THE HOLY DOOR

Polly Donegan and Nora Lawlor met every morning after eight o’clock
Mass. They were both good-living girls; indeed, they were among the
best girls in town. Nora had a round soft face and great round
wondering eyes. She was inquisitive, shy, and a dreamer—an awkward
combination. Her father, a builder called Jerry Lawlor, had been
vice-commandant of the Volunteers during the Troubles.

Polly was tall, with coal-black hair, a long, proud, striking face,
and an air of great calm and resolution. As they went down the hill
from the church she saluted everyone with an open pleasant smile and
accepted whatever invitations she got. Nora went through the torments
of the damned whenever anyone invited her anywhere; curiosity and
timidity combined made her visualize every consequence of accepting or
not accepting, down to the last detail.

Now Nora, with that peculiar trait in her make-up, had a knack which
Polly found very disconcerting of bringing the conversation round to
the facts of life. To Nora the facts of life were the ultimate
invitation; acceptance meant never-ending embarrassment, refusal a
curiosity unsatisfied till death. While she struggled to put her
complex in words Polly adopted a blank and polite air and without the
least effort retreated into her own thoughts of what they should have
for dinner.

“You’re not listening to a word I say,” Nora said on a note of
complaint.

“Oh, I am, Nora, I am,” Polly said impatiently. “But I’ll have to be
rushing or I’ll be late for breakfast.”

Nora could see that Polly wasn’t even interested in the facts of
life. She wondered a lot about that. Was Polly natural? Was it
possible not to be curious? Was she only acting sly like all the
Donegans? Nora had thought so long about God’s inscrutable purpose in
creating mankind in two sexes that she could hardly see the statue of
a saint without wondering what he’d be like without his clothes. That
was no joke in our church, where there are statues inside the door and
in each of the sidechapels and along the columns of the arcade. It
makes the church quite gay, but it was a terrible temptation to Nora,
who found it hard not to see them all like Greek statues, and whatever
it was about their faces and gestures they seemed worse like that than
any Greek divinities. To the truly pious mind there is something
appalling in the idea of St. Aloysius Gonzaga without his clothes.

That particular notion struck Polly as the height of nonsense.

“Wisha, Nora,” she said with suppressed fury, “what things you think
about!”

“But after all,” retorted Nora with a touch of fire, “they must have
had bodies like the rest of us.”

“Why then indeed, Nora, they’d be very queer without them,” said Polly
serenely, and it was clear to Nora that she hadn’t a glimmer. “Anyway,
what has it to do with us?”

“You might find it has a lot to do with you when you get married,”
said Nora darkly.

“Ah, well, it’ll never worry me so,” said Polly confidently.

“Why, Polly? Won’t you ever get married?”

“What a thing I’d do!” said Polly.

“But why, Polly?” asked Nora eagerly, hoping that at last she might
discover some point where Polly’s fastidiousness met her own.

“Ah,” Polly sighed, “I could never imagine myself married. No matters
how fond of them you’d be. Like Susie. I always hated sharing a room
with Susie. She was never done talking.”

“Oh, if talking was all that was in it!” exclaimed Nora with a dark
brightness like a smile.

“I think talking is the worst of all, Nora,” Polly said firmly. “I
can’t imagine anything worse.”

“There’s a shock in store for you if you do marry,” said Nora
darkly.

“What sort of shock, Nora?” asked Polly.

“Oh, of course, you can’t even describe it,” said Nora fretfully “No
one will even tell you. People you knew all your life go on as if you
were only a child and couldn’t be told.”

“Do they really, Nora?” Polly said with a giggle, inspired less by
thought of what the mystery could be than by that of Nora’s
inquisitiveness brought to a full stop for once.

“If you get married before me will you tell me?” Nora asked.

“Oh, I will to be sure, girl,” said Polly in the tone of one promising
to let her know when the coal man came.

“But I mean everything, Polly,” Nora said earnestly.

“Oh, why wouldn’t I, Nora?” Polly cried impatiently, showing that
Nora’s preoccupation with the facts of life struck her as being
uncalled-for. “Anyway, you’re more likely to be married than I
am. Somehow I never had any inclination for it.”

It was clear that her sister’s garrulity had blighted some man’s
chance of Polly.

II

Charlie Cashman was a great friend of Nora’s father and a regular
visitor to her home. He had been her father’s Commandant during the
Troubles. He owned the big hardware store in town and this he owed
entirely to his good national record. He and his mother had never got
on, for she hated the Volunteers as she hated the books he read; she
looked on him as a flighty fellow and had determined early in his life
that the shop would go to her second son, John Joe. As Mrs. Cashman
was a woman who had never known what it was not to have her own way,
Charlie had resigned himself to this, and after the Troubles, cleared
out and worked as a shop assistant in Asragh. But then old John
Cashman died, having never in his liftime contradicted his wife, and
his will was found to be nothing but a contradiction. It seemed that
he had always been a violent nationalist and admired culture and hated
John Joe, and Charlie, as in the novels, got every damn thing, even
his mother being left in the house only on sufferance.

Charlie was a good catch and there was no doubt of his liking for
Nora, but somehow Nora couldn’t bear him. He was an airy, excitable
man with a plump, sallow, wrinkled face that always looked as if it
needed shaving, a pair of keen grey eyes in slits under bushy brows;
hair on his cheekbones, hair in his ears, hair even in his nose. He
wore a dirty old tweed suit and a cap. Nora couldn’t stand him—even
with his clothes on. She told herself that it was the cleft in his
chin, which someone had once told her betokened a sensual nature, but
it was really the thought of all the hair. It made him look so animal!

Besides, there was something sly and double-meaning about him. He was,
by town standards, a very well-read man. Once he found Nora reading
St. Francis de Sales and asked her if she’d ever read Romeo and Juliet
with such a knowing air that he roused her dislike even further. She
gave him a cold and penetrating look which should have crushed him but
didn’t—he was so thick.

“As a matter of fact I have,” she said steadily, just to show him that
true piety did not exclude a study of the grosser aspects of life.

“What did you think of it?” he asked.

“I thought it contained a striking moral lesson,” said Nora.

“Go on!” Charlie exclaimed with a grin. “What was that, Nora?”

“It showed where unrestrained passion can carry people,” she said.

“Ah, I wouldn’t notice that,” said Charlie. “Your father and myself
were a bit wild too, in our time.”

Her father, a big, pop-eyed, open-gobbed man, looked at them both and
said nothing, but he knew from their tone that they were sparring
across him and he wanted to know more about it. That night after
Charlie had gone he looked at Nora with a terrible air.

“What’s that book Charlie Cashman was talking about?” he asked. “Did I
read that?”

“Romeo and Juliet?” she said with a start. “It’s there on the shelf
behind you. In the big Shakespeare.”

Jerry took down the book and looked even more astonished.

“That’s a funny way to write a book,” he said. “What is it
about?”

She told him the story as well as she could, with a slight tendency to
make Friar Laurence the hero, and her father looked more pop-eyed than
ever. He had a proper respect for culture.

“But they were married all right?” he asked at last.

“They were,” said Nora. “Why?”

“Ah, that was a funny way to take him up so,” her father said
cantankerously. “’isn’t as if there was anything wrong in it.” He
went to the foot of the stairs with his hands in his trouser pockets
while Nora watched him with a hypnotised air. She knew what he was
thinking of. “Mind,” he said, “I’m not trying to force him on you, but
there’s plenty of girls in this town would be glad of your chance.”

That was all he said but Nora wanted no chances. She would have
preferred to die in the arena like a Christian martyr sooner than
marry a man with so much hair. She never even gave Charlie the
opportunity of proposing, though she knew her father and he had
discussed it between themselves.

And then, to her utter disgust, Charlie transferred his attentions to
Polly, whom he had met at her house. Of course, her disgust had
nothing to do with jealousy of Polly. Mainly it was inspired by the
revelation it afforded of masculine character, particularly of
Charlie’s. Sensual, flighty, he had not had the decency to remain a
celibate for the rest of his life; he hadn’t threatened suicide,
hadn’t even to be taken away for a long holiday by his friends. He
merely cut his losses as though she were a type of car he couldn’t
afford and took the next cheapest.

It left her depressed about human nature in general. Only too well had
her father gauged the situation. Not only did the Donegans go all-out
to capture Charlie but Polly herself seemed quite pleased. After all
she had said against marriage, this struck Nora as sly. In more
judicious moments she knew she was not being quite fair to Polly. The
truth was probably that Polly, being a good-natured, dutiful girl,
felt if she were to marry at all, she should do so in such a way as to
oblige her family. She did not mind the hair and had a genuine liking
for Charlie. She was a modest girl who made no claim to brains; she
never even knew which of the two parties was the government of the
moment, and Charlie could explain it all to her in the most
interesting way. To her he seemed a man of really gigantic intellect,
and listening to him was like listening to a great preacher.

Yet, even admitting all this, Nora thought her conduct pretty
strange. The Donegans were all sly. It caused a certain coldness
between the two girls, but Polly was self-centred and hardhearted and
Nora got the worst of that.


III

Like all young brides-to-be, Polly was full of plans. When Charlie
asked where they should go on their honeymoon she looked troubled.

“Ah, ’twould cost too much,” she said in her tangential way.

“What would cost too much, girl?” Charlie replied recklessly. “Never
mind what it costs. Where do you want to go?”

“Lourdes?” Polly asked, half as a question. “Is that far, Charlie?”

“Lourdes,” repeated Charlie in bewilderment. “What do you want to go
to Lourdes for?”

“Oh, only for the sake of the pilgrimage,” said Polly. “You never read
_The Life of Bernadette_, Charlie?”

“Never,” said Charlie promptly, in dread he was going to be compelled
to read it. “We’ll go to Lourdes.”

It was all arranged when one day Polly and Nora met in the
street. Nora was self-conscious; she was thinking of all the things
she had said of Charlie to Polly and certain they had got back (they
hadn’t, but Nora judged by herself).

“Where are ye going for the honeymoon?” she asked.

“You’d never guess,” replied Polly joyously.

“Where?” Nora asked, her eyes beginning to pop.

“Lourdes, imagine!”

“Lourdes?” cried Nora aghast. “But didn’t you know?”

“Know what, Nora?” Polly asked, alarmed in her turn. “Don’t tell me
’tis forbidden.”

“’Tisn’t that at all but ’tis unlucky,” said Nora breathlessly. “I
only knew one girl that did it and she died inside a year.”

“Oh, Law, Nora,” Polly cried with bitter disappointment, “how is it
nobody told me that, or what sort of people do they have in those
travel agencies?”

“I suppose they took it for granted you’d know,” said Nora.

“How _could_ I know, Nora?” Polly cried despairingly. “Even Charlie
doesn’t know, and he’s supposed to be an educated man.”

Away she rushed to challenge Charlie and they had their first big
row. Charlie was now reconciled to Lourdes by the prospect of a few
days in Paris, and he stamped and fumed about Nora Lawlor and her
blasted pishrogues, but you did not catch a prudent girl like Polly
risking fortune and happiness by defying the will of God, and a few
days before the wedding everything was cancelled. They went to
Connemara instead.

They arrived there on a wet evening and Polly said dismally that it
wasn’t in the least like what she expected. This was not the only
thing that failed to come up to expectations, nor was hers the only
disappointment. She had brought a little statue of the Blessed Virgin
and put it on the table by her bed. Then she said her night prayers
and undressed. She was rather surprised at the way Charlie looked at
her but not really upset. She was exhausted after the journey and
remarked to Charlie on the comfort of the bed. “Oh,” she said with a
yawn, “I don’t think there’s anything in the world like bed.” At this
Charlie gave her a wolfish grin, not like any grin she’d ever seen
before, and it filled her with alarm. “Oh, Charlie, what did I say?”
she asked. Charlie didn’t reply, which was still more alarming; he got
into bed beside her and she gave a loud gasp that could be heard right
through the hotel.

For the rest of the night her brain, not usually retentive of ideas,
had room only for one. “Can it be? Is it possible? Why did nobody tell
me?” She kept herself from flying out of the room in hysterics only by
repeating aspirations like “Jesus, mercy! Mary, help!” She thought of
all the married women she had known from her mother on—fat pious,
good-natured women you saw every morning at Mass—and wondered if they
had lived all those years with such a secret in their hearts. Now she
knew exactly what Nora had been trying to find out and why no one had
ever told her. It was something that couldn’t be told, only
endured. One faint hope remained; that after years she might get used
to it as the others seemed to have done. But then it all began again
and she muttered aspirations to herself loud enough for Charlie to
hear, and knew she could never, never get used to it; and when it was
over a bitter anger smouldered in her against all the nonsense that
had been written about it by old gasbags like Shakespeare. “Oh, what
liars they are!” she thought, wishing she could just lay hands on one
of them for five minutes. “What liars!”

The day after they returned from the honeymoon Nora called. She had
managed to bottle her curiosity just so far. Charlie was in the shop
and she smiled shyly at him. Polly and herself sat in the best room
overlooking the Main Street and had their tea. Nora noticed with
satisfaction that she looked a bit haggard. Then Nora lit a cigarette
and sat back.

“And what does it feel like to be married?” she asked with a smile.

“Oh, all right, Nora,” Polly replied, though for a moment her face
looked more haggard than before.

“And how do you find Charlie?”

“Oh, much like anyone else, I suppose,” Polly said doubtfully, and her
eyes strayed in the direction of the window.

“And is that all you’re going to tell us?” Nora went on with a nervous
laugh.

“Oh, whatever do you mean, Nora?” Polly asked indignantly.

“I thought you were going to advise me,” Nora said lightly, though
with a growing feeling that there was nothing to be got out of Polly.

“Oh, Law, Nora,” Polly said with a distraught air, “I don’t think it
can ever be right to talk about things like that.”

Nora knew she would never get anything out of Polly. She would never
get anything out of anybody. They were all the same. They went inside
and the door closed behind them forever. She felt like crying.

“Was it as bad as that?” she asked with chagrin.

“I think I’d sooner not talk about it at all, Nora,” Polly said
firmly. She bowed her head; her smooth forehead became fenced with
wrinkles and a second chin began to peep from beneath the
first. 


IV

Charlie’s shop was on Main Street; a store like a cave, with buckets
and spades hanging and stacked at either side of the opening. When you
went in there was hardware on your right and the general store on the
left. Charlie looked after the hardware and Polly and a girl assistant
after the rest. Charlie’s end of it was really well run; there wasn’t
a bit of agricultural machinery for miles around that he didn’t know
the workings of and for which, at a pinch, he couldn’t produce at
least the substitute for a spare part.

Polly wasn’t brilliant in that way, but she was conscientious and
polite. In every way she was all a wife should be; obliging,
sweet-tempered, good-humoured, and so modest that she wouldn’t even
allow Charlie to put on the light while she dressed for Mass on a
winter morning. Mrs. Cashman had always had a great selection of holy
pictures but Polly had brought a whole gallery with her. There was
also a Lourdes clock which played the Lourdes hymn at the Angelus
hours—very soothing and devotional—but at the same time Charlie was
just the least bit disappointed.

He was disappointed and he couldn’t say why. “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore
art thou, Romeo?” he would suddenly find himself declaiming about
nothing at all. Italian women were probably different. No doubt it was
the sun! He was a restless man and he had hoped marriage would settle
him. It hadn’t settled him. When he had closed the shop for the night
and should have been sitting upstairs with his book and his pipe, the
longing would suddenly seize him to go out to Johnny Desmond’s pub
instead. He would walk in and out the hall and peer up and down the
street till the restlessness became too much for him. It was all very
disconcerting. Sometimes for consolation he went back to the shop,
switched on the lamp over his desk, and took out the copy of his
father’s will. This was the will from which he had expected nothing
and which gave him everything. He read it through again with a
reverent expression. He had always liked the will; admired its massive
style, the way it carefully excluded all possibility of
misunderstanding; it had given him a new respect for lawyers; indeed,
in its own way it was as powerful as Shakespeare.

One murky, gloomy afternoon when business had stopped his mother came
in and found him at it. He gave her a sly grin. She was a cranky,
crafty, monotonous old woman, twisted with rheumatics and malice.

“I was just saying my office,” he said.

“Oh, I see what you’re at,” she said with resignation. “I saw it long
ago.”

“Fine, devotional reading!” said Charlie, slapping a hairy paw on the
will.

“Go on, you blasphemous bosthoon!” she said without rancour. “You were
always too smart for your poor slob of a brother. But take care you
wouldn’t be keeping the bed warm for him yet!”

“What’s that you say?” asked Charlie, startled.

“God spoke first,” intoned his mother. “Many a better cake didn’t
rise.”

She went out, banging the door behind her, and left Charlie gasping,
naked to the cruel day. The will had lost its magical power. There was
one clause in it to which he had never paid attention—there never had
been any reason why he should do so—entailing the shop on his
children, and, failing those, on John Joe’s. And John Joe had four
with another coming while Charlie still had none.

Another man only a year married wouldn’t have given it a thought but
Charlie wasn’t that kind. The man was a born worrier. With his hands
in his pockets he paced moodily to the shop door and stood there,
leaning against the jamb, his legs crossed and his cap pulled down
over his eyes.

His mother read him like a book. The least thing was enough to set him
off. At the first stroke of the Angelus he put up the shutters and ate
his supper. Then he lit his pipe and strolled to the hall door for a
look up and down the Main Street on the off chance of seeing somebody
or something. He never did, but it was as well to make sure. Then he
returned to the kitchen, his feet beginning to drag as they usually
did before he set out for Johnny Desmond’s. It was their way of
indicating that they weren’t moving in the right direction. His mother
had gone to the chapel and Polly was sitting by the table under the
window. Charlie took a deep breath, removed his hands from his
pockets, raised his head, and squared his shoulders.

“Well,” he said briskly, “I might as well take a little turn.”

“Wisha, you might as well, Charlie,” Polly replied without resentment.

It was only what she always said, but in Charlie’s state of depression
it sounded like a dead key on the piano. He felt it was a hard thing
that a married man of a year’s standing had no inclination to stop at
home and that his wife had no inclination to make him. Not that she
could have made him even if she had tried but he felt that a little
persuasion wouldn’t have been out of place.

“The mother wasn’t talking to you?” he asked keenly.

“No, Charlie,” Polly said in surprise. “What would she talk to me
about?”

“Oh, nothing in particular. ...Only she was remarking that you were
a long time about having a family,” he added with a touch of reproach.

“Oh, Law, Charlie,” Polly cried, “wasn’t that a very queer thing for
her to say?”

“Was it, I wonder?” Charlie said as though to himself but giving her a
sideway glance.

“But Charlie, you don’t think I won’t have children, do you?” she
exclaimed.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Charlie replied hastily, in dread he might have said
too much. “But ’twould suit her fine if you hadn’t. Then she’d have
the place for John Joe’s children.”

“But how would John Joe’s children get it?” asked Polly. “Didn’t your
father leave it to you?”

“To me and my children,” said Charlie. “If I hadn’t children ’twould
go to John Joe’s.”

“Oh, Law, Charlie, isn’t that a great worry to you?”

“Well, it is, a bit,” Charlie conceded, scratching his poll. “I put a
lot of work into the place. No one likes working for another man’s
family. You wouldn’t see a doctor?”

“I’d have to ask Father Ring first.”

That upset Charlie again. He nearly told her it was Father Ring she
should have married, but remembered in time that she’d be bound to
confess it. There’s nothing a good-living woman likes so much as
confessing her husband’s sins.



V

Charlie’s remarks brought Polly for the first time up against the
facts of life. This made her very thoughtful, but it was a week before
she could even bring herself to discuss it with Nora. It was a subject
you could only discuss with a woman, and an intellectual woman at
that, and Nora was the only intellectual woman Polly knew.

Nora was not inclined to treat it as seriously as Charlie had
done. According to her there was a lot of chance in it. Some people
went on for years before they had a child; others didn’t even wait for
their time to be up. It was quite shocking when you came to think of
it, but somehow Polly never did get round to thinking of it. If you
were really in trouble, there was always the Holy Door. Johnny Fleming
the barrister and his wife had been married ten years without having
children, and they had made the pilgrimage to the Holy Door, and now
people were beginning to say it was about time they made another to
shut off the power.

“I suppose I could go next year if I had to,” said Polly doubtfully.

“You’ll have to go this year if you’re going at all,” said Nora. “It’s
only opened once in seven years.”

“Seven years!” cried Polly. “Oh, I could never wait as long as that.”

“It would be too dangerous anyway,” said Nora. “There was a woman up
our road waited till she was thirty-eight to have a child, and she
died.”

“Oh, Law!” cried Polly, a little peeved. “I suppose ’tis wrong to be
criticizing, but really, the Lord’s ways are very peculiar.”

So back she went to Charlie with her story. Charlie screwed up his
face as though he were hard of hearing, a favourite trick of his
whenever he wanted to gain time. He wanted to gain it now.

“Where did you say?” he asked searchingly.

“Rome,” repeated Polly.

“Rome?” echoed Charlie with a mystified air. “And what did you say you
wanted to go to Rome for?”

“It’s the pilgrimage to the Holy Door,” said Polly. “You wouldn’t know
about that?” she asked in the trustful tone she used to indicate the
respect she had for his learning.

“No,” replied Charlie doubtfully, playing up to the part of the
well-informed husband. “What sort of door?”

“A holy door.”

“A holy door?”

“’Tis only opened once in seven years, and ’tis good for people that
want families,” prompted Polly hopefully.

“Is that so?” asked Charlie gravely. “Who told you about that?”

“Nora Lawlor.”

“Tut, tut, tut,” clucked Charlie impatiently, “ah, I wouldn’t say
there would be any truth in that, Polly.”

“Oh, Law, Charlie,” she cried in ringing tones, outraged at his lack
of faith, “you surely don’t think the Flemings would go all that way
unless there was something in it?”

“Oh, no, no, no, I dare say not,” Charlie said hastily, seeing that
any further objections he made were likely to be reported back to
Father Ring. “I’m afraid I couldn’t get away, though.”

“Well, I’ll have to get away, Charlie,” Polly said with quiet
decision. “It might be too late if I left it for another seven
years. Nora says ’tis very dangerous.”

“And a hell of a lot of danger that one will ever be in!” snapped
Charlie fierily.

His bad temper did not last long. This was an excuse for an outing,
and Charlie loved an outing. He had never been farther than London
before; Paris staggered him; he experimented with green drinks, pink
drinks, and yellow drinks with the satisfied expression of a child in
a pantry; and while the train passed through the Alps in the late
evening he wedged himself in the corridor with his elbows on the rail,
humming “Home to Our Mountains,” while tears of excitement poured down
his hairy cheeks. He couldn’t forget that he was going to the homeland
of Romeo and Juliet.

He quickly made friends with the other two occupants of the carriage,
a fat Dutchman in shirtsleeves who ate sausqages and embraced the
woman beside him who he said was his wife. The sight was too gross for
Polly and she went and stood in the corridor but not to look at the scenery.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” said the Dutchman, stroking his companion
affectionately under the chin.

“Grand! grand!” agreed Charlie enthusiastically, nodding and smiling
encouragement to the woman, who couldn’t speak English and to all
appearances didn’t know much of any other language either.

That’s a nice-looking girl with you ,’ said the Dutchman. “Who is she?”

“Polly?” said Charlie looking at the gloomy figure in the
corridor. “Oh, that’s the wife.”


“Whose wife?” asked the Dutchman.

“Mine,” said Charlie.

“And don’t you love her?”

“Love her?” echoed Charlie, giving another peep out. “I’m cracked on
her, of course.”

“Then why don’t you make love to her?” asked the Dutchman in
surprise. “Women can’t have enough of it. Look at this!”

“Ah, mine wouldn’t like it,” said Charlie in alarm. “In Ireland we
don’t go in much for that sort of thing.”

“And what do you go in for?”

“Well,” says Charlie doubtfully, seeing that he didn’t quite know
himself—apart from politics, which didn’t sound right—“we’re more in
the sporting line; horses and dogs, you know.”

“Ah,” said the Dutchman earnestly, “you can’t beat women.”

Charlie went out to Polly, who was leaning with her back to the
compartment and a brooding look on her face.

“Charlie, how do they do it?” she asked in a troubled voice. “Wouldn’t
you think the woman would drop dead with shame? I suppose they’re
Protestants, are they, Charlie?”

“I dare say, I dare say,” said Charlie, thinking it was better not to
try to explain.


VI

It was a great outing and it lasted Charlie in small talk for a
month. The grapes like gooseberries, and from nightfall on every
little café with soprano or tenor or baritone bawling away about
love—_amore, mio cuore, traditore_—you could see where Juliet got
it. But they weren’t there long enough for Polly to be infected, and
all the wonders she brought back was her astonishment at the way the
men in St. Peter’s pinched her bottom. “Your what, Polly?” the
neighbours asked in surprise. “My bottom,” repeated Polly
incredulously. “Would you believe it?”

After that, Morgan, the wit of Johnny Desmond’s pub, began dropping
nasty remarks about doors of one sort and another, while old
Mrs. Cashman, getting over her alarm at the possibility of divine
intervention, declared loudly that it would be a poor lookout for a
woman like her to be relying on a son who had to take his wife to
Rome. It didn’t take a miracle to start John Joe’s wife off, for the
poor wretch had only to look at her.

But Polly, to give her her due, was every bit as upset as
Charlie. Sixty pounds odd the pilgrimage had cost, and they had
absolutely nothing to show for it. If the Holy Door couldn’t do a
thing like that it couldn’t be so holy after all. She scolded Nora
Lawlor a lot over her bad advice.

“But after all, Polly,” Nora said reasonably, “you mustn’t expect too
much. It might be something mental.”

“Oh, how could it, Nora?” Polly cried in a fury. “What a thing to
say!”

“But why not?” asked Nora with a touch of asperity. “If you didn’t
feel attracted to Charlie—”

“Oh,” said Polly vaguely and guardedly but with a dim comprehension
dawning in her eyes, “would that make a difference?”

“It might make all the difference in the world, Polly,” Nora said
severely. “After all, there was Kitty Daly. She was married eight
years without having a family, and one night she pretended to herself
that her husband was Rudolph Valentino, and everything was all right.”

“Rudolph Valentino?” said Polly. “Who’s he?”

“He was a film actor,” said Nora.

“But why would she do that?”

“Well, I suppose he was a nice-looking man, and you know what sort
Jerome Daly is.”

“Would there be a picture of that fellow that I could see?” asked
Polly.

“I wouldn’t say so,” replied Nora. “Anyway, he’s dead now, so I
suppose it wouldn’t be right. But, of course, there are plenty of
others just as nice-looking.”

“Oh, I don’t think it could ever be right,” cried Polly with a
petulant toss of her head. She was feeling very sorry for herself. She
knew quite well that that sly thing, Nora, was trying to worm out of
her what Charlie really did to her and she was torn asunder between
the need for revealing something and the desire not to reveal anything
at all. “I’m sure Father Ring would say it was wrong.”

“I don’t see why he would,” Nora said coolly. “After all, it was done
with a good purpose.”

Polly had no reply to that, for she knew the importance of doing
things with a good purpose, but at the same time the temptation
lingered. The following Saturday evening she went to confession to
Father Ring. Her sins didn’t take long to tell. They were never what
you’d call major ones.

“Father,” she said when she had done, “I want to ask your advice.”

“What about, my child?” asked Father Ring.

“It’s my husband, father,” said Polly. “You see, we have no children,
and I know it’s a terrible worry to him, so I went on the pilgrimage
to the Holy Door but it didn’t do me any good.”

“Go on,” said Father Ring.

“So a friend of mine was telling me about another woman that was in
the same position. It seems she imagined her husband was Rudolph
Valentino.”

“Who was he?”

“Some sort of fellow on the pictures.”

“But what made her think he was her husband?” asked Father Ring with a
puzzled frown.

“Oh, she didn’t think it,” said Polly in distress. “She only
pretended. It seems he was a very nice-looking fellow and her husband
is an insignificant little man. ... Of course, I could understand
that,” she added candidly. “My husband is a very good fellow, but
somehow he doesn’t look right.”

“Is it Charlie?” exclaimed Father Ring, so astonished that he broke
the tone of decent anonymity in which the discussion was being
conducted. “Sure, Charlie is a grand-looking man.”

“Oh, would you think so?” asked Polly with real interest. “Of course I
might be wrong. But anyway, this woman had a child after.”

“What did she call him?” asked Father Ring.

“I don’t know, father. Why? Does it make any difference?”

“No. I was just wondering.”

“But tell me, father, would that ever be right?” asked Polly.

“Ah, I don’t say there would be anything wrong about it,” said Father
Ring, pulling aside the curtain before the confessional and peeping
out into the darkened church. “Of course she did it with a good
object.”

“That’s what my friend said,” said Polly, amazed at the intellect of
that little gligeen of a girl.

“Provided, of course, she didn’t get any pleasure from it,” Father
Ring added hastily. “If she got carnal pleasure out of it that would
be a different thing.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Polly, aghast. “You don’t think she’d do that?”

“What I mean,” the priest explained patiently, “is more than the
natural pleasure.”

“The natural pleasure?” repeated Polly with a stunned air.

“However,” said Father Ring hastily, “I don’t think you’re in much
danger of that.”

It was shortly after this that Charlie began to notice a change in the
atmosphere in Johnny Desmond’s. Charlie was very sensitive to
atmosphere. First Morgan passed a remark about Polly and the new
teacher, Carmody. Now, Carmody was a relative of Father Ring’s, as has
been said, a good-looking plausible Kerryman who put on great airs
with the women. Charlie greeted the remark with a sniff and a laugh
and was almost on the point of telling how Polly wouldn’t let him
switch on the light while she dressed for Mass. Then he began to
wonder. The remark had stuck. The next time Polly’s name was mentioned
in connection with Carmody he scowled. It was clear that something was
going on and that he was the victim. He couldn’t bear the thought of
that. It might be that in her innocence Polly was being indiscreet. On
the other hand it might well be that like many another woman before
her, she was only letting on to be innocent to get the chance of being
indiscreet. A man could never tell. He went home feeling very upset.

He strode in the hall and snapped a command to Polly, who was sitting
in the darkness over the range. She rose in surprise and followed him
meekly up the stairs. In the sitting-room he lit the gas and stooped
to look up under the mantel as though to see if the burner was
broken. Like all worriers Charlie considered nothing beneath him.

“Sit down,” he said curtly over his shoulder.

“Oh, Law, what is it at all, Charlie?” Polly asked nervously.

Charlie turned and stood on the hearthrug, his legs apart like
buttresses, his cap drawn down over his eyes, and seemed as if he were
studying her through his hairy cheekbones. It was a matter that
required study. He had no precedent for inquiring whether or not Polly
had been unfaithful to him.

“Tell me, Polly,” he said at last in a reasonable tone which seemed to
suit the part, “did I do anything to you?”

“Oh, whatever do you mean, Charlie?” she asked in bewilderment. “What
could you do to me?”

“That’s just what I’d like to know,” said Charlie, nodding
sagaciously. “What I did out of the way.”

“Oh, Charlie,” she exclaimed in alarm, “what a thing to say to me! I
never said you did anything out of the way.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Charlie, nodding again and looking away
across the room at the picture of a sailing-ship in distress, “I
suppose you don’t know the new teacher in the school?” he added with
the innocent air of a cross-examining lawyer.

“Is it Mr. Carmody?” she asked, giving herself away at once by the
suspicion of a blush.

“Aha, I see you do,” said Charlie.

“I met him a couple of times with Mrs. MacCann,” Polly explained
patiently. “What about him?”

“Now is that all?” Charlie asked accusingly. “You might as well tell
me the truth now and not have me drag it out of you.”

“Oh, what do you mean?” cried Polly, sitting erect with
indignation. “What would you drag out of me? I don’t know what’s
coming over you at all, Charlie.”

“Hold on now, hold on!” Charlie said commandingly, raising one hand
for silence. “Just sit where you are for a minute.” He put his hands
behind his back, tilted forward on his toes and studied his feet for a
moment. “Do you know,” he added gravely, barely raising his head to
fix her with his eyes, “that ’tis all over the town that you and
Carmody are carrying on behind my back? Isn’t that a nice thing to
have said about your wife?” he added, raising his voice.

Up to that moment he had only partly believed in her guilt, but he no
longer had any doubt when he saw how she changed colour. It was partly
anger, partly shame.

“Oh,” she cried in a fury, tossing her handsome black head, “the
badness of people! This is all Nora Lawlor’s fault. Father Ring would
never repeat a thing like that.”

“Father Ring?” exclaimed Charlie with a start, seeing that, whatever
her crime was, it was already public property. “What has he to do with
it?”

“I see it all now,” Polly cried dramatically with a large wave of her
arm. “I should never have trusted her. I might have known she’d bell
it all over the town.”

“What would she bell?” snapped Charlie impatiently. At the very best
of times Polly was not what you’d call lucid, but whenever anything
happened to upset her, every joint in her mind flew asunder.

“She said,” explained Polly earnestly, wagging a long arm at him,
“that Kitty Daly had a child after imagining her husband was Rudolph
Valentino.”

“Rudolph who?” asked Charlie with a strained air.

“You wouldn’t know him,” replied Polly impatiently. “He’s an old
fellow on the pictures. He’s dead now.”

“And what has he to do with Carmody?” Charlie asked anxiously.

“He has nothing to do with Carmody,” shouted Polly, enraged at his
stupidity.

“Well, go on, woman, go on!” said Charlie, his face screwed up in a
black knot as he tried to disentangle the confusion she had plunged
him in.

“Oh, I know it couldn’t be wrong, Charlie,” Polly said positively,
flying off at another tangent. “I asked Father Ring myself was it
wrong for her.”

“Wrong for who?” snarled Charlie, beside himself.

“Kitty Daly, of course,” shouted Polly.

“Christ Almighty!” groaned Charlie. “Do you want to drive me mad?”

“But when you won’t listen to me!” Polly cried passionately. “And
Father Ring said there was no harm in it so long as she was doing it
for a good purpose and didn’t get any pleasure out of it. ...Though
indeed,” she added candidly, “I’m sure I have no idea what pleasure
she could get out of it.”

“Ah, botheration!” shouted Charlie, shaking his fists at her. “What
goings-on you have about Rudolph Valentino! Don’t you see I’m demented
with all this hugger-mugger? What did you do then, woman?”

“I went to the pictures,” replied Polly with an aggrieved air.

“You went to the pictures with Carmody?” asked Charlie encouragingly,
only too willing to compound for an infidelity with an indiscretion.

“Oh, what a thing I’d do!” cried Polly in a perfect tempest of
indignation. “Who said I went to the pictures with Mr. Carmody? This
town is full of liars. I went with Nora, of course.”

“Well?” asked Charlie.

“Well,” Polly continued in a more reasonable tone, “I thought all the
old men in the pictures were terrible, Charlie. How people can bear
the sight of them night after night I do not know. And as we were
coming out Nora asked me wasn’t there any man at all I thought was
good-looking, and I said: ‘Nora,’ I said, ‘I always liked
Mr. Carmody’s appearance.’ ‘Oh, did you?’ said Nora. ‘I did, Nora,’
said I. “Now that,” said Polly flatly, bringing her palm down on her
knee, “was all that either of us said; and, of course, I might be
wrong about his appearance, though I always thought he kept himself
very nicely; but anyone that says I went to the pictures with him,
Charlie, all I can say is that they have no conscience. Absolutely no
conscience.”

Charlie stared at her for a moment in stupefaction. For that one
moment he wondered at his own folly in ever thinking that Polly would
have it in her to carry on with a man and in thinking that any man
would try to carry on with her. _Amore, mio cuore, traditore_, he
thought despairingly. Quite clearly Italian women must be
different. And then the whole thing began to dawn on him and he felt
himself suffocating with rage.

“And do you mean to tell me,” he asked incredulously, “that you went
to Father Ring and asked him could you pretend that I was Charlie
Carmody?”

“Rudolph Valentino, Charlie,” corrected Polly. “It was Nora Lawlor who
suggested Mr. Carmody. ...You don’t think it makes any difference?”
she added hastily, terrified that she might unwittingly have drifted
into mortal sin.

“You asked Father Ring could you pretend that I was Rudolph
Valentino?” repeated Charlie frantically.

“Oh, surely Charlie,” Polly said, brushing this aside as mere
trifling, “you don’t think I’d do it without finding out whether ’twas
a sin or not?”

“God Almighty!” cried Charlie, turning to the door. “I’m the
laughing-stock of the town!”

“Oh, you think too much about what people say of you,” Polly said
impatiently. “What need you care what they say so long as ’tis for a
good object?”

“Good object!” cried Charlie bitterly. “I know the object I’d like to
lay my hands on this minute. It’s that Nora Lawlor with her cesspool
of a mind. By God, I’d wring her bloody neck!”


VII

That was nothing to what Nora did later. Somebody, Charlie discovered,
had put round the story that it was really his fault and not Polly’s
that they had no children. Of course, that might well have been a
misconception of Polly’s own, because he learned from a few words she
dropped that she thought his mother was a witch and was putting spells
on her. A girl who would believe that was quite capable of blaming it
on the butcher’s boy. But the obvious malice identified the story as
Nora’s. The Carmody business was only a flea-bite to it, because it
lowered him in the estimation of everybody. Morgan made great play
with it. And it was clever because Charlie was in no position to prove
it a lie. Worst of all, he doubted himself. He was a nervous man; the
least thing set him off; and for weeks and weeks he worried till he
almost convinced himself that Nora was right, that he wasn’t like
other men. God had heaped so many burdens on him that this was all he
could expect.

Now, the Cashmans had a maid called Molly O’Regan, a country girl with
a rosy, laughing, good-natured face and a shrill penetrating
voice. She was one of the few people Charlie knew who were not afraid
of his mother, and in his bachelor days when she brought him his
shaving-water of a morning, she had always leaned in the door and
shown him just enough of herself to interest a half-wakened man. “Come
in, girl,” he would whisper, “come in and shut the door.” “What would
I come in for?” Molly would ask with a great air of surprise. “’Pon my
soul,” Charlie would say admiringly, “you’re most captivating.”
“Captivating?” Molly would shriek. “Listen to him, you sweet God!
There’s capers for you!” “You’re like a rose,” Charlie would say and
then give one wild bound out of the bed that landed him within a few
feet of her, while Molly, shrieking with laughter, banged the door
behind her.

It was undoubtedly the slander on his manhood which interested Charlie
in Molly, though it would be going too far to say that he had no other
object than to disprove it. He liked Molly, and more than ever with
Polly and his mother round the house she seemed like a rose. Sometimes
when they were out he followed her upstairs and skirmished with
her. She let on to be very shocked. “Sweet Jesus!” she cried, “What
would I do if one of them walked in on me? And all the holy pictures!”
She flashed a wondering look at all the coloured pictures, the
statues, and the Lourdes clock. “Isn’t it true for me?” she cried. “A
wonder you wouldn’t have a bit of shame in you!”

“As a matter of fact,” said Charlie gravely, “that’s the idea. You
knew I was starting a religious order of my own here, didn’t your”

“A religious order?” echoed Molly. “I did not.”

“Oh, yes, yes,” said Charlie importantly. “I’m only waiting on the
authority from Rome.”

“What sort of religious order?” asked Molly suspiciously—she was not
too bright in the head and, as she said herself, with that thundering
blackguard, Charlie Cashman, you’d never know where you were.

“An order of Christian married couples,” replied Charlie. “The old
sort of marriage is a washout. Purity is what we’re going in for.”

“Purity?” shrieked Molly in a gale of laughter. “And you in it!”

Secretly she was delighted to see Charlie among all “them old holy
ones,” as she called them, showing such spunk, and couldn’t bear to
deprive him of his little pleasure. She didn’t deprive him of it long.

And then one autumn evening she whispered to him that she was going to
have a baby. She wept and said her old fellow would have her sacred
life, which was likely enough, seeing that her father preferred to
correct his large family with a razor. Charlie shed a few tears as
well and told her not to mind her old fellow; while he had a pound in
the bank he’d never see her short of anything. He meant it too,
because he was a warm-hearted man and had always kept a soft spot for
Molly. But what really moved and thrilled him was that in spite of
everybody he was at last going to be a father. His doubts about his
manhood were set at rest. In the dusk he went up to Johnny Desmond’s
overflowing with delight and good humour. He cracked half a dozen
jokes at Morgan in quick succession and made them all wonder what he
had up his sleeve. From this out they could pass what dirty remarks
they liked, but these would be nothing compared with his secret laugh
at them. It didn’t matter if it took twenty years before they knew. He
was in the wildest spirits, drinking and joking and making up rhymes.

Next morning, coming on to dawn, he woke with a very bad taste in his
mouth. He glanced round and there, in the light of the colza-oil lamp
that burned before the statue of the Sacred Heart, saw Polly beside
him in the bed. She looked determined even in sleep. The Lourdes
clock, which was suffering from hallucinations and imagining it was an
alarm clock, was kicking up merry hell on the mantelpiece. He knew it
was really playing “The bell of the Angelus calleth to pray,” which is
a nice, soothing, poetic thought, but what it said in his mind was:
“You’re caught, Charlie Cashman, you can’t get away.” He realized
that, instead of escaping, he had only wedged himself more firmly in
the trap, that if ever the truth about Molly became known, Polly would
leave him, the Donegans would hound him down, Father Ring would
denounce him from the altar, and his little business would go to
pot. And in spite of it all he would not be able to leave the business
to his son. “You’re caught, Charlie Cashman, you can’t get away,” sang
the clock with a sort of childish malice.

The skill with which he manoeuvred Molly out of the house would have
done credit to an international statesman. He found her lodgings in
Asragh and put some money to her name in the bank without anyone being
the wiser. But in crises it is never the difficulties you can
calculate on that really upset you. How could anyone have guessed that
Molly, without a job to do, would find her time a burden and spend
hours in the Redemptorist church? After a couple of months Charlie
started to receive the most alarming letters. Molly talked of telling
Polly, of telling her father, of spending the rest of her days in a
home doing penance. Charlie was getting thoroughly fed up with
religion. When he saw her one night in a back street in Asragh—the
only place where they could meet in comparative safety—he was shocked
at the change in her. She was plumper and better-looking but her eyes
were shadowy and her voice had dropped to a sort of whine.

“Oh, Charlie,” she sighed with a lingering, come-to-Christ air, “what
luck or grace could we have and the life of sin and deception we’re
leading?”

“A lot of deception and damn little sin,” Charlie said bitterly. “What
the hell do you want?”.

“Oh, Charlie, I want you to put an end to the deception as well as the
sin. Be said by me and confess it to your wife.”

“What a thing I’d do!” Charlie said, scowling and stamping. “Do you
know what she’d do?”

“What would any woman do and she finding you truly repentant?” asked
Molly ecstatically.

“She’d take bloody good care I had cause,” said Charlie.

He persuaded her out of that particular mood but all the same he
wasn’t sure of her. It was a nerve-racking business. In the evenings
after his supper he lit his pipe and took his usual prowl to the door
but he couldn’t bring himself to leave the house. Nora Lawlor might
drop in while he was away and tell the whole thing to Polly. He had a
trick of making up little rhymes to amuse himself, and one that he
made at this time ran: 

 _Brass, boys, brass, and not only buttons,
  The older we gets, the more we toughens._

Charlie didn’t toughen at all, unfortunately.

“Wisha, wouldn’t you go for a little stroll?” Polly would ask
considerately.

“Ah, I don’t feel like it,” Charlie would say with a sigh.

“Oh, Law!” she would cry in gentle surprise. “Isn’t that a great
change for you, Charlie?”

Once or twice he nearly snapped at her and asked whose fault it
was. Sometimes he went to the house door and stood there for a full
half-hour with his shoulder against the jamb, drinking in the misery
of the view in the winter dusk: the one mean main street where
everyone knew him and no one wished him well. It was all very fine for
Romeo, but Romeo hadn’t to live in an Irish country town. Each morning
he prowled about in wait for Christy Flynn, the postman, to intercept
any anonymous letter there might be for Polly. As he didn’t know which
of them were anonymous, he intercepted them all.

Then one morning the blow fell. It was a solicitor’s letter. He left
the shop in charge of Polly and went down to Curwen Street to see his
own solicitor, Timsy Harrington. Curwen Street is a nice quiet
Georgian street, rosy and warm even on a winter’s day, and signs on
it; the cheapest call you could pay there would cost you a
pound. Charlie knew his call would cost him more than that, but he
smoked his pipe and tried to put a brave face on it, as though he
thought actions for seduction the best sport in the world. That didn’t
go down with Timsy Harrington, though.

“Mr. Cashman,” he said in his shrill, scolding, old woman’s voice,
“I’m surprised at you. I’m astonished at you. An educated man like
you! You had the whole country to choose from and no one would do you
but a daughter of Jim Regan, that stopped in bed with his son for
eight months, hoping to get a couple of pounds out of the insurance
company.”

Charlie went back along the main street feeling as though he were
bleeding from twenty gashes. He swore that if ever he got out of this
scrape he’d live a celibate for the rest of his days. People said the
woman always paid, but the particular occasion when she did was
apparently forgotten. Outside the shop he was accosted by an old
countryman with a long innocent face.

“Good morrow, Charlie,” he said confidentially, giving Charlie a
glimpse of a plug in the palm of his hand. “I wonder would you have
the comrade of this?”

“I’ll try, Tom,” said Charlie with a sigh, taking it from him and
turning it over in his hand. “Leave me this and I’ll see what I can
do. I’m very busy at the moment.”

He opened the shop door, and knew at once that there was trouble in
the wind. There was no one in the shop. He stood at the door with his
ear cocked. He heard Polly moving with stallion strides about the
bedroom and his heart misgave him. He knew well the Lawlor one had
profited by his absence. Already the solicitor’s letter was public
property. He went up the stairs and opened the bedroom door a few
inches. Polly was throwing clothes, shoes, and statues all together in
a couple of suitcases with positive frenzy. Charlie pushed in the door
a little further, looked at the suitcases, then at her, and finally
managed to work up what he thought of as an insinuating smile.

“What’s up, little girl?” he asked with a decent show of innocent
gaiety.

He saw from her look that this particular line was a complete washout,
so he entered cautiously, closing the door behind him for fear of
being overheard from the shop.

“Aren’t I in trouble enough?” he asked bitterly. “Do you know what the
O’Regans want out of me?”

“Oh,” cried Polly with the air of a tragedy queen, “if there was a man
among them he’d shoot you!”

“Two hundred pounds!” hissed Charlie, his high hairy cheekbones
twitching. “Isn’t that a nice how-d’ye-do?”

“Oh,” she cried distractedly, “you’re worse than the wild beasts. The
wild beasts have some modesty but you have none. It was my own
fault. Nora Lawlor warned me.”

“Nora Lawlor will be the ruination of you,” Charlie said
severely. “She was in here again this morning—you needn’t tell me. I
can see the signs of her.”

“Don’t attempt to criticize her to me!” stormed Polly. “Get out of my
sight or I won’t be responsible. The servant!”

“Whisht, woman, whisht, whisht, whisht!” hissed Charlie, dancing in a
fury of apprehension. “You’ll be heard from the shop.”

“Oh, I’ll take care to be heard,” said Polly, giving her rich voice
full play. “I’ll let them know the sort of man they’re dealing
with. I’ll soho you well.”

“So this is married life!” muttered Charlie in a wounded voice,
turning away. Then he paused and looked at her over his shoulder as if
he couldn’t believe it. “Merciful God,” he said, “what sort of woman
are you at all? How well I didn’t go on like this about the
schoolmaster!”

“What schoolmaster?” Polly asked in bewilderment, her whole face
taking on a ravaged air.

“Carmody,” said Charlie reproachfully. “You thought it was my fault
and I thought it was yours—what more was in it? We both acted with a
good purpose. Surely to God,” he added anxiously, “you don’t think I
did it for pleasure?”

“Oh,” she cried, beside herself, “wait till I tell Father Ring! Wait
till he knows the sort of comparisons you’re making! With a good
purpose! Oh, you blasphemer! How the earth doesn’t open and swallow
you!”

She pushed him out and slammed the door behind him. Charlie stood on
the landing and gave a brokenhearted sigh. “So this is married life!”
he repeated despairingly. He returned to the shop and stood far back
at the rear, leaning against the stovepipe. It was a sunny morning and
the sunlight streamed through the windows and glinted on the bright
buckets hanging outside the door. He saw Nora Lawlor, wearing a
scarlet coat, come out of the butcher’s and give a furtive glance
across the street. If he had had a gun with him he would have shot her
dead.

He heard Polly come downstairs and open the hall door. Slowly and on
tiptoe he went to the door of the shop, leaned his shoulder against
the jamb and looked up the street after Nora. He saw her red coat
disappear round the corner by the chapel. The old farmer who was
waiting outside the Post Office thought that Charlie was hailing him,
but Charlie frowned and shook his head. From the hall he heard Polly
address a small boy in that clear voice of hers which he knew could be
heard all along the street.

“Dinny,” she said, “I want you to run down to Hennessey’s and ask them
to send up a car.”

Charlie was so overcome that he retreated to the back of the shop
again. Polly was leaving him. It would be all round the town in five
minutes. Yet he knew he wasn’t a bad man; there were plenty worse and
their wives didn’t leave them. For one wild moment he thought of
making a last appeal to her love, but one glance into the hall at
Polly sitting bolt-upright in her blue serge costume, her cases beside
her and her gloves and prayerbook on the hall stand, and he knew that
love wasn’t even in the running. He went to the shop door and beckoned
to another small boy.

“I want you to find Father Ring and bring him here quick,” he
whispered fiercely, pressing a coin into the child’s
palm. “Mr. Cashman sent you, say. And tell him hurry!”

“Is it someone sick, Mr. Cashman?” asked the little boy eagerly.

“Yes,” hissed Charlie. “Dying. Hurry now!”

After that he paced up and down the shop like a caged tiger till he
saw Father Ring rounding the corner by the chapel. He went up to meet
him.

“What is it at all, Charlie?” the priest asked anxiously. “Is it ‘the
mother?”

“No, father,” Charlie said desperately, seeing the twitching of
curtains in top rooms. “I only wish to God it was,” he ground out in a
frenzy.

“Is it as bad as that, Charlie?” Father Ring asked in concern as they
entered the shop.

“Ah, I’m in great trouble, father,” Charlie said, tossing his head
like a wounded animal. Then he fixed his gaze on a spot of light at
the back of the shop and addressed himself to it. “I don’t know did
you hear any stories about me,” he inquired guardedly.

“Stories, Charlie?” exclaimed Father Ring, who, being a Kerryman,
could fight a better delaying-action than Charlie himself. “What sort
of stories?”

“Well, now, father, not the sort you’d like to hear,” replied Charlie
with what for him was almost candour.

“Well, now you mention it, Charlie,” said Father Ring with equal
frankness, “I fancy I did hear something. ... Not, of course, that I
believed it,” he added hastily, for fear he might be committing
himself too far.

“I’m sorry to say you can, father,” said Charlie, bowing his head and
joining his hands before him as he did at Mass on Sunday.

“Oh, my, my, Charlie,” said Father Ring, giving him a look out of the
corner of his eye, “that’s bad.”

Charlie looked at the floor and nodded glumly a couple of times to
show he shared the priest’s view of it.

“And tell me, Charlie,” whispered Father Ring, pivoting on
his umbrella as he leaned closer, “what way did herself take it?”

“Badly, father,” replied Charlie severely. “Very badly. I must say I’m
disappointed in Polly.”

This time it was he who looked out of the corner of his eye and
somehow it struck him that Father Ring was not as shocked-looking as he
might have been.

“I’d expect that, mind you,” Father Ring said thoughtfully.

“By God, he isn’t shocked!” thought Charlie. There was something that
almost resembled fellow-feeling in his air.

“But heavens above, father,” Charlie said explosively, “the woman is
out of her mind. And as for that Lawlor girl, I don’t know what to say
to her.” Father Ring nodded again, as though to say that he didn’t
know either. “Of course, she’s a good-living girl and all the rest of
it,” Charlie went on cantankerously, “but girls with no experience of
life have no business interfering between married couples. It was bad
enough without her—I needn’t tell you that. And there she is now,” he
added, cocking his thumb in the direction of the hall, “with her bags
packed and after ordering a car up from Hennessey’s. Sure that’s never
right.”

“Well, now, Charlie,” Father Ring whispered consolingly, “women are
contrairy; they are contrairy, there’s no denying that. I’ll have a
word with her myself.”

He opened the house door gently, peeped in, and then went into the
hall on tiptoe, as if he were entering a room where someone was
asleep. Charlie held the door slightly open behind him to hear what
went on. Unfortunately, the sight of the priest going in had given the
old farmer the notion of business as usual. Charlie looked round and
saw his long mournful face in the doorway.

“Charlie,” he began, “if I’m not disturbing you—”

Charlie, raising his clenched fists in the air, did a silent war
dance. The old farmer staggered back, cut to the heart, and then sat
on the sill of the window with his stick between his legs. When
another farmer came by the old man began to tell him his troubles with
long, accusing glances back at Charlie, who was glued to the door with
an agonized look on his face.

“My poor child!” he heard Father Ring say in a shocked whisper. “You
were in the wars. I can see you were.”

“Well, I’m going home now, father,” Polly replied listlessly.

“Sure, where better could you go?” exclaimed Father Ring as if trying
to disabuse her of any idea she might have of staying on. “’Tis that
husband of yours, I suppose? ’Tis to be sure. I need hardly ask.”

“I’d rather not talk about it, father,” Polly said politely but
firmly. “I dare say you’ll hear all about it soon enough.”

“I dare say I will,” he agreed. “People in this town don’t seem to
have much better to do. ’Pon my word, I believe I saw a few curtains
stirring on my way down. You’ll have an audience.”

“I never minded much what they saw,” said Polly wearily.

“Sure, you never had anything to conceal,” said Father Ring,
overwhelming her with agreement, as his way was. “I suppose you
remember the case of that little girl from Parnell Street a few weeks
ago?” 

“No, father, I’m afraid I don’t,” replied Polly without interest.

“Sure, you. couldn’t be bothered. Ah, ’twas a sad business,
though. Married at ten and the baby born at one.”

“Oh, my, father,” said Polly politely, “wasn’t that very quick?”

“Well, now you mention it, Polly, it was. But that wasn’t what I was
going to say. The poor child came home at four in the morning to avoid
attracting attention, and would you believe me, Polly, not a soul in
Parnell Street went to bed that night! Sure, that’s never natural! I
say that’s not natural. Where’s that blackguard of a husband of yours
till I give him a bit of my mind? Charlie Cashman! Charlie Cashman!
Where are you, you scoundrel?”

“I’m here, father,” said Charlie meekly, taking two steps forward till
he stood between the crimson curtains with a blaze of silver from the
fanlight falling on his bowed head.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself£?” shouted the priest, raising the
umbrella to him.

“I am, father, I am, I am,” replied Charlie in a broken voice without
looking up.

“Oh, that’s only all old connoisseuring, father,” Polly cried
distractedly, jumping to her feet and grabbing gloves and
prayerbook. “No one knows what I went through with that man.” She
opened the hall door; the hall was flooded with silver light, and she
turned to them, drawing a deep breath through her nose, as beautiful
and menacing as a sibyl. “I’m going home to my father now,” she
continued in a firm voice. “I left my keys on the dressing-table and
you can give Hennessey’s boy the bags.”

“Polly,” Father Ring said sternly, leaning on his umbrella, “what way
is this for a Child of Mary to behave?”

“As, ’tis all very fine for you to talk, father,” Polly cried
scoldingly. “You don’t have to live with him. I’d sooner live with a
wild beast than with that man,” she added dramatically.

“Polly,” Father Ring said mildly, “what you do in your own house is
your business. What you do in the public view is mine. Polly, you’re
in the public view.”

For the first time in Charlie’s life he found himself admiring Father
Ring. There was a clash and a grating of wills like the bending of
steel girders, and suddenly Polly’s girders buckled. She came in and
closed the door. “Now, Polly,” Father Ring said affectionately,
“inside that door I don’t want to interfere between ye, good or
bad. Make what arrangements you like. Live with him or don’t live with
him; sleep in the loft or sleep in the stable, but don’t let me have
any more scandal like we had this morning.”

“I wouldn’t be safe from him in the stable,” Polly said
rebelliously. She felt that for the first time in her life she had
been met and mastered by a man, and it rankled. There was more than a
joke in Charlie’s suggestion that it was Father Ring she should have
married. If only she could have gone to bed with him then and there
she would probably have risen a normal woman. But deprived of this
consolation she was ready to turn nasty, and Father Ring saw
it. Charlie only noticed the falsehood about himself.

“You wouldn’t be what?” he cried indignantly. “When did I ever raise a
finger or say a cross word to you?”

“Now, Charlie, now!” Father Ring said shortly, raising his hand for
silence. “And woman alive,” he asked good-humouredly, “can’t you bolt
your door?”

“How can I,” stormed Polly, as sulky as a spoiled child, “when there’s
no bolt on it?”

“That’s easily remedied.”

“Then tell him send out for a carpenter and have it done now,” she
said vindictively.

“Send out for a what?” shouted Charlie, cocking his head as if he
couldn’t believe what he heard. “Is it mad you are? What a thing I’d
do!”

“Very well,” she said, opening the hall door again. “I’ll go home to my
father.”

“Hold on now, hold on!” Charlie cried frantically, dragging her back
and closing the door behind her. “I’ll do it myself.”

“Then do it now!” she cried.

“Do what she says, Charlie,” the priest said quietly. He saw that the
danger wasn’t over yet. Charlie gave her a murderous glare and went
out to the shop. A crowd had gathered outside on the pavement,
discussing the wrongs of the poor farmer, who was an object of the
most intense sympathy. Charlie returned with a brass bolt, a
screwdriver, and a couple of screws.

“Show me that bolt!” said Polly menacingly. The devil was up in her
now. The priest might have bested her but she still saw a way of
getting her own back. Charlie knew that next day she and Nora Lawlor
would be splitting their sides over it; women were like that, and he
vowed a holy war against the whole boiling of them to the day of his
death. “I’m going home to my father’s,” she said, clamping her long
lips. “That bolt is too light.”

“Get a heavier one, Charlie,” Father Ring said quietly. “Don’t argue,
there’s a good man!”

Argument was about the last thing in Charlie’s mind at that
moment. Murder would have been nearer the mark. He flung the bolt at
Polly’s feet but she didn’t even glance at him. When he returned to
the shop the crowd was surging round the door.

“Bad luck and end to ye!” he snarled, taking out his spleen on
them. “Have ye no business of yeer own to mind without nosing round
here?”

“Mr. Cashman,” said a young man whom Charlie recognized as the old
farmer’s son, “you have a plug belonging to my father.”

“Then take it and to hell with ye!” snarled Charlie, taking the plug
from his pocket and throwing it into the midst of them.

“Oh, begor, we won’t trouble you much from this day forth,” the young
man said fierily. “Nor more along with us.”

That was the trouble in a quarrel with a country man. There always
were more along with him. Charlie, aware that he might have seriously
injured his business, returned to the hall with an iron bolt. “That’s
a stable bolt,” he said, addressing no one in particular.

“Put it on,” said Polly.

Charlie went upstairs. Father Ring followed him. The priest stood in
awe, looking at all the holy pictures. Then he held the bolt while
Charlie used the screwdriver. Charlie was so mad that he used it
anyhow.

You’re putting that screw in crooked, Charlie,” said the priest. “Wait
now till I put on my specs and I’ll do it for you.” 

“Let her go! Let her go!” said Charlie on the point of a
breakdown. “It doesn’t matter to me whether she goes or stays. I’m
nothing only a laughing-stock.”

“Now, Charlie, Charlie,” said the priest good-naturedly, “you have
your little business to mind.”

“For my nephews to walk into,” said Charlie bitterly.

“God spoke first, Charlie,” the priest said gravely. “You’re a young
man yet. Begor,” he added, giving Charlie a quizzical look over the
specs, “I did a few queer jobs in my time but this is the queerest
yet.” He saw that Charlie was in no state to appreciate the humour of
it, and gave him a professional look through the spectacles. “Ah,
well, Charlie,” he said, “we all have our burdens. You have only one,
but I have a dozen, not to mention the nuns, and they reckon two on a
count.”

As they came down the stairs Charlie’s mother appeared out of the
kitchen as if from nowhere, drying her hands in her apron; a little
bundle of rags, bones and malice, with a few wisps of white hair
blowing about her.

“Aha,” she cackled as if she were speaking to herself, “I hear the
Holy Door is shut for the next seven years.”


VIII

But, as she was so fond of saying herself, “God spoke first.” It
seemed as if Polly never had another day’s luck. She fell into a slow
decline and made herself worse instead of better by drinking the stuff
Mrs. Cashman brought her from the Wise Woman, and by changing from the
Nine Fridays to the Nine Tuesdays and from the Nine Tuesdays to the
Nine Mondays on the advice of Nora Lawlor, who had tried them all.

A scandal of that sort is never good for a man’s business. The
Donegans and their friends paid their accounts and went elsewhere. The
shop began to go down and Charlie went with it. He paid less attention
to his appearance, served the counter unshaven and without collar and
tie; grew steadily shabbier and more irritable and
neglected-looking. He spent most of his evenings in Johnny Desmond’s,
but even there people fought shy of him. The professional men and
civil servants treated him as a sort of town character, a humorous,
unreliable fellow without much balance. To Charlie, who felt they were
only cashing in on the sacrifices of men like himself, this was the
bitterest blow, and in his anxiety to keep his end up before them he
boasted, quarrelled, and generally played the fool.

But the funny thing was that from the time she fell ill Polly herself
softened towards him. Her family were the first to notice it. Like
everything else in Polly it went to extremes, and indeed it occurred
to her mother that if the Almighty God in His infinite mercy didn’t
release her soon, she’d have no religion left.

“I don’t know is he much worse than anyone else,” she said
broodingly. “I had some very queer temptations myself that no one knew
about. Father Ring said once that I was very unforgiving. I think now
he was right. Our family were always vindictive.”

After that she began to complain about being nervous alone and
Mrs. Cashman offered to sleep with her.

“Oh, I could never bear another woman in the room with me,” Polly said
impatiently. “What I want is a man. I think I’ll ask Charlie to make
it up.”

“Is it that fellow?” cried Charlie’s mother, aghast. “That scut—that—I
have no words for him. Oh, my! A man that would shame his poor wife
the way that ruffian did!”

“Ah, the way ye talk one’d think he never stopped,” Polly said
fractiously. “Ye have as much old goings-on about one five minutes!”

At this Mrs. Cashman decided she was going soft in the head. When a
married woman begins to reckon her husband’s infidelities in terms of
hours and minutes she is in a bad state. Polly asked Charlie meekly
enough to come back and keep her company. Charlie would have been as
well pleased to stay as he was, where he could come and go as he
liked, but he saw it was some sort of change before death.

It was cold comfort for Polly. Too much mischief had been made between
them for Charlie to feel about her as a man should feel for his
wife. They would lie awake in the grey, flickering light of the
colza-oil lamp, with all the holy pictures round them and the Lourdes
clock on the mantelpiece ticking away whenever it remembered it and
making wild dashes to catch up on lost time, and Charlie’s thoughts
would wander and he would think that if Polly were once out of the way
he would have another chance of a woman who would fling herself into
his arms without asking Father Ring’s permission, like the Yeoman
Captain’s daughter in the old song:

 _A thousand pounds I’ll give thee
  And fly from home with thee;
  I’ll dress myself in man’s attire
  And fight for Liberty._

Charlie was a romantic, and he couldn’t get over his boyish notion
that there must be women like the Captain’s Daughter, if only you
could meet them. And while he was making violent love to her, Polly,
lying beside him, thought of how her poor bare bones would soon be
scattered in the stony little patch above Kilmurray while another
woman would be lying in her bed. It made her very bitter.

“I suppose you’re only waiting till the sod is over me?” she said one
night in a low voice when Charlie was just fancying that she must have
dropped off.

“What’s that?” he asked in astonishment and exasperation, looking at
her with one arm under her head, staring into the shadows.

“You’re only waiting till I’m well rotten to get another woman in my
place,” she went on accusingly.

“What a thing I’d think of!” Charlie snapped, as cross as a man jolted
out of his sleep, for her words had caught the skirts of the Captain’s
Daughter as she slipped out of the room, and Charlie felt it was
shameful for him in his health and strength to be contriving like that
against a sick woman.

“Nothing matters to you now only to best John Joe and have a son
that’ll come in for the shop,” said Polly with the terrible insight of
the last loneliness. “Only for the shop you might have some nature for
me.”

“And when the hell had I anything but nature for you?” he shouted
indignantly, sitting up. “What do you think I married you for?
Money?”

“If you had any nature for me you wouldn’t disrespect me,” Polly went
on stubbornly, clinging to her grievance.

“And what about you?” said Charlie. “You had to think I was some old
devil on the pictures before you could put up with me. There’s nature
for you!”

“I did it with a good object,” said Polly.

“Good object!” snorted Charlie. He almost told her that Juliet and the
Captain’s Daughter didn’t do it with a good object or any object at
all only getting the man they wanted, but he knew she wouldn’t
understand. Polly lay for a long time drawing deep breaths through her
nose.

“Don’t think or imagine I’ll rest quiet and see you married to another
woman,” she added in a very determined voice. “You may think you’ll be
rid of me but I’ll make full sure you won’t. All our family would go
to hell’s gates to be revenged.”

“Christ Almighty,” snarled Charlie, giving one wild leap out of the
bed, “leave me out of this! This is my thanks for coming back here!
Leave me out!”

“Mind what I say now,” said Polly in an awe-inspiring voice, pointing
a bony arm at him from the shadows. She knew she had him on a sore
spot. Herself or Mrs. Cashman would have made no more fuss about
meeting a ghost than about meeting the postman, but Charlie had enough
of the rationalist in him to be terrified. His mother had brought him
up on them. “Our family was ever full of ghosts,” she added
solemnly. “You won’t have much comfort with her.”

“My trousers!” cried Charlie, beside himself with rage and terror.
“Where the hell is my trousers?”

“I’m giving you fair warning,” Polly cried in blood-curdling tones as
he poked his way out of the room in his nightshirt. “I’ll soho ye
well, the pair of ye!”


IX

She died very peacefully one evening when no one was in the room but
old Mrs. Cashman. Even in death she made trouble for Charlie. Her last
wish was to be buried in Closty, the Donegan graveyard. It wasn’t that
she bore any malice to Charlie, but the thought of the two wives in
one grave upset her. She said it wouldn’t be nice, and Nora agreed
with her. Of course, when it got out it made things worse for Charlie,
for it suggested that, at the very least, he had some hand in her
death.

Nora felt rather like that too, but then a strange thing happened. She
was coming down from the bedroom when she heard a noise from the
shop. The door was closed, all but an inch or two, but Nora was of a
very inquisitive disposition. She pushed it in. The shop was dark,
several of the outside shutters being up, but in the dim light she saw
the figure of a man and realized that the noise she had heard was
weeping. It gave her a shock, for it had never once occurred to her
that Charlie was that sort of man. She was a warm-hearted girl. She
went up and touched his arm.

“I’m sorry, Charlie,” she said timidly.

“I know that, Nora,” he muttered without looking round. “I know you
are.”

“She’ll be a terrible loss,” she added, more from want of something to
say than the feeling that she was speaking the truth.

“Ah, she was unfortunate, Nora,” Charlie said with a sob. “She was a
fine woman, a lovely woman. I don’t know what bad luck was on us.”

“What better luck could ye have and the poor orphan cheated?” cried a
harsh, inexpressive voice from the hall. Nora started. Mrs. Cashman
was standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. Her voice and
appearance were like those of an apparition, and for the first time
Nora wondered if there wasn’t something in Polly’s fancy that she was
really a witch. “She’s better off, Nora girl.”

“I suppose so,” Nora agreed doubtfully, resenting her intrusion just
at the moment when Charlie was ready for confidences. People with
tears in their eyes will tell you things they’d never tell you at
other times.

“She was a good girl and a just girl and she loved her God,” hissed
Mrs. Cashman, aiming every word at Charlie under Nora’s guard. “It
would be a bad man that would go against her dying wishes.”

“Who talked of going against them?” snarled Charlie with the savagery
of a goaded beast, and lunging past them went out and
banged the hall door behind him.

“Poor Charlie is very upset,” said Nora.

“Upset?” cackled Mrs. Cashman. “How upset he is! She’s not in her
grave yet, and already he’s planning who he’ll get instead of
her. That’s how upset he is! But he’s not done with me yet, the
blackguard!”

For the first time it occurred to Nora that perhaps Charlie had been
misjudged—if men could ever be misjudged. From all accounts of what
they did to poor women when they had them stripped, they could not,
but something about Mrs. Cashman made her suspicious.

She went to the funeral in Mrs. Cashman’s carriage. The moment she got
out of it at the graveyard she knew there was trouble in store. The
Donegans were there, a half dozen different families, and on their own
ground they had taken complete command. Charlie was only an
outsider. He stood by the hearse with his hands crossed before him,
holding his hat, and a look of desperation on his dark face. Others
besides herself had noticed the signs, and a group of men was standing
in a semicircle a hundred yards down the road, where they wouldn’t get
involved. Her father was between them and the hearse, but sufficiently
far away to keep out of it as well. He was scowling, his lips pouted,
his eyes were half shut while he noticed everything that went on.

The procession into the graveyard would be the signal. Charlie would
be shouldered away from the cemetery gate, and he knew it, and knew he
was no match for half a dozen men younger than himself. He’d fight, of
course; everyone who knew Charlie knew that, but he could be very
quickly dragged down the lane and no one much the wiser. Just at the
moment when the coffin was eased out of the hearse and four Donegans
got under it Nora left Mrs. Cashman’s side and stood by Charlie.

It was exactly as though she had blown a policeman’s whistle. Her
father raised his head and beckoned to the semicircle of men behind
and then, pulling the lapels of his coat together, placed himself at
the other side of her. One by one half a dozen middle-aged men came up
and joined Charlie’s party. They were all old Volunteers and could not
stand aside and let their commandant and vice-commandant be hustled
about by the seed of land-grabbers and policemen. Not a word was
spoken, not a cross look exchanged, but everyone knew that sides had
been taken and that Charlie could now enter the graveyard
unmolested. As he and Nora emerged at the grave Father Ring looked up
at them from under his bushy brows. He had missed none of the
drama. There was very little that foxy little man missed.

“Thanks, Nora, thanks,” said Charlie in a low voice as the service
ended. “You were always a good friend.”

Even Nora at her most complacent wouldn’t have described herself as a
friend of Charlie’s, but the fact that he had understood what she had
done proved him to have better feelings than she had given him credit
for. She was embarrassed by the feelings she had roused. The old
volunteers all came up and shook her formally by the hand. Her father
was the most surprising of all. He stood aside sniffing, with tears in
his eyes, too overcome even to tell her what he felt.

After that, everyone noticed the change in Charlie. His clothes were
brushed, his boots were polished, his face was shaved, and no matter
what hour of the morning you went in he had collar and tie on. He
spent more time in the shop and less in Johnny Desmond’s. He even gave
up going to Johnny’s altogether. That could only mean that he was
looking for someone to take Polly’s place. But who would have him? A
respectable woman would be lowering herself. The general impression
was that he’d marry Molly O’Regan, and Nora supposed that this would
only be right, but somehow she couldn’t help feeling it would be a
pity. Mrs. Cashman, who saw all her beautiful plans for her
grandchildren go up in smoke, felt the same. For the first time Nora
included Charlie in her prayers, and asked the Holy Ghost to help him
in making the right choice.

One night a few weeks later on her way back from the church she looked
in on him. She was astonished at Mrs. Cashman’s sourness.

“You’ll have a cup of tea?” said Charlie.

“I won’t Charlie, honest,” she said hastily, alarmed at the puss the
old woman had on her. “I’m rushing home.”

“I’ll see you home,” he said at once, giving himself a glance in the
mirror.

“If you’re back before me, the key will be in the window,”
Mrs. Cashman said sourly.

“You’re not going out again?” he asked.

“I’m not going to stop in this house alone,” she bawled.

“Really, Charlie, there’s no reason for you to come,” said Nora in
distress.

“Nonsense!” he snapped crossly. “Herself and her ghosts!”

It was a moonlit night and the street was split with silver light. The
abbey tower was silhouetted against it, and the light broke through
the deeply splayed chancel lancets, making deep shadows among the
foundered tombstones.

“I only came to know how you were getting on,” she said.

“Ah, I’m all right,” said Charlie. “Only a bit lonesome, of course.”

“Ah,” she said with a half-smile, “I suppose you won’t be long that
way.”

She could have dropped dead with shame as soon as she had said
it. Nora was never one to make any bones about her inquisitiveness,
but this sounded positively vulgar. It wasn’t in line at all with her
behaviour at the funeral. Charlie didn’t seem to notice. He gave her a
long look through screwed-up eyes, and then crossed the road to lean
his back against the bridge.

“Tell me, Nora,” he asked, folding his arms and looking keenly at her
from under the peal of his cap, “what would you do in my position?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Charlie,” she replied in alarm, wondering how she
could extricate herself from the consequences of her own curiosity.
“What’s to prevent you?”

“You know the sort of things Polly said?” he said with a sigh.

“I don’t think I’d mind that at all,” she replied. “After all, Polly
was a very sick woman.”

“She was,” agreed Charlie. “Do you think ’twould be right to go
against her wishes like that?”

“Well, of course, that would depend, Charlie,” said Nora with sudden
gravity, for like many of her race she combined a strong grasp of the
truths of religion with a hazy notion of the facts of life.

“You mean on whether ’twas done with a good object or not?” Charlie
asked keenly. All he had learned from years with Polly was the
importance of doing things with a good object.

“And whether the wishes were reasonable or not,” she added, surprised
to find him so well-versed in religious matters.

“And you don’t think they were?”

“I wouldn’t say so. Father Ring could tell you that better than I
could.”

“I dare say, I dare say. Tell me, Nora, do you believe in things like
that?”

“Like what, Charlie?” she asked in surprise.

“Ghosts, and things of that sort,” he said with a nervous glance in
the direction of the abbey, whose slender tapering tower soared from
the rubbish-tip of ruined gables, with its tall irregular battlements
that looked like cockades in the moonlight.

“We’re taught to believe in them,” she replied with a little shudder.

“I know we are,” sighed Charlie. “But you never saw one yourself ?”

“I didn’t.”

“Nor I.”

They resumed their walk home. Nora saw now what was fretting
him. Polly had said she’d haunt him and Polly was a woman of her
word. Anything she had ever said she’d do she had done, and there was
no saying that as a pure spirit she’d have changed much. Charlie
himself had lost a lot of the cocksure rationalism of his fighting
days. He had lived so long with women that he was becoming almost as
credulous as they. He was reckoning up his chances in case Polly’s
ghost got out of hand. Nora couldn’t give him much comfort, for her
own belief in ghosts was determined by the time of day, and at ten
o’clock of a moonlight night is was always particularly strong.

When they parted she blamed herself a lot. It was most unmaidenly of
her first to call at all and, secondly, to ask point blank what his
intentions were, for that was what it amounted to, and for a terrible
few minutes she had dreaded that he might think it mattered to her. Of
course it didn’t, except for his own sake, because though she had
begun to like him better, she knew there was no possibility of a Child
of Mary like herself marrying him—even if Polly had been an
unobtrusive ghost.

She would have been surprised and upset to know that her views were
not shared by others. When Charlie got home he stood in the hall in
surprise. There was something queer about the house. The hall was in
darkness; there was light in the kitchen but it was very feeble. With
all the talk of ghosts it upset him. “Are you there, mother?” he
called nervously, but there was no reply, only the echo of his own
voice. He went to the kitchen door and his heart almost stopped
beating. The fire was out, the greater part of the room in shadow, but
two candles in two brass candlesticks were burning on the mantelpiece,
and between them, smiling down at him, a large, silver-framed photo of
Polly.

Next moment, seeing how he was being baited, he went mad with
rage. His mother, the picture of aged innocence, was kneeling by her
bed when he went in, and she looked round at him in surprise.

“Was it you left that in the kitchen?” he shouted.

“What is it?” she asked in mock ignorance, rising and screwing up her
eyes as she reached for the picture. “Oh, isn’t it pretty?” she
asked. “I found it today in one of her drawers.”

“Put it back where you found it,” he stormed.

“Oye, why?” she asked with a pretence of concern. “Wouldn’t anyone
like it—his poor, dead wife? Unless he’d have something on his
conscience.”

“Never mind my conscience,” shouted Charlie. “Fitter for you to look
after your own.”

“Aha,” she bawled triumphantly, throwing off the mask, “my conscience
have nothing to trouble it.”

“You have it too well seasoned.”

“And don’t think but she sees it all, wherever she is,” the old woman
cried, raising her skinny paw in the direction in which Polly might be
supposed to exist. “Take care she wouldn’t rise from the grave and
haunt you, you and that litle whipster you were out gallivanting
with!”

“What gallivanting?” snarled Charlie. “You don’t know what you’re
talking about.”

“Maybe I’m blind!” bawled his mother. “Walking into the graveyard
alongside you, as if she had you caught already! Aha, the sly-boots,
the pussycat, with her novenas and her Nine Fridays! She thinks we
don’t know what she’s up to, but God sees ye, and the dead woman sees
ye, and what’s more, I see ye. And mark my words, Charlie Cashman,
that’s the hand that’ll never rock a cradle for you!”


x

Two days later Charlie happened to be serving behind the counter when
he saw Father Ring busily admiring the goods in the shop window. The
priest smiled and nodded, but when Charlie made to come out to him he
shook his head warningly. Then he raised one finger and pointed in the
direction of the house door. Charlie nodded gloomily. Father Ring made
another sign with his thumb to indicate the direction he was going in
and Charlie nodded again. He knew Father Ring wanted to talk to him
somewhere his mother wouldn’t know.

He found Father Ring letting on to be studying the plant life in the
river. When Charlie appeared he indicated surprise and pleasure at
such an unexpected meeting.

“Whisper, Charlie,” he said at last, putting his left hand on
Charlie’s shoulder and bending his head discreetly across the other
one, “I had a visit from your mother.”

“My mother?”

“Your mother,” the priest said gravely, studying his face again before
making another little excursion over his shoulder. “She’s afraid
you’re going to get married again,” he whispered in amusement.

“She’s easy frightened.”

“That’s what I told her. I know you’ll keep this to yourself. She
seems to think there’s some special commandment to stop you. Of
course,” added the priest with a shocked air, “I told her I wouldn’t
dream of interfering.”

“You did to be sure,” said Charlie watchfully, knowing that this was
the one thing in the world that no one could prevent Father Ring from
doing.

“You know the girl I mean?”

“I do.”

“A nice girl.”

“A fine girl.”

“And a courageous girl,” said Father Ring. “Mind you, ’tisn’t every
girl would do what she did the day of the funeral. Of course,” he
admitted, “she should have been married ten years ago. They get very
contrairy.” Then he pounced. “Tell me, Charlie, you wouldn’t be
thinking about her, would you? I’m not being inquisitive?”

“You’re not, to be sure.”

“Because it struck me that if you were, I might be able to do you a
good turn. Of course, she hasn’t much experience. You know what I
mean?”

“I do, father,” said Charlie who realized as well as the priest did
that it would be no easy job to coax a pious girl like Nora into
marriage with a public sinner like himself. But at the same time he
was not going to be bounced into anything. He had made a fool of
himself once before. “Well now,” he added with a great air of candour,
turning towards the river as though for recollection, “I’ll tell you
exactly the way I’m situated, father. You know the old saying: ‘Once
bitten, twice shy.’”

“I do, I do,” said Father Ring, turning in the same direction as if
his thought and Charlie’s might meet and mingle over the river. Then
he started and gave Charlie a look of astonishment. “Ah, I wouldn’t
say that, Charlie.”

“Well, maybe I’m putting it a bit strongly, father.”

“I think so, Charlie, I think you are,” Father Ring said eagerly. “I’d
say she was a different class altogether. More feminine, more
clinging—that’s under the skin, of course.

“You might be right, father,” Charlie said but he stuck to his point
all the same. “But there’s one thing you might notice about me,” he
went on, looking at the priest out of the corner of his eye. “You
mightn’t think it but I’m a highly strung man.”

“You are, you are,” said Father Ring with great anxiety. “I noticed
that myself. I wonder would it be blood pressure, Charlie?”

“I was never the same since the Troubles,” said Charlie. “But whatever
it is, I want something to steady me.”

“You do, you do,” said the priest, trying to follow his drift.

“If I had a family I’d be different.”

“You would,” said Father Ring with a crucified air. “I can see you’re
a domesticated sort of man.”

“And,” added Charlie with a wealth of meaning in his tone, “if the
same thing happened me again I might as well throw myself in there.”
He pointed at the river, scowling, and then took a deep breath and
stepped back from the priest.

“But you don’t think it would, Charlie?”

“But you see, father, I don’t know.”

“You don’t, you don’t, to be sure you don’t,” said Father Ring in a
glow of understanding. “I see it now. And, of course, having doubts
like that, they might come against you.”

“You put your finger on it.”

“And, of course, if you were to marry the other girl—what’s that her
name is?—Peggy or Kitty or Joan, you’d have no doubts, and, as well as
that, you’d have the little fellow. You could look after him.”

“That’s the very thing, father,” Charlie said savagely. “That’s what
has me demented.”

“It has, it has, of course,” said Father Ring, smiling at the sheer
simplicity of it. “Of course, Nora is a nicer girl in every way but a
bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I know exactly how you
feel. I’d be the same myself.”

So Charlie returned to the shop, feeling worse than ever. Nora, as
Father Ring said, was a nice girl, but a bird in the hand was worth
two in the bush and Charlie felt he never really had a bird of any
breed; nothing but a few tailfeathers out of Molly before she flew
into the bush after the others. And even Father Ring didn’t know how
badly he felt about Molly’s son. He was a warm-hearted man; how else
could he feel? Once he had got out the car and driven to the village
where the boy had been nursed, watched him come home from school, and
then followed him to slip a half crown into his hand. If only he could
bring the little fellow home and see him go to a good school like a
Christian, Charlie felt he could put up with a lot from Molly. And he
knew that he wouldn’t really have to put up with much from her. Under
normal circumstances, there was no moral or intellectual strain that
Molly could be subjected to which could not be cured by a hearty smack
on the backside.

But then his mind would slip a cog and he would think of the scene
outside the graveyard, and Nora, grave and pale, stepping over to his
side. “In comes the Captain’s Daughter, the Captain of the Yeos”;
“Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”—a couple of lines like those
and Charlie would feel himself seventeen again, ready to risk his life
for Ireland or anything else that came handy. Whatever misfortune was
on him, he knew his mother was right all the time; that he could never
be like any other sensible man but would keep on to the day he died,
pining for something a bit larger than life.

That night the temptation to go to the pub was almost irresistible. He
went as far as the door and then walked on. That was where people went
only when their problems had grown too much for them. Instead he went
for a lonesome stroll in the country, and as he returned his feet, as
if by magic, led him past Nora’s door. He passed that too, and then
turned back.

“God bless all here,” he said pushing in the door. She was sitting in
the dusk and rose to meet him, flushed and eager.

“Come in, Charlie,” she said with real pleasure in her tone. “You’ll
have a cup?”

“I’ll have a bucket,” said Charlie. “Since I gave up the booze I have
a throat like a lime-kiln.”

“And did you give it up entirely?” she asked with awe.

“Entirely,” said Charlie. “There’s no other way of giving it up.”

“Aren’t you great?” she said, but Charlie didn’t know whether he was
or not. Like all worriers he had at last created a situation for
himself that he could really worry about. As she rose to light the gas
he stopped her, resting his big paws on her shoulder.

“Sit down,” he said shortly. “I want to have a word with you.”

Her face grew pale and her big brown eyes took on a wide, unwinking
stare as she did what he told her. If Charlie could only have
forgotten his own problem for a moment he would have realized that
Nora had also hers. Her problem was what she would say if he asked her
to marry him,

“I’m in great trouble,” he said.

“Oh, Law!” she exclaimed, “What is it?”

“I had a talk with Father Ring today.”

“I heard about that.” (There was very little she didn’t hear about.)

“He wanted me to get married.”

“’Tisn’t much when you say it quick,” said Nora with rising
colour. From Charlie’s announcement that he was in trouble she had
naturally concluded that Father Ring wanted him to marry Molly and,
now that it had come to the point, she didn’t really want him to marry
Molly. “I wonder how people can have the audacity to interfere in
other people’s business like that.”

“Ah, well,” said Charlie, surprised at her warmth, “he intended it as
a kindness.”

“It mightn’t turn out to be such a kindness,” said Nora.

“That’s the very thing,” said Charlie. “It might not turn out to be a
kindness. That’s what I wanted to ask your advice about. You know the
way I’m situated. I’m lonely down there with no one only the mother. I
know it would probably be the makings of me, but ’tis the risk that
has me damned. ’Twould be different if I knew I was going to have a
family, someone to come in for the business when I’m gone.”

“You mean the same thing as happened with Polly might happen with
her?” Nora exclaimed in surprise.

“I mean I broke my heart once before,” snapped Charlie, “and I don’t
want to do it again.”

“But you don’t think the same thing would happen again?” she asked
with a hypnotised air.

“But I don’t know, girl, I don’t know,” Charlie cried desperately.
“You might think I’m being unreasonable, but if you went through the
same thing with a man that I went through with Polly you’d feel the
same. Did Polly ever tell you she thought the mother was putting
spells on her?” he added sharply.

“She did.”

“And what do you think of it?”

“I don’t know what to think, Charlie,” said Nora, the dusk having
produced its periodical change in her views of the supernatural.

“When I married Polly first,” Charlie went on reflectively, “she said:
‘Many a better cake didn’t rise.’ The other night she said: “That’s
the hand that’ll never rock a cradle for you.’” He looked at Nora to
see if she was impressed, but seeing that Nora in her innocent way
applied his mother’s prophecy to Molly O’Regan she wasn’t as impressed
as she might have been if she had known it referred to herself.
Charlie felt the scene wasn’t going right, but he couldn’t see where
the error lay. “What knowledge would a woman like that have?” he
asked.

“I couldn’t imagine, Charlie,” replied Nora with nothing like the awe
he expected.

“So you see the way I am,” he went on after a moment. “If I don’t
marry her—always assuming she’d have me, of course,” he interjected
tactfully—“I’m cutting my own throat. If I do marry her and the same
thing happens again, I’m cutting her throat as well as my own. What
can I do?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t advise you, Charlie,” replied Nora steadily,
almost as though she was enjoying his troubles, which in a manner of
speaking—seeing that her premises were wrong—she was. “What do you
think yourself?”

Charlie didn’t quite know what to think. He had come there expecting
at least as much sympathy and understanding as he had received from
Father Ring. He had felt that even a few tears and kisses wouldn’t be
out of place.

“If she was a different sort of girl,” he said with an infinity of
caution, “I’d say to her what I said to Father Ring and ask her to
come to Dublin with me for a couple of days.”

“But for what, Charlie?” asked Nora with real interest.

“For what?” repeated Charlie in surprise. Charlie was under the
illusion most common among his countrymen that his meaning was always
crystal-clear. “Nora,” he went on with a touch of pathos, “I’ll be
frank with you. You’re the only one I can be frank with. You’re the
only friend I have in the world. My position is hopeless. Hopeless!
Father Ring said it himself. ‘Marrying a girl with doubts like that,
what can you expect, Charlie?’ There’s only one thing that would break
the spell—have the honeymoon first and the marriage after.”

It was dark, but he watched her closely from under the peak of his cap
and saw that he had knocked her flat. No one had ever discussed such a
subject with Nora before.

“But wouldn’t it be a terrible sin, Charlie?” she asked with a quaver
in her voice.

“Not if ’twas done with a good object,” Charlie said firmly, answering
her out of her own mouth.

“I’m sure she’d do it even without that, Charlie,” Nora said with
sudden bitterness.

“If she loved me she would,” said Charlie hopefully.

“Love?” cried Nora scornfully, springing from her chair, all her
maiden airs dropping from her and leaving her a mature, raging,
jealous woman. “Don’t be deceiving yourself like that, my dear
man. That one doesn’t love you.”

“What? Who? Who doesn’t love me?” asked Charlie in stupefaction.

It was her turn then.

“Weren’t you talking about Molly O’Regan?” she asked in alarm.

“Molly O’Regan?” Charlie cried, raising his face to the ceiling like a
dog about to bay. “What the hell put Molly O’Regan into your head,
woman? Sure, I could have Molly O’Regan in the morning and the child
along with her. Isn’t that what I was saying to you?”

“Oh,” said Nora, drawing back from him with a look of horror, “don’t
say any more!”

“But my God, girl,” moaned Charlie, thinking of his beautiful scene
absolutely wasted and impossible to begin on again, “sure you must
know I don’t give a snap of my fingers for Molly O’Regan! You were the
first woman I ever gave a damn about, only you wouldn’t have me. I
only married Polly because she was your shadow. Even Father Ring knew
that.”

“Oh,” she cried as if she were just ready to go into hysterics, “I
couldn’t do it! I couldn’t!” 

“No, no, no, no,” said Charlie in alarm as though such an idea had
never crossed his mind. “You’re taking me up wrong. Whisht, now,
whisht, or you’ll be heard!”

“You must never, never say such a thing to me again,” she said,
looking at him as though he were a devil in human shape.

“But my God, woman,” he cried indignantly, “I didn’t. You’re missing
the whole point. I never asked you. I said if you were a different
sort of woman I might ask you. I was only putting the case the way I
put it to Father Ring. Surely you can understand that?”

It seemed she couldn’t, not altogether anyhow, and Charlie strode to
the door, his hands clasped behind his back and a gloomy look on his
face.

“I’m sorry if I upset you,” he snapped over his shoulder. “’Tis your
own fault didn’t marry me first. You’re the only woman I ever cared
about and I wanted to explain.”

She was staring at him incredulously, brushing back the loose black
hair from her forehead with an uncertain hand. She looked childish and
beautiful. If Charlie had only known, she was thinking what a very
queer way the Holy Ghost had answered her prayer. As Polly had once
said the Lord’s ways were very peculiar. Charlie waited for some sign
of relenting in her but saw none and, heaving a deep sigh, he
left. Crossing the bridge when the abbey tower was all black and spiky
against the sky and the lights in the back of the little shops were
reflected in the river, he was like a man demented. He had done it
again! This time he’d done it for good. It would soon be in everyone’s
mouth that he had tried to seduce a second girl. He knew how it would
be interpreted. He saw it already like headlines in a newspaper:
WELL-KNOWN SHOPKEEPER’S SHOCKING PROPOSAL OUTRAGED FATHER’S
INDIGNATION. The girl who had stood by him when no one else would do
it—this was her thanks! And it all came of Romeo and Juliet, the
Captain’s Daughter and the rest of the nonsense. There was a curse on
him. Nora would tell her father and Father Ring; between them they
would raise up a host of new enemies against him; no one would do
business with him—a foolish, idle, dreamy, impractical man!


XI

He let a week go by before he did anything. In that time he realized
the full horror of the scrape he had got himself into, and avoided
every contact with people he knew. He spent most of his time in the
sitting-room, and only went down to the shop when the girl came up for
him and he knew that the visitor was a genuine customer and not an
angel of vengeance. Finally, he asked Jim O’Regan in for a drink.

Jim was an ex-soldier, small, gaunt, and asthmatic, dressed in a blue
serge suit that was no bluer than his face and with a muffler high
about his throat. Johnny Desmond gave them a queer look as they
entered, but Charlie, seemingly in the highest spirits, rattled away
about everything till it dawned on them both that he had opened
negotiations for Molly and the child. Charlie could have gone further
but one glance at Jim’s mean poker face and he remembered the scene
outside the graveyard, and then it was as if Holy Ireland, Romeo and
Juliet, and all the romantic dreams of his youth started with a cry
from their slumber. It was terrible, but he couldn’t help it; he was
an unfortunate dreamy man.

Later that morning he had to go to the bank. The whole week he had
been putting it off, but he could put it off no longer. He gave a
quick glance up the street to see that the coast was clear and then
strode briskly out. He hadn’t gone a hundred yards when he saw Jerry
Lawlor coming down the same pavement. Charlie looked round frantically
for some lane or shop he could take refuge in but there was
none. “Brass, boys, brass!” he groaned. But to his great surprise
Jerry showed no signs of anger, only a slight surprise at Charlie’s
slinking air.

“Good morrow, Charlie,” he said, sticking his thumbs in the armholes
of his vest, “as you won’t say it yourself,” he added jovially.

“Oh, good morrow, good morrow, Jerry,” cried Charlie with false
heartiness, trying to read the signs on Jerry’s battered
countenance. “Up to the bank I’m rushing,” he said
confidentially. 

“The bank?” Jerry said slyly. “Not the presbytery?”

“What the hell would I be doing at the presbytery?” Charlie exclaimed
with a watchful smile.

“Oh, headquarters, headquarters,” replied Jerry. “Who was it was
telling me you were thinking of taking the field again? I believe your
patrols were out.”

“Patrols, Jerry?” Charlie echoed in surprise. “Ah, I’m too old for
soldiering.”

“I hope not, Charlie,” said Jerry. “Begor,” he added, squaring his
shoulders, “I don’t know that I’d mind shouldering the old shotgun
again in a good cause. Well, be good!” he ended with a wink and a nod.

He left Charlie open-mouthed on the pavement, looking after him. What
the blazes did Jerry Lawlor mean? he wondered, scratching his
poll. “Be good”—was that the sort of advice you’d expect from a man
whose daughter you had just been trying to seduce? “Be good”—was the
man mad or something? He couldn’t understand why Jerry, who had the
devil’s own temper, took his advances to Nora in that spirit. Was it
possible that Nora had censored them so much that he hadn’t
understood? Was it—a wild hope—that she hadn’t told him at all? His
face fell again. No woman could keep a thing like that to herself. If
she hadn’t told her father, she’d told someone else, and sooner or
later it would get back to him. He heaved a bitter sigh. The sooner he
could fix up things with the O’Regans the sooner he would be armed to
face the attack.

He went on, but his luck seemed to be dead out that morning. As he
went in the door Father Ring came out. Charlie gave him a terrified
look, but before he could even think of escape, Father Ring was
shaking his hand.

“You’re looking well, Charlie.”

“I’m not feeling too good, father,” said Charlie, thinking how far
from the truth it was.

“Tell me,” said Father Ring confidentially, “you didn’t do any more
about that little matter we were discussing?”

“To tell you the truth, father,” Charlie said with apparent candour,
“I didn’t.”

“Take your time,” Father Ring said with a knowing look.

“There’s no hurry. I wouldn’t be surprised if something could be done
about that kid of yours. Mind! I’m not making any promises, but
there’s a soft corner there for you all right, and the father wouldn’t
let her go empty-handed. You know what I mean?”

“I do, father,” groaned Charlie, meaning that he hadn’t a notion, and
as Father Ring went round the corner towards the church he stood on
the bank steps with his head in a whirl. It was a spring day, a
sunshiny day which made even the main street look cheerful, but
Charlie was too confused for external impressions. For a week he had
skulked like an assassin from Jerry Lawlor and Father Ring, yet here
they treated him like lovers. And Nora went to confession to Father
Ring! Admitting that he wouldn’t let on what she did tell him, he
couldn’t conceal what she didn’t, and it was quite plain that she
hadn’t told either of them about Charlie. Now what purpose would a
girl have in concealing a thing like that? Modesty? But modesty in
Charlie’s mind was associated with nothing but hullabaloo. There was
another flash of hope like a firework in his head, and then again
darkness. “Christ!” he thought despairingly. “I’m going dotty! ’Tis
giving up the drink in such a hurry.”

“Morra, Charlie,” said a farmer going in, but Charlie didn’t even
acknowledge the salute. His face was screwed up like that of a man who
has forgotten what he came for. Then he drew a deep breath, pulled
himself erect, and set off at a brisk pace for the Lawlors’.

Nora came out when she heard him banging on the door and gaped at him
with horror-stricken eyes. He pushed her rudely back into the kitchen
before him.

“Sit down, sit down!” he said shortly.

“What would I sit down for?” she asked in a low voice, and then her
knees seemed to give way and she flopped.

“When can you marry me?” asked Charlie, standing over her like a
boxer, ready to knock her flat if she rose again.

“Why?” she asked in a dead voice. “Wouldn’t Molly O’Regan have you?”

“Ha, ha,” laughed Charlie bitterly. “I see the tomtoms were working
this morning.”

“I suppose you think we don’t know that ’tis all arranged?” she asked,
throwing back her head to toss aside the stray curl that fell across
her face.

“The trouble with you,” Charlie said vindictively, “is that you always
know other people’s business and never know your own. When you met the
one man that cared for you you let him slip. That’s how much you
knew. You’re trying to do the same thing now.”

“If you cared for me you wouldn’t ask me to disrespect myself,” she
said with mournful accusation.

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t ask you at all,” snapped Charlie. “Now, I’m
asking you properly. Once and for all, will you marry me?”

“But why should you?” she asked in a vague hysterical tone, rising
with her hands thrown out and her head well back. “You know now the
sort of woman I am. You need never respect me any more.”

“What the hell is up with you?” shouted Charlie, almost dancing with
fury. Whatever he said to this girl seemed to be wrong.

“There’s nothing up with me,” she answered in a reasonable tone which
was as close to lunacy as anything Charlie had ever heard. “I know
what I am now—that’s all.”

“And what are you?” asked Charlie in alarm.

“You ought to know,” she said triumphantly. “I didn’t slap your face,
did I?”

“You didn’t what?” cried Charlie with an agonized look.

“Oh,” she cried in a rapture of self-abasement, “I deceived myself
nicely all the years. I thought I was a good-living woman but you knew
better. You knew what I was; a cheap, vulgar, sensual woman that you
could say what you liked to. Or do what you liked to. I suppose it’s
the just punishment for my pride. Why would you marry me when you can
get me for nothing?”

Charlie had another flash of inspiration, this time inspiration mixed
with pity and shame. He suddenly saw the girl was fond of him and
would do anything for him. Jessica, Juliet, the Captain’s Daughter,
the whole blooming issue. This was the real thing, the thing he had
always been looking for and never found. He nearly swept her off her
feet as he grabbed her.

“God forgive me!” he said thickly. “The finest woman in Ireland and I
tormenting you like that! Your father and the priest have more sense
than me. Put on your things and we’ll go down and see them.”

“No, no, no,” she cried hysterically like a Christian martyr offering
herself to the lions. “Your mother said I’d never rock a cradle for
you.”

“My mother, my mother—she has me as bad as herself. Never mind what
she says.”

“But what’ll you do if she puts spells on me?” she asked in a dazed
tone, putting her hand to her forehead.

“Roast her over a slow fire,” snapped Charlie. He was himself again,
aged seventeen, a roaring revolutionary and rationalist, ready to take
on the British Empire, the Catholic Church, and the Wise Woman all
together. “Now listen to me, girl,” he said, taking her hands. “No one
is going to put spells on you. And no one is going to haunt you,
either. That’s only all old women’s talk and we had enough of it to
last us our lives. We’re a match for anyone and anything. Now, what
are you doing?”

“Making the dinner,” said Nora, blinking and smiling at anything so
prosaic.

“We’ll have dinner in town, the four of us,” said Charlie. “Now come
on!”

He stood behind her grinning as she put on her hat. She put it on
crooked and her face was blotched beyond anything a powderpuff could
repair, but Charlie didn’t mind. He felt grand. At last he had got
what he had always wanted, and he knew the rest would come. (It did
too, and all Mrs. Cashman’s spells didn’t delay it an hour.) As for
Nora, she had no notion what she had got, but she had an alarming
suspicion that it was the very opposite of what she had always
desired.

(Which, for a woman, is usually more or less the same thing.)


(1947)