Read Ebook: The Valley of Squinting Windows by MacNamara Brinsley

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Ebook has 1142 lines and 77979 words, and 23 pages

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 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 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!"

Farrell McGuinness, grinning to himself, had moved away on his red bicycle, and a motor now came towards her in its envelope of dust down the long road of Tullahanogue. This was the first hire motor that had appeared in the village of Garradrimna and was the property of Charlie Clarke, an excellent, religious man, who had interested himself so successfully in bazaars and the charities that he had been thus enabled to purchase it. Its coming amongst them had been a sensational occurrence. If a neighbor wished to flout a neighbor it was done by hiring Clarke's car; and Mrs. Brennan immediately thought what a grand thing it would be to take it on the coming Thursday and make a brave show with her son John sitting up beside her and he dressed in black. The dignity of her son, now moving so near the priesthood, demanded such a demonstration. She hailed Charlie Clarke, and the car came suddenly to a standstill. The petrol fumes mingling with the rising dust of the summer road, floated to her nostrils like some incense of pride.

"Good morning, Mrs. Brennan!"

"Good morning, Mr. Clarke!"

"You're not at the races of Mullaghowen?"

"Not yet, Mrs. Brennan, but I'm going--and with the Houlihans of Clonabroney."

"Oh, indeed, 'tis almost exclusively to the quality and to the priests my drives are confined, Mrs. Brennan. I'm not patronized by the beggars of the valley."

"Is that so? Well you may say that's grand, Mrs. Brennan. Oh, indeed, John is the rare credit to you, so he is. You should be proud of him, for 'tis the fine beautiful thing to be going on for the Church. In fact, do ye know what it is, Mrs. Brennan? Only I'm married, I'd be thinking this very minute of giving up motor, shop, land and everything and going into a monastery. I would so."

"Now aren't you the fine, noble-minded man to be thinking of the like?"

"I am so.... Well, I'll drive you, Mrs. Brennan. On Thursday, you say, to Kilaconnaghan. The round trip will cost you fifteen shillings."

"Fifteen shillings?"

Charlie Clarke had already re-started the car which was again humming dustily down the road. Mrs. Brennan turned wearily into the sewing-room and seated herself once more by the machine. She was crushed a little by the thought of the fifteen shillings. She saw clearly before her the long procession of the hours of torture for her eyes that the amount represented. It appeared well that she had not given the few coppers to old Marse Prendergast, for, even as things stood, she must approach some of her customers towards the settlement of small accounts to enable her to spend fifteen shillings in the display of her pride.... For eighteen years it had been thus with her, this continual scraping and worrying about money. She wondered and wondered now was she ever destined to find release from mean tortures. Maybe when her son had become a priest he would be good to his mother? She had known of priests and the relatives of priests, who had grown amazingly rich.

She was recalled from her long reverie by the return of Ned Brennan from Garradrimna. The signs of drink were upon him.

"Where's me dinner?" he said, in a flat, heavy voice.

"Your dinner, is it? Oh dear, dear, 'tis how I never thought of putting it on yet. I had a letter from John, and sure it set me thinking. God knows I'll have it ready for you as soon as I can."

"Aye, John. A letter from John.... Begad.... Begad.... And I wanting me dinner!"

"So you'll have it, so you'll have it. Now aren't you the wild, impatient man? Can't you wait a minute?"

"I never did see such a woman as you, and I in a complete hurry. Three slates slipped down off the school roof in the bit of wind the other night, and I'm after getting instructions from Father O'Keeffe to put them on."

"Ah, sure, 'tis well I know how good and industrious you are, Ned. That's the sixth time this year you've put on the very same slates. You're a good man, indeed, and a fine tradesman."

For the moment his anger was appeased by this ironical compliment, which she did not intend as irony; but at heart he was deeply vexed because he was going to do this little job. She knew he must be talking of it for months to come. When the few shillings it brought him were spent she must give him others and others as a continuous reward for his vast effort. This she must do as a part of her tragic existence, while beholding at the same time how he despised her in his heart.

But, just now, the bitterness of this realization did not assail her with the full power of the outer darkness, for her mind was lit brilliantly to-day by the thought of John. And during the hours that passed after she had fitted out Ned for his adventurous expedition to the roof she could just barely summon up courage to turn the machine, so consumed was she by a great yearning for her son.

The days, until Thursday, seemed to stretch themselves into an age. But at three o'clock, when Charlie Clarke's white motor drew up at the door, she was still preparing for the journey. In the room which had known another aspect of her life she had been adorning herself for long hours. The very best clothes and all the personal ornaments in her possession must needs be brought into use. For it had suddenly appeared to her that she was about to enter into an unique ceremony comparable only to the ordination of John.

Searching in an unfrequented drawer of the dressing-table for hair-pins, she had come upon an old cameo-brooch, one of Henry Shannon's costly presents to her during the period of their strange "honeymoon." It was a pretty thing, so massive and so respectable-looking. It was of that heavy Victorian period to which her story also belonged. With trembling hands she fastened it upon her bosom. In a deeper recess of the drawer she came upon a powder puff in a small round box, which still held some of the aid to beauty remaining dry and useful through all the years. She had once used it to heighten her graces in the eyes of Henry Shannon. And now, for all the blanching trouble through which she had passed, she could not resist the impulses of the light woman in her and use it to assert her pride in her son. It must be a part of her decking-out as she passed through the valley in a motor for the first time, going forth to meet her son.

She took her seat at last by the side of Charlie Clarke, and passed proudly down the valley road. Things might have gone as agreeably as she had planned but for the peculiar religious warp there was in Charlie. He might have talked about the mechanism of his car or remarked at length upon the beauty of the summer day, but he must inevitably twist the conversation in the direction of religion.

"I suppose," said he, "that it's a fine thing to be the mother of a young fellow going on for the Church. It must make you very contented in yourself when you think of all the Masses he will say for you during your lifetime and all the Masses he will say for the repose of your soul when you are dead and gone."

"Aye, indeed, that's a grand and a true saying for you, Mr. Clarke. But sure what else could one expect from you, and yourself the good man that goes to Mass every day?"

"And, Mrs. Brennan, woman dear, to see him saying the Holy Mass, and he having his face shining with the Light of Heaven!"

"A beautiful sight, Mr. Clarke, as sure as you're there."

The car was speeding along merrily, and now it had just passed, with a slight bump, over the culvert of a stream, which here and there was playing musically about little stones, and here and there was like bits of molten silver spitting in the sun. It was a grand day.

Whether or not the unusual sensation of the throbbing car was too much for Mrs. Brennan, she was speaking little although listening eagerly to the words of Charlie Clarke, asking him once or twice to repeat some sentences she had been kept from hearing by the noise of the engine. Now she was growing more and more silent, for they had not yet passed out of the barony of Tullahanogue. She saw many a head suddenly fill many a squinting window, and men and women they met on the road turn round with a sneer to gaze back at her sitting up there beside Charlie Clarke, the saintly chauffeur who went to Mass every day.

Her ears were burning, and into her mind, in powerful battalions, were coming all the thoughts that had just been born in the minds of the others. The powder she had applied to her cheeks was now like a burning sweat upon her skin. The cameo-brooch felt like a great weight where it lay upon her bosom heavily. It caught her breath and so prevented her maintaining conversation with Charlie Clarke. It reminded her insistently of the dear baby head of John reposing, as in a bower of tenderness, upon the same place.

"It must be the grand and blessed thing for a mother to go to confession to her son. Now wouldn't it be wonderful to think of telling him, as the minister of God's mercy, the little faults she had committed before he was born or before she married his father. Now isn't that the queer thought, Mrs. Brennan?"

She did not reply, and it took all she could marshal of self-possession to protect her from tears as the motor hummed into the village of Kilaconnaghan, where the railway station was. They had arrived well in advance of the train's time. She passed through the little waiting-room and looked into the advertisement for Jameson's Whiskey, which was also a mirror. She remembered that it was in this very room she had waited before going away for that disastrous "honeymoon" with Henry Shannon.... This was a better mirror than the one at home, and she saw that the blaze upon her cheeks had already subdued the power of the powder, making it unnecessary and as the merest dirt upon her face.... The cameo-brooch looked so large and gaudy.... She momentarily considered herself not at all unlike some faded women of the pavement she had seen move, like malignant specters, beneath the lamplight in Dublin city.... She plucked away the brooch from her bosom and thrust it into her pocket. Then she wiped her face clean with her handkerchief.

Far off, and as a glad sound coming tentatively to her ears, she could hear the train that was bearing her beloved son home to the valley and to her. It was nearly a year since she last saw him, and she fancied he must have changed so within that space of time. Who knew how he might change towards her some day? This was her constant dread. And now as the increasing noise of the train told that it was drawing nearer she felt immensely lonely.

The few stray passengers who ever came to Kilaconnaghan by the afternoon train had got out, and John Brennan was amongst them. On the journey from Dublin he had occupied a carriage with Myles Shannon, who was the surviving brother of Henry Shannon and the magnate of the valley. The time had passed pleasantly enough, for Mr. Shannon was a well-read, interesting man. He had spoken in an illuminating way of the Great War. He viewed it in the light of a scourge and a just reckoning of calamity that the nations must pay for bad deeds they had done. "It is strange," said he, "that even a nation, just like an individual, must pay its just toll for its sins. It cannot escape, for the punishment is written down with the sin. There is not one of us who may not be made to feel the wide sweep of God's justice in this Great War, even you, my boy, who may think yourself far removed from such a possibility."

These were memorable words, and John Brennan allowed himself to fall into a spell of silence that he might the better ponder them. Looking up suddenly, he caught the other gazing intently at him with a harsh smile upon his face.

So now that they were to part they turned to shake hands.

"Good-by, Mr. Brennan!" said Myles Shannon to the student. "I wish you an enjoyable holiday-time. Maybe you could call over some evening to see my nephew Ulick, my brother Henry's son. He's here on holidays this year for the first time, and he finds the valley uncommonly dull after the delights of Dublin. He's a gay young spark, I can tell you, but students of physic are generally more inclined to be lively than students of divinity."

This he said with a flicker of his harsh smile as they shook hands, and John Brennan thanked him for his kind invitation. Catching sight of Mrs. Brennan, Mr. Shannon said, "Good-day!" coolly and moved out of the station.

To Mrs. Brennan this short conversation on the platform had seemed protracted to a dreadful length. As she beheld it from a little distance a kind of desolation had leaped up to destroy the lovely day. It compelled her to feel a kind of hurt that her son should have chosen to expend the few first seconds of his home-coming in talking, of all people, to one of the Shannon family. But he was a young gentleman and must, of course, show off his courtesy and nice manners. And he did not know.... But Myles Shannon knew.... His cool "Good-day!" to her as he moved out of the station appeared to her delicate sensitiveness of the moment as an exhibition of his knowledge. Immediately she felt that she must warn John against the Shannons.

He came towards her at last, a thin young man in black, wearing cheap spectacles. He looked tenderly upon the woman who had borne him. She embraced him and entered into a state of rapt admiration. Within the wonder of his presence she was as one translated, her sad thoughts began to fall from her one by one. On the platform of this dusty wayside station in Ireland she became a part of the glory of motherhood as she stood there looking with pride upon her son.

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