Denis. A study in black and white

Front matter

DENIS DENIS A STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE BY MRS. E. M. FIELD AUTHOR OF "ETHNE," " THE CHILD AND HIS BOOK," ETC TLon&on MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. NEW YORK : MACMILLAN & CO. 1896 Tlie Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved Richard Clay and Sons, Limited, LONDON AND BUNGAY. PREFATORY NOTE To my kinsfolk and friends, among the landowners of Ireland, this unvarnished tale is offered. It advances no theory, it upholds no political doctrine, nor does it seek to espouse the cause of peasant against pro prietor, or of proprietor against peasant. Its aim is by the relation of actual incidents, to throw some light on circumstances and characteristics too often unknown and ignored, which yet are vital factors in that vast and ever-recurring problem, the Irish Question. And may those who know but too well the truth of certain incidents be kindly willing to forgive the frankness with which they are related.

CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. A DINNER OF HERBS — I II. — AND LOVE THEREWITH 17 III. "AS THE EYES OF SERVANTS — " 25 IV. "BE IT NEVER SO HOMELY — " 46 V. AT O'HARAVILLE HOUSE 54 VI. THE QUALITY'S NOTIONS 67 VII. YOUR LADY OF LOVE 84 VIII. THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND IS MAN 94 IX. MIRTH AND A MIDDLEMAN II3 X. THE QUALITY WORSHIF 125 XI. LADY BOUNTIFUL I38 XII. "WHEN HOME HIS FOOTSTEPS HE HATH TURNED" . 158 XIII. EDGE TOOLS 178 XIV. TAAKE MY WORD FOR IT, SAMMY, THE POOR IN A LOOMP IS BAD 191 XV. NOT WHAT MEN CALL LOVE 204 XVI. THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING 211 XVII. " PRETTY ENOUGH, VERY PRETTY, ! " 23O XVIII. EROS TRIUMPHANT 24I XIX. WASTED AND WEARY CONTENTS chap. page XX. FLAWED HEARTS AND BOWED NECKS 266 XXI. DENIS LEARNS A TRUTH 282 XXII. THE ELECTION 291 XXIII. ESCODEEL, MAVOURNEEN SLAWN 306 XXIV.

THE GOMBEEN MAN 32O XXV. AN ENGLISHMAN SPEAKS TRUTH 333 XXVI. A HARVEST OF THE WHIRLWIND 349 XXVII. FOR A HANDFUL OF SILVER 359 XXVIII. PENANCE 374 XXIX. FAMINE 387 XXX. WHERE THE SUN SHINES 4OI XXXI. TOUT EST PERDU, FORS L'HONNEUK DENIS

Chapter I

A DINNER OF HERBS — The time — a June evening when the sharpness of tree-shadows was beginning to soften into the general twilight. The place — a bare hillside, with a little home lying upon it, as if accidentally dropped there. Dust it was, and to dust would return, for the walls were earthen sods that had shrunk and sunk in the first year or two of their erection, till the building, though sustained by a couple of courses of unhewn stones ingeniously piled together without mortar, looked like a child's sketch of a house, childishly out of drawing. The low door and tiny, square four-paned window completed the resemblance, with the thatched roof, at the top of which a box without bottom or lid was fixed to serve the purpose of a chimney, a suggestive curl of blue smoke rising from it and leisurely drifting away into the still air.

The interior consisted of one single living room, from which a tiny slip at each end was partitioned off for bedroom accommodation. The mud floor of the main room was tidily swept, though it was depressed in two places to form natural basins for the food of the chickens and young turkeys that £ B were as children in the house. There was some deal furniture — a wooden table and two chairs, besides several creepies, little stools on which to sit cosily by the fire, and a dresser that held a fair show of crockery and tinware. " Pity th' atables wasn't always to match," said the master of the house, with the cheerful wink and grin which go some little way towards flavouring a poor meal. The wide hearth, with a flat stone for grate, held the turf fire that diffused a good part of its smoke into the room to sting the eyes of the unaccustomed, to tone the woodwork, and fill corners with a picturesque blue mist and a dry warmth not un pleasant in this moist climate.

Over it hung the big black pot that cooked everything for the family and the chickens, as well as the chopped nettles for the voracious young turkeys that clacked round Michael Cassidy's door, and food for that important gentleman the pig. Mrs. Cassidy, spinning in the doorway, was trying without stopping her wheel to peer down into the bag, where her good man was using the last of the daylight to attend to a conacre patch of potatoes he had there. She made a pleasant picture, this apple cheeked silver-haired woman, with indigo-blue skirt tucked neatly over her bare feet, and white granny's cap crimped round the face and tied over with a wide maize ribbon. A gray woollen crossover shawl, of her own spinning and little lame Micky Doolan's weaving, completed her costume. Her wheel turned steadily, and a little bag filled with wool lay ready to her hand.

She smiled as she looked at the wool, for it was a wonderful windfall. Last year when "the Masther's" sheep, their shearing, in true Irish fashion, delayed far too long, had covered the briars with fluffy tufts, Miss O'Hara— Miss Marg'et herself— had hinted to Mary Cassidy that it would be worth while I A DINNER OF HERBS— 3 to carry a basket round those meadows. No one had ever thought of that before, though the briars were white year by year ; but then who was like Miss Marg'et ? And who but Miss Marg'et would be pleased when there resulted at last a new pair of stockings for Michael to wear, when he put on his brogues for mass or fair-day ? Bare-footed, red-skirted Mary was cooking oatmeal stirabout over the fire, whose warm gleam lit up the masses of her blue-black hair, and deepened the glow of her round but not over-round cheek.

Mary's eyes, too, gave frequent glances into the gathering dusk. It was a beautiful view that stretched before her, a mosaic of little fields spreading downwards and then upwards over the low rolling hills of that county which they call the crate of eggs, from the odd shape of the hills, each ridge rounded at the sides, and finished at the ends by a steep brae. Through the valley below a lazy river wound its slow way downwards, from the town of Moyne, away to the right, till it reached the grounds of Mr. O'Hara's white house, where it made the handsome waterfall among the trees which was the pride of the place. Then it hurried on, still through woods, into the grounds of Castlemoyne House, and there it lost itself in a long lake that wound about among wooded shores and islands, nobly wide in parts and elsewhere narrowing almost to the dimensions of a river.

At last it ended in a low marshy valley, where the river grew lazy, and went on its way as if it hardly cared to extricate itself from the broader bosom of the lake. Far away on the left, this part of its course could be seen when the sunlight caught it. Looking straight forward beyond the valley, which here was wide and partly boggy, and through which wound the high road to Moyne town, the eye followed the roll of hill after hill in a higher wave, crowned by a craggy peak, which the gentry called the Sugarloaf, and the people Slieve Glass B (the grey mountain). Certainly it was a beautiful view at which Mary Cassidy was gazing so fixedly. Yet the look in her eyes hardly suggested a rapt contemplation of its beauties. " He's late," said Mrs. Cassidy at last, but spinning on serenely. One learns to wait as the time for waiting grows shorter.

" It's late he is," said Mary, and thumped the stirabout with quite needless vigour. " Troth, he'll be tired, the crathur," Mrs. Cassidy added with a little sigh. " Is it father ? " asked Mary absently. " An' who else ? " said the mother, and stooped for fresh wool. " 'Tis a power iv work, day-labourin' for the Masther an' puttin' in the twilight wid our own praties. But to-morrow's a saint's day, glory be to God, an' he'll rest the ould bones an' go dacently to mass." " Isn't it well the Quality's come to the Big House ? " said Mary, as she came to the door, potstick in hand, and gazed down the hill. Her hand closed more tightly on the potstick. Not a bad weapon — ! " 'Tis, sure," said the mother, calmly as ever. " That the Lord may be about them, an' make them mindful iv the poor ! " " I'm thinkin' — " began Mary, and stopped short.

" An' what are ye thinkin', avourneen ? " Mary blushed a sudden rosy red. In her secret heart she had nursed a hope, had pondered it, till what had at first seemed wild impossibility put on an air first of possibility, then of probability. Yet to men tion it was to challenge a reproof, or at least surprise, at her effrontery. '• What's the colleen thinkin' ? " repeated the gentle mother. " I'm thinkin' — " with a desperate plunge — " that maybe the young lady might want a maid." Mrs. Cassidy's wheel stopped, for the thread was broken by her start of surprise. She turned and looked at her daughter, who was kneeling now before the fire, piling on more turf with spaces between each block, as a child builds a house of bricks. She seemed to bestow enormous pains on the symmetry of this erection.

Truly there is no small art in the building of a turf fire. Still, the trouble she took was unusual. " An' it's likely, Mary," said Mrs. Cassidy, uttering what was for her an unusually grave reproof — " it's likely the young lady 'ud take the likes of you to care her silk gownds." But the mother sighed, as a gleam of the sunset came in through the little window and rested lovingly on the young head. Mary was the beauty of the countryside — how should she fail to know it ? She was pretty enough, gentle enough with her quiet ways and low-toned voice, to be not wholly unfit for better things. Mrs. Cassidy had had a friend in her youth who became under servant, then upper servant, and at last the wife of a Dublin shopkeeper, able herself to wear a silk gown. The wheel hummed again, while the spindle spun a dream in which Mary, dressed in a flounced silk gown and wearing a real bonnet on her head, drove up the crooked boreen that led to the house in a carriage and pair.

Mary's courage returned in the silence. " I wisht she might," she said, with a shade of defiance in her tone. " Ochone, acushla," sighed the mother, " sure ye wouldn't lave us an' the ould house where ye wor born an' bred ? Barrin' it was marryin' ye wor," she added after a moment's pause, with the common place acquiescence of mothers in that particular reason for quitting the home of girlhood. Mary, a little penitent, came behind the mother's chair and leaned down to kiss her. Neither guessed how pretty a picture they made at the moment, the black hair against the silver, the peach-bloom of the young cheek against the winter apple of the old. Mrs. Cassidy had not married young ; Michael had been content to wait till she had seen ailing parents and an afflicted sister safely to their graves.

Perhaps it was in those years that the look of patient serenity had come upon the face that was once like Mary's. " Will I go down an' call father ? " suggested Mary. " Do, achora. Is the stirabout done ? Lave it down fornenst the fire, an' run down quick. Och, fine and glad I'll be whin we know how it'll be with the praties this year ! The Lord help us if they fail now, for we're all in debt for the seed ; an' how we'll pay that an' keep ourselves livin' Himself knows. Do ye mind last year, acushla ? " " Do I mind ? " asked Mary absently ; she was arranging a little shawl over her head. " Do ye mind the blight ? Do ye mind the way it kem, all in the one night ? " She left off spinning, and rocked herself to and fro with sobbing breaths. " Holy Mother ! will I iver forget it ? " said Mary.

" All the fields that was green the night burnt black by the mornin' light." "Troth, many were worse off nor us," said Mrs. Cassidy, turning as usual to the bright side of things. "We kept off the Injy male anyway." "An' the Lord send we may do that," said Mary. " Wasn't Ned Barer saying them that ate it turns black?" "I wouldn't hould by that," said Mrs. Cassidy, thoughtfully. " I've seen thim that had it kape their colour. An' Ned Barer tells lies with a lid to them an' a handle to hould on by." " He's been in thim parts anyway," said Mary, completing the arrangement of her shawl by the aid of a triangular atom of mirror some three inches by two. "An' the few that was saved, an' wint bad in the heaps," continued Mrs. Cassidy, "will I iver forget that till the Blessed Mother finds me a place wid herself — the Lord send that same ! — the sight an' the smell !

" " Steepin' flax was roses to it," said Mary, using the strongest of all possible comparisons. For what odour was ever more repulsive than that of flax soak ing till rot sets the fibres free ? She passed out at the door, and sped down the hill with light bare feet twinkling past one another in the dusk. A sound of singing met her suddenly as she went, it was coming towards her up the hill, a love song in a man's voice : Gille machree, sit down by me, We now are joined and ne'er shall sever ; This hearth's our own, Our hearts are one, And peace is ours for ever. That was the voice of young Denis Moriarty, and Mary's colour deepened a little. The bare feet twinkled faster down the boreen under the high wild hedge hung with pink roses and honeysuckle. Down the boreen — and into the arms of her lover ?

Not at all. With the shawl well hiding her eyes, and with a stately gait worthy of an offended duchess, the bare footed beauty walked deliberately past her admirer, without wasting a glance on his supplicating face. Then she went on even more slowly. Denis Moriarty grinned from ear to ear. " Faix, eels an' girls is hard catchin'," muttered he. Then in two strides he caught up the wayward lady of his love, resolved to see what blarney would do. Like any other gentleman opening conversation, he began with the weather. "That's a fine evenin', Mary agra." No reply. " At laste it's been fine since yerself came out to save the moon the throuble iv shinin'." This delicate compliment deserved acknowledg ment. Mary deigned to turn round, her rosy lips parted, and two words came therefrom, precious pearls not to be squandered.

" Ye gosther ! " With that she resumed her walk. Denis, following still, remarked to the hedgerow, " Faix, that's not what Katty Brierly tould me yestreen. ' Dinis,' she says (Och, herself's got the soft voice that dhrops the words out like pays slippin' from the shell), ' Dinis, is it harvestin' ye're goin' ? ' "Tis that, itself,' says I. 'Och, sorra mend it,' says she, ' stay at home with thim that wants ye, a bouchal, an' don't go riskin' yer life on the salt say, an' forgettin' us all wid the girls beyant' ' Och Katty,' says I." Here Denis sighed heavily, a sigh to touch a millstone. " ' Sure I'm not wanted here at all, at all,' says I, ' an' by this an' by that I'll be aff out iv it the morrow, plaze the powers.' " No sympathy yet, but the bare feet twinkled on more slowly. Denis began to sing again softly, and to whisk the hedges with his blackthorn.

Och, hone ! don't provoke me to do it, For there's girls by the score That loves me, an' more — And ye'd look very quare if some morning ye'd meet Me weddin' all marching in pride down the street ; Faix, you'd open your eyes, An' you'd die with surprise, To think 'twasn't you was come to it. "Well, I'll be goin' now; it's a bit cowld, an' I'll get a warm an' a welkim by Pat Brierly's fire, an' away to England by cockcrow." Then, pensively : " There's boys doesn't come home out o' that." Denis turned and walked away leisurely. " Dinis ! " a low voice called behind him. Denis may not have been quick of hearing, and besides he was singing to himself, his head high in air. " Dinis, avick ! " repeated the soft voice. Denis walked on, warbling. Sure the shovel an' tongs To each other belongs, While the kittle sings songs Full of family glee — Yet alone " Dinis, will ye whisht ?

" This time the tone was neither low nor pleading, but was accompanied by a sounding thump on Moriarty's broad shoulders from an arm which if fair was not frail. Denis turned round, took off his cap — a curious cap made of gray frieze with a wreath of green shamrocks in cloth round the brow — and bowed low. " Wid all the pleasure in life, ma'am. Sure the birds wouldn't sing while you were spakin'." " Quit now before I'm angry," retorted his lady. " Is it harvestin' you're goin', Denis ? " " 'Tis that same. An' maybe I won't bring back a tidy penny." This with a wink of awful import. "An' maybe I'll be home to dance at your wedding, Mary. Jigs an' fourhandreels — " " Weddin' is it ? " quoth Mary. " Is it a bachelor ye'll bring me from thim parts ? " " Isn't there boys here ? " " There is, lashins — and lavins," said Mary with measureless contempt.

She drew herself up and let the shawl, an instrument of coquetry hardly inferior to the Spanish mantilla, slip back a little. Denis looked, and admiration made him eloquent. " It's hard plazin' ye, Mary, an' little wondher's in that same. Troth, I think the bhoy to fit yerself isn't born yet. Mebbe they'll need to make him to ordher. Och, och ! why didn't they ax me before I was borned what way I'd like to be turned out ? Mary, avourneen," an arm was stealing insinuatingly round Mary's waist under cover of the shawl, "maybe, since the right bhoy's not made yet, ye'll not waste time waitin' till they put him in hand. Och, Mary, 'twouldn't be so bad crossin' the salt say if I'd just a worrud to turn over in me mind, the same as I'd jingle the halfpence in me pockutt to keep me cheered up — " " An' what'll Katty Brierly do wid herself in the manetime ?

" asked innocent Mary. Upon which Denis closed her mouth by a brief but unanswerable argument. " Denis," said Mary, five minutes later, " may be there's girls beyant wid shoes an' stockuns all the week through, an' bonnets! It's not the likes of me ye'll look afther whin ye come home." To which Denis replied with energy that as he had heard tell English girls were invariably plain and all had red hair — that crown of misfortunes to the Irish mind, and that the reason they all wore shoes and stockings was that not one had a foot fit to be seen, but often the handsome allowance of six toes. Why, their shoes would serve a baby for a coffin any day. Was it likely any sensible man would take one at a gift, even if they were not all Protestants ? " Oh, Holy Mother ! The supper ! " cried Mary, as much dismayed as a young lady who has lingered over-long in the scented twilight of a conservatory.

Denis volunteered to run down into the bog with her message, and so Mary sat down on the grassy bank of the little boreen, and threw back her shawl to let the evening breeze blow the woodbine scents across her flushed face. It bore on its wings distant sounds of lowing cattle, of a dog's bark at some far away farm, answered from a dozen cabins, each ot which had its two or three curs of lowest degree. More sweetly came the sound of a convent bell. Sursum corda — Lift up thine heart. Mary was used to obey the monition, and her lips moved as she gazed into the twilight sky, saying her formal prayer while she thought of her parents, of brother Pat away in America, and to-night of Denis Moriarty. But somehow Mary's thought was not quite so simple and whole-hearted as usual to-night. Denis had long been courting her, and the parents had always looked with a favouring eye upon him as a good steady lad who would do well for her.

But — how did ambition enter heaven ? How came it that the first movement of a longing to rise above what she now was had begun to stir in the mind of the peasant girl ? Only because at fair or wake she was the prettiest girl, the best dancer, the most admired by all the ' bhoys ' ? She was thinking of those girls overseas who wore shoes and stockings every day. And bonnets . She was gazing idly down the boreen as wild dreams chased each other through her thoughts even before the short prayer was ended, and up the rough track came upon her view the vision — no, not a vision but a wonderful reality. She was like the Lady of Shalott, upon whose vestal existence flashed the revelation of magnificent manhood. Tirra lirra, by the river Sang Sir Lancelot. A gentleman, young and handsome, came riding up the boreen on a fine horse.

A cap was pushed back from his fair curling hair, his figure stood out in clear relief against the pink sky. And Mary knew in a moment that Denis Moriarty's honest face was coarse as to feature, ill trimmed as to hair, ill shaven as to chin. And Denis's figure " Good evening," said the young gentleman, reining in his horse, like a modern Prince Paris before his Œnone. " Why, you're the pretty girl I saw at Moyne fair. Did you find your friend after all ? " " I did, your honour," and a warm flush crept slowly up to the dark waves of Mary's hair. The young man laughed. " Why, you look as if I were a dragon that ate up pretty girls ! I'm not so terrible as all that, am I ? " He settled his chin into his high collar, and brushed a trifle of dust from his sleeve. " Am I ? " he repeated. " Your honour does be a great play boy, surely," said Mary.

One must answer the Masther if he deigns to ask a question. Captain Mervyn was not offended ; he only laughed. What a laugh it was, to be sure ! Now, when Denis laughed he opened a mouth like an oven door, and emitted an amiably intended roar. How strangely different are The Quality ! ~ " Well," he said, " it is more like bedtime than playtime. Can you tell me if there is a way to Castlemoyne through these fields ? " " There is, sure," said Mary. " If your honour goes down Mullan's field, an' across the road and round to the right of the big boghole, an' takes care of the shaky scraw afther that — " " Nonsense ; how can I possibly remember all that ? Come and show me the way, there's a good girl." He dismounted and stood waiting. The most care lessly expressed wish of the monarch is law to the faithful subject.

Mary never thought of disputing the command. She rose at once, and pattered with bare feet beside the fashionable boots. " Do you never wear shoes ? " asked Captain Mervyn, removing his eyes at last from Mary's face to her feet. " I do, sir, Sundays an' Saints' days." " By Jove, it must be uncomfortable ! Wouldn't you like a pair for every day ? " Mary looked doubtful. Shoes may be dignified, but to unaccustomed feet are as trying as the first experience of legs to Hans Andersen's mermaid. Her shoes were only put on at the last turn of the road to chapel or fair, and gladly taken off again as soon as might be. But pride is willing to suffer pain, and Mary ended by stammering, with a shyness which would have amazed Denis, that she thought she would — very much. "Well, we'll see," said Captain Mervyn.

"And ribbons, perhaps, to keep that pretty hair from blowing into your eyes." Pretty, he called it. Mary resolved to examine it more closely in that triangular bit of glass in the cabin. It was not a very useful mirror, certainly, and at the moment they passed one which was much more often Mary's resort, and which reflected far better the charms of which she was by no means unconscious. It was a deep well, full to the brim, and carefully built up with stones, which formed at the top a low parapet, clothed by kindly Nature with fern and moss, daintily and delicately soft and green. A little overflow of crystal water trickled musically away among watercresses. " By Jove ! " said Captain Mervyn, " I'm thirsty enough to relish some of that clear water. Catch, my bog fairy." He tossed the rein to Mary Cassidy, and stooped over the clear water.

Mary had never heard of Narcissus, but the thought passed through her mind that it must be lovely to have such a re flection rise up to meet one in the crystal mirror. Even she herself did not dislike gazing at the other Mary there. " It's a regular fairy well," said the young man, as he dipped a pocket cup which he took from a case and fitted together to Mary's speechless amazement. What things The Quality owned ! Mary turned a little pale and looked nervously round. It would be wiser of the young Masther not to mention the Good People in that careless way at this hour. She spoke hastily, lest more might follow. " They do say it's a Wishin' Well, your honour," said she, blushing as she ventured to look in his face. " There does be a story that if ye come before the sun touches the wather, an' have no speech wid any one since the last sunset, an' drink of the wather, ye may wish a wish an' have it."

" By Jove ! a pleasant thing enough. ' I can call spirits from the vasty deep. But will they come when you do call for them ? ' Ah, you don't understand Shakespeare, my bog fairy." Again Mary cast a timid glance round. " The point is, did you ever know anybody who knew anybody else who wished, and who got the heart's desire ? " Mary's cheeks burned bright. "There was my mother's aunt, she wished — 'twas a great wish intirely — " " And she got it ? Now I shouldn't wonder if it was a lover she wanted. Wasn't it ? " "'Twas that itself," confessed Mary, with more blushes, when he insisted on an answer. " And if I got up very early, and didn't say a word to anybody the whole day before, and wished somebody I know would give me a kiss of her own accord, do you think I should get it ? " The words were carelessly uttered, they might have borne a quite indifferent construction.

Mary cast a quicker glance round than before, and for half a second thought of running back towards her father and Denis. But the evening air was wonderfully and strangely sweet. Above the well hung a bush of elder now covered with heavy-headed, heavy-scented bloom. Their perfume made the brain feel soothed and half drowsy. Mervyn dipped for a second cup ful of the water. It was deliciously fresh, the evening air was deliciously mild, the girl beside him deliciously pretty. And he had found out already that no one hurried here. Far away beyond the horizon lay great cities where life was a whirl which he had known and enjoyed, here the quiet was almost absurd by contrast. I A DINNER OF HERBS— 15 Just to make the warm blood tingle up into a Drown cheek and watch its crimson flush pale again to rose and then to shell-pink.

Just to make the long black lashes lift in surprise or mirth, and to gaze for a moment, before they shyly fell again, into the very depths of those gray Irish eyes which suggest such infinite capacities for emotion — it was an amusement exactly suited to the surroundings. " Well," he said, " it's perhaps not well to take too many liberties with these wells and their powers." " 'Tis that itself, sir," said Mary eagerly. " Sure your honour has seen the little lake beyant the other side of Slieve Glass, where the hills slope down to the edge, an' it just fills the valley like wather in the trough." " I know it. Well ? " " It's just the story they do be telling," the melodious voice went on, and being encouraged to proceed Maiy related, " There was a wishin' well there, and a colleen thought long an' long that she'd be after thryin' it.