: The Valley of Squinting Windows by MacNamara Brinsley - Ireland Social conditions Fiction

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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.

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