometimes seemed that the packet of tea lasted longer when Hughie brought it, that the twist of tobacco was larger, the pinch of snuff more satisfying; once she had taxed him with adding from his own pocket to her order, but he would not admit that his skill in shopping was not alone responsible for this phenomenon. She would not have taken charity, yet, proffered thus, how could she refuse? And besides —but that was still her own secret. ‘ I was wearyin’ for your footstep, avick,’ she said, ignoring his question. ‘ Hughie, I’ve a thing to ask. Think well now, for I’m an old woman, an’ it won’t be for long. I’m lonesome up here, alone with meself, an’ what would happen me at all if I were took suddent an’ no one to go for the priest?’ ■She paused a moment, looking up to see the effect' of her words, but there was nothing yet beyond surprise to be read on Hughie ’s face. ‘Will you come up to me, avick?’ she pleaded. There’s the settle-bed an’ all ready, ever since the day that Paddy left me; an’ who has better reason than yourself to know that there’s enough turf to last us the winter through ? I’ll be gone, please God, ere ever the spring come in.’ She did not know what she was asking. No one but Hugh himself—and maybe, unknown to him, one other— the reason that had kept him all these years in Drinagh. Of course, a fever orphan was a very different thing from a common workhouse child ; yet even so, that a servant boy should dare to think of his master s daughter was a thing unheard of in a respectable house like the Carmodys’. Yet Hugh had dared to think of, to watch, to love . Maureen, but in so silent a way that no one dreamed - of such a possibility. Sometimes he questioned himself if he were not a fool to stay. If he had only gone four years ago to America he might by this have started to make a fortune. But deep in his heart he knew that such a thing could never have been. He might have put a few dollars by, but the first hungry child who begged from him, the first comrade in distress who confided in him, would have made an end to his little hoard : besides, and perhaps beyond this reason, he knew that the farm could not wait very long for the money of a rich son-in-law to keep it going. Any fair-day might make Maureen s marriage inevitable. There was a debt on the land on which interest had to be paid, no matter what the price of cattle might be. Had it not been so, the Carmodys would have been quite prosperous ; but pow things had to go before they had come to their full value. A little sum in hand could not be turned I over to advantage for fear that the next pay-day might § not be met without it, and it was only the united 1 determined efforts of Hugh himself and of grim old £ JohnCarmody that had so far warded off the evil hour, r n or John was no more anxious than Hugh to see a El stranger own the farm, and when Maureen married ■ money it would practically come to that. All dav 1 ! ° n S the y worked unceasingly, and it was only in long evenings that Hugh could feast his eyes on

Maureen. Sometimes carding wool, sometimes knitting, or even busy with her spinning-wheel, her. place was always where -the light of the oil-lamp fell, and he, sitting on the hearth by the big fleece bags, could watch and smoke and dream impossible dreams' for the future. And it was these evening hours that Katty asked him to give up—the golden hours of his life. He sat down on the low creppie-stool and pushed the turf in with his foot. She could not see his face now, blit she felt that for some unknown reason her plan was unacceptable. With a quiet gesture she laid her wrinkled, crooked, toil-marked hands on his. You don’t know,.you don’t know how I'm needin’ what I ask, she said, with piteous quivering in, her voice. ‘ I’ll come,’ he said, quickly,' gruffly, and he rose to his feet, as though afraid either of her thanks or that his own resolution would fail. But she did not speak, did not even say a mechanical word of thanks; only, as he went out, leaving the heifer to be called for in the morning, he caught a murmured Gaelic prayer that said ‘ God bless him !’ He meant to tell Mrs. Carmody of his proposed move next morning, and before leaving the loft under the kitchen roof where he had slept for' the past six years, he put his few belongings into a heap together but, going down, he saw that something more important than his own change of residence was taking up his mistress’s mind. ‘ Keep in the pony,’ John Carmody had bade him as he passed out to set at liberty the beasts that Rory had brought safely home the night before; ‘an’ throw the saddle on her when you’ve done with the milkin’ of the cows.’ ‘ Is it to town you’re goin’ this early ?’ asked Hugh carelessly, curious at this unusual journey; ‘ It is not,’ returned John Carmody with an almost vicious snap, that without further explanation told Hugh in a flash that the blow, so long expected, had fallen at last. He did not know that yesterday John Carmody had received a notice that, owing to the intended sale of the estate, the money which had been advanced on the security of the land must be repaid in full at no very distant date. There was a jobbing man on the Galway road who, it was well known, could give his son two hundred pounds when he went to look for a wife, and rumour had it that young Edward Gagahan was only waiting for the chance of getting Maureen Carmody. With himself wanting the girl and his father wanting the farm, there was little likelihood of the day’s negotiations proving fruitless, and to Hugh it was already a thing settled when he saw the pony’s grey quarters disappear round the corner of the mountain path. He had often thought of this day, and somehow in his imagination he had felt much keener pain than now he was feeling in reality. Nothing seemed to be real to-day ; nothing seemed to matter, except that his work should, be done. He could not remember afterwards having collected his tools, but in due time he found himself using them mechanically on the roof , of the old house on the holding that the Carmodys had, beyond Derrynea, where the cattle went for a change of grazing in the summer. It seemed as though there was nothing iii the world except this old roof on which he had to bind the thatch. Even when the job was done, it was more from habit than from any action of his that he turned upon his homeward way. It was only late afternoon, but he realised dully that the evening’s work had been hurried forward. ■ The kitchen was already prepared for the coming of the matchmaker. ‘ls that Hugh?’ It was Mrs. Carmody who greeted him. ‘Go out to the byre, lad, an’ bid Maureen hurry wid the feedin’ of them calves. The father may be in on us any minute now.’ Hugh turned as he was bidden, but as he did so he was at last gripped with the deep, tearing anguish that all day he had numbly been expecting, but that seized him now with the force he never could have even guessed at till it came. His footfall was noiseless in the slush of the yard, and he reached the door of the

byre unheard. Maureen was there, in the gloom, with the young calves pushing greedily around her. He could not “see her face, for it was best down over the bucket, but there were tears falling into the milk. At the sight of her, something rose up in his throat, something that he had forgotten, that he had never known since the far-away .days of his lonely childhood, when the terrible griefs of ten years old had been relieved by a passion of tears. He put his hand up to his face., Yes, he was crying, not with the dry, hard sobs of broken manhood, but with the hopeless, senseless tears of a child. Then suddenly she raised her head, and, dark as it was getting, through the tears of both, their eyes met. There were only two steps between them, and was it he or she who made those steps? Neither of them knew or cared. The milk-pail rolled unheeded in the straw, its white contents lost for ever to the hungry calves, who followed it; but to Hugh and Maureen understanding had come, and with it entire comfort. Then the pony’s footsteps clattered at the gate, and Mrs. Carmody’s voice brought them back to earth again. They could not hear her question, but her husband’s answer fell like lead upon their hearts. ‘Yes, they’ll be here all right. Neddy Gagahan is a soft fool —but I seen the bank receipt.’ ‘What ails you, avick ? Is it cornin’ here to me that has you all that bothered?’ It was Katty’s turn ' now to question Hugh, as an hour later he sat cowering over the fire; and, with the sudden impulse of confiding in someone that sometimes comes to those in overwhelming trouble, he told her all. She listened, never speaking, even when he’d - finished. It almost seemed as though she had not heard, for, when at last he broke the silence that had fallen on the little room, it was of her own concerns and not of his at all that she spoke. ‘Tell me,’ she whispered; ‘you’ve heard them speak of my Paddy, who went from me these twenty years an’ more?’ For a moment Hugh looked at her in speechless astonishment. What had her Paddy Duggan to say to the two lives that were being broken to-night ? Was the old woman wandering? Surely she was, and that must be the reason for her sudden wish for his companionship. ‘ Dead !’ he said., answering with less compassion than he would have felt at any other time. ‘To be sure an’ he’s dead. Where else would he be these” years else?’ ‘ Then, certain sure, he’ll never be coinin’ back to claim what is his own?’ she asked. ‘Not a thing ever will he claim from you but prayers,’ he answered, and then his head fell down on his hands again, and his mind went back to the old problem of how after to-night was he to live without Maureen, knowing now, God help her ! that she loved him. ‘ There, indeed, was the only answer. God help her! and God help him He did not know if it was minutes or longer that he sat thus in the darkened kitchen. It was only the sound of the old woman’s voice that roused him, and looking up he found that he was alone. Katty had left her side of the fire, and the voice that called him came from the little inner room. Half angrily he got up and peered through the door towards the gloom beyond. Yes, without doubt poor Katty had lost her mind. That was his first thought, and certainly the sight before him gave reason for his thought. The bedding was all upon the floor, the wooden bedstead was dragged out to the middle of ♦the room, and Katty on her knees, was pulling at the - loosened stones of the wall against which her head rested at night. ‘Oh, Katty, asthore, come out of that!’ he began . coaxingly, forgetting his sorrow in the fear that the I crazy walls would come sorrow in the fear them crazy walls would come down upon the two of them '■ if the old woman went on with her work of apparent I destruction. But with an exclamation of relief she I interrupted him, getting painfully to her feet again, ■ and holding out towards him a small tin box, such Bas American cigarettes are often sold in.

Take it,’ she said incoherently. ‘’Tis for you I've had it these many a days. For ’twas<only makin’ believe to meself I was that Paddy wasn't gone beyond.’ ‘ "Mother," says he, an’ he givin’ it to me, “if anything happens me you'll always have this for your comfort and your keep. ’Tis Mr. Brown in the bank within in the town that has the money, but keep the receipt as safe as your own soul, for ’tis your name an’ no other that's on it this minute.” ’ 1 She held the dripping tallow dip in one hand, and with the other forced the box on Hugh. ‘ Open it,’ she said. ‘ ’Twas always for you I meant it. What do I want with the like, an’ me on the King’s list? Read it now an’ see if my Paddy’s bank receipt isn’t every penny as good as Neddy Gagahan’s. Two hundred pounds did my Paddy bring home to his old mother, God bless an’ help him! an’ a nice penny besides for all the years that Mr. Brown’s been carin’ it, so he does be tellin’ me.. Read now,’ she urged. ‘ An’ then be off wid you before it is too late; I’ve no need of your company now.’ And she chuckled to herself. ‘ Wasn’t it only to keep it safe—it is your own now— I wanted you at all ?’ Once he had seized her meaning, Hugh had no scruples in taking what the old woman offered. What good had the receipt ever done her, but only trouble her with fears Besides, she was a rich woman, these weeks back, since the Old Age Pension Act had come into force, and couldn’t he make it up to her in a hundred ways better than money would be to her, once ‘ Katty, you’re a good woman; God bless you!’ She felt his lips brushing the white hair upon her forehead, and then he was gone. It was almost as though her own Paddy had come back to her. . The matchmaking was progressing, surely, though slowly. If Neddy Gagahan was a soft fool,’ his father made up for him in hardness. Every stick and stone, every live thing, down to the very hens and had to be gone over before the jobber would put pen to - paper, to bind himself to the payment of what the bank receipt represented; and before this crucial moment arrived the door was opened and in came Hugh. At first, John Carmody was impatient of interruption, incredulous as to the receipt that this farm-boy produced being genuine. Then, as" Edward Gagahan saw a chance of losing, at the last moment,- the farm on which he had set his heart, he began to bluster, and ended with threats. All through the evening the truth had been coming nearer and nearer home to ' John Carmody, that with the contract of his daughter’s marriage he would be signing the death-warrant of his own interest in the farm that he loved beyond wife and children, beyond everything but life itself. And now, when the chains were almost upon him, he suddenly was given a loophole of escape. What did he care, now, that Hugh was his own farm-servant? Pride had gone to the wall, pushed there relentlessly by the jobber’s high hand. He knew Hugh : he was quiet and honest ; he would keep to his word, and it was Maureen, not the farm, he wanted. With Hugh as a son-in-law he would still be master ; with .the other it would in future be the jobber’s farm. With a quick thought he looked up from the two receipts that he held in his hand, to the girl for whose sake this money was given. ‘ One’s as good as the other to me,’ he said gruffly. ‘ You’d better choose for yourself, Maureen.’ For the second time that evening, Hugh held out his arms; but now there were no tears between themonly gladness, too deep for words, in the eyes that were raised to claim him as their own.