A PROUD WOMAN

A PROUD WOMAN

Peter Mackey, the Carrickcrum Doctor’s man, introduced me to Mrs Daly one early summer morning, when her table was flecked with small quivering shadows by the young beech-leaves. That such a ceremony was required argued me a stranger to the place, for “ould Anne Daly” at her stall had a speaking acquaintance with almost every passer-by. Her rickety deal board stood at the cross-roads under the beech-tree whose trunk was built into the wall behind the National School, where she had a view of Carrickcrum’s street on either hand, and looked up the road to the bridge, and down the road to the police barracks as well. She was a picturesque figure in her black gown and bluish apron; for her hair made white light beneath broad cap frills hooded with a heavy grey shawl, and the brown eyes among their weather-worn wrinkles still glanced as brightly as the waters of a bog-stream. Her knitting-needles twinkled up at them, in and out of the dark, rough stocking-leg that lengthened in her hands, as she sat perched on a crippled chair, dexterously propped against the beech’s roots. Upon the planks before her glowed a small heap of half-a-dozen oranges, and as many pink sugar-sticks protruded from a white Delft jam-pot. That was all her stock-in-trade, and even the golden dance over it of the spangling sunbeams could not give it an opulent aspect. What caught my eye at once, however, was a signboard nailed to the trunk just above her head, bearing on a brilliant ultramarine ground, in letters of fiery vermilion, the words:—

The Sentrall Imporeom.

The inscription somehow took my fancy, and I had scarcely beheld it when I seemed to be reading in the catalogue of a certain art exhibition: “No. 34. The Sentrall Imporeom, by Charles Hamilton, price ——.” Whereupon followed a vision of the corresponding work—the quaint old country woman presiding over her simple wares beneath her leafy canopy and grandiloquent label, with perhaps a hint of the village street in the distance to explain the situation. I presaged “a hit,” and felt impatient to set about it at once. There was a grass-patch over the way that would conveniently accommodate my easel. Then I wondered who had put up the gaudy signboard, and why; whether in pompous earnest, or intending a jest at the poor little establishment: and what might be Mrs Daly’s sentiments on the subject. So, with a design to elicit these, I remarked: “That’s a fine piece of painting you have up there.”

“’Deed now is it, sir?” Mrs Daly replied, darting a quick look at me to ascertain whether my admiration was unfeigned, much as I have seen her prove the soundness of her pears with the point of her knitting-needle. It stood the test with effrontery, and she proceeded: “That was Joe Lenihan. He done it last winter wid the bit of paint he had over after finishin’ Mr Conroy’s new cart. Joe’s a terrible handy boy. It’s got a nice apparence off it, to my mind, and ne’er a harm at all that I can see; but, och! the Gaffneys were ragin’ mad over it—them at the shop below there, sir.” She pointed down the street, and I took a few steps backwards to get a glimpse of its single plate-glass pane, which displayed groceries, hardware, millinery, and other things, and above which ran, large and yellow, “General Emporium.” “Ragin’ they were,” Mrs Daly said in a tone that was half-gratified and half-rueful. “Sure to this day they won’t look the way I am. But I dunno what call they have to set themselves up to be the only Imporum in the place, and they just ‘P. Gaffney,’ sorra a hap’orth more, and plenty good enough, for them, until before last Christmas they got a man over from Newtownbailey to do their paintin’. There was nobody here aquil to it, I should suppose. So now they’re of the opinion I had a right to ha’ hindered Joe of doin’ me a Imporum as well, and I wid ne’er a notion he was plannin’ any such a thing. Howsome’er, he made a very good job of it, sir, as you was sayin’.”

“It’s a fine morning, Mrs Daly,” someone said at my elbow, and, turning round, I saw beside me a tall, respectable-looking young man in a grey tweed suit. “I’m just after shooting old Mr Carbury dead with the rook-rifle, and throwing him over the wall into the river below at Reilly’s,” he said.

“And is it yourself, Mr Ned? I never heard you comin’. Well now, but you’re terrible wicked to go do the like of that,” Mrs Daly said, as placidly as she had praised Joe Lenihan’s handiness. “It’s hangin’ you they’ll be this time for sartin. So you’re off to the barracks?”

“Straight,” said Mr Ned gravely, “and they needn’t offer to say it’s manslaughter either, for it’s an awful murder. You might have heard the shot. But to see him rolling down the river, over and over—I didn’t wait till he sank, for it’s time I gave myself up on the charge of committing a cold-blooded murder.”

He strode away abruptly with an air of solemn fuss, and Mrs Daly said, looking after him commiseratingly: “He’s a son of the Clancys at Glen Farm. Asthray in his mind he is, the crathur, and scarce a mornin’ but he comes by here on his way to the polis wid a story of some quare villiny he’s after doin’. My belief is he dhrames them in the night, and when he wakes up he can’t tell the differ as a sinsible body would. Anyhow he niver harmed man or baste. But sure the Sargint and all of them up there knows the way it is, and they niver throuble their heads about his romancin’, or now and again they put him up in the guard-room for a while, just to contint him.

“Only one day be chance he landed in on them when there was nobody in it except a young constable that was new to the place, and him he had in a sarious consternation wid the slaughtherin’ he was tellin’ him of. Fit to raise the counthryside he was before the other men came home. It’s as good as a play to hear Joe Lenihan tellin’ it. ’Deed now, we’d maybe do betther to not be takin’ divarsion out of the crathur’s vagaries, that’s to be pitied, the dear knows. But sure your heart might be broke waitin’ for somethin’ to laugh at, if you was to look black at everythin’ wid a grain of misfortin in it, for that comes as nathural as the grounds in your cup of tay.”

So Mrs Daly philosophised; and when she had finished I bought an orange, and went on my way.

This, however, was only the first of many visits to the Sentrall Imporeum. My wish to paint it and its proprietress continued, and she presently gave me a series of sittings, in the course of which I learned a good deal about her character and affairs. Mrs Daly lived close by, in a very miserable little shanty, windowless and chimneyless, built against a sunken bank, so that its ragged thatch was on a level with the roadway. How she lived seemed less obvious than where, as although she owned three or four hens, and did some coarse knitting while she sat all day at the table with its screed of sweets and fruit, one would have estimated the combined profits of these to fall far short of sufficiency for even her modest wants. Her lameness debarred her from more active industries, she having been crippled by an accident at the same disastrous period—about thirty years before—when her husband died, and her son ’listed, and her daughter married an emigrant to the States.

Perhaps it should be reckoned as another disability that she was the proudest woman in the parish, to whom an offer of assistance seemed an insult, and who would accept nothing from her neighbours beyond a most rigorous equity. For instance, Arthur Kelly, the struggling farmer who owned the shed which she inhabited, would gladly have allowed her to occupy it rent free, but was obliged every week compunctiously to receive sixpence.

I myself experienced the same sort of thing in my trivial dealings with her. Small artifices, prompted by baffled speculations as to how she made out a subsistence, all signally failed. If I contrived one day to over-pay for a purchase, pleading want of change, on the next the undesired pennies were sure to be awaiting me inevitably and inexorably. She refused point-blank to sell me the crushed and over-ripe gooseberries with a fancy for which I had been seized, and she insisted upon taking a farthing apiece off the price of some apples that were fully half-sound. In fact, I was soon compelled to desist from practising any such stratagems, perceiving that our sittings and conversations would otherwise abruptly end. But being wise in time, I kept on good and improving terms with Mrs Daly, and made my studies at the Sentrall Imporeum desultorily all through the summer. Still, when it drew to a close, I was quite aware that our friendliness had not brought me a step nearer venturing upon any attempt to undermine her rigid principle of independence.

This being so, I was not a little surprised when one wet evening at tea-time Mrs Daly paid me a visit for the purpose of asking me to do her a favour. The cottage I had taken that summer stands on the same side of the road as her tiny cabin, but about half-a-mile farther from Newtownbailey. It belongs to the brother-in-law of Peter Mackey, Dr Kennedy’s man, which is how I came to hear of it, and it contains no less than three rooms on the ground—literally ground—floor, besides two little attics huddled up under the thatch. As it has a strip of privet hedge in front, and a path three flag-stones long leading to the door, and a hen-house leaned-to against one end, it may be considered superior to the neighbouring residences, though unsophisticated mud and straw are the main ingredients in its, as well as in their, composition. With the help of loans from my friend the Doctor, and some properties of my own, I had furnished it in a style which I believe excited admiration on the whole. Yet the establishment did not reach the standard of what was deemed appropriate for “rael quality,” especially as I did for myself single-handed, with only an old woman from next door to “ready up” things in the morning; and my social standing was consequently always regarded as an ambiguous and perplexing point at Carrickcrum.

Mrs Daly arrived with something evidently on her mind. She was not likely, indeed, to have undertaken that slow and painful hobble through the pelting rain without some object; but she seemed to find much difficulty in disclosing it. At last, however, having repeated incredibly often that it was “a very soft night intirely,” she made the following more pertinent statement:—

“I’m after gettin’ a letter to-day from me brother Hugh’s son. That was Hugh went out to the States I couldn’t tell you what ould ages ago, and be all accounts he’s made the fine fortin in it. But the time he went I was about gettin’ married, and he set his face agin that altogether. No opinion he had of poor Andy, that wasn’t to say very well to do, and maybe not over-steady. So he wouldn’t allow me to be spakin’ to Andy at all, and he was wantin’ me to go out along wid himself, for Hugh and I were always frinds. Infuriated he was when he couldn’t persuade me; the last time I seen him, there was no name bad enough for him to be callin’ poor Andy, and he up and tould me that, as sure as he was alive, the next time he set eyes on me ’twould be beggin’ he’d find me, unless it was in the workhouse. And sez I to him he might make his mind aisy that, whativer place he might find me in, the on’y thing I’d be beggin’ of him’d be to keep himself out of it. And we’ve niver been friendly since. Sorra the letter I’ve wrote to him, nor he to me. But now there’s the young chap writin’ me word from Queenstown that he’s crossed the wather to see the ould counthry, and that before he wint his father bid him go look up his Aunt Nan while he was at home. Sure, I scarce thought he as much as knew where I was livin’ these times. So me nephew’s comin’ to-morra on the train to Newtownbailey.... Well, now, you know me house, sir? It isn’t too bad a little place at all, but you couldn’t say it was very big.”

You certainly could not say so, upon almost any scale of measurement, or with any approximation to truth, I reflected; for I had seen its tenant creeping in and out at its low black doorway, which would hardly have made an imposing entrance to an average rabbit-burrow.

“And I was thinkin’,” she continued, “that if the young fellow come there, it might be apt to give him the notion I was livin’ in a poorish sort of way—for the dear knows what quare big barracks of places he’s maybe used to at home—and I’m no ways wishful he’d bring back any such a story wid him to his father, after the talk he had out of him about the workhouse and the beggin’.

“And another thing is, Hugh’d say ’twas next door to it, me sellin’ them hap’orths of sweets outside there; he would, sure enough, for none of me family done the like ever. Och, I’d a dale liefer he’d ha’ sted away; but I can’t put him off of comin’. And I was thinkin’—I was thinkin’, sir....” But Mrs Daly’s further thoughts could not be put into words without much stumbling and hesitation. “What I was thinkin’ was, that if be any chance you were out paintin’ the way you do mostly be, sir, after dinner-time to-morra, you’d be willin’, maybe, to let me bring me nephew in here just for the couple of hours he has to stop—comin’ on the half-past two train he is, and lavin’ on the five—and loan me the fire to make him a cup of me own tay. For then, sir, you see, he could niver say a word to anybody except that I was livin’ rael dacint and comfortable—ay, bedad, it is so,” she said, glancing wistfully round the ruddily-lighted room. “But it’s a terrible dale to be axin’ you; and very belike ’twill be a pourin’ wet day, and you not stirrin’ out,” she added, looking behind her as if she had several minds to vanish away through the dim rain without waiting for an answer.

I lost no time in cordially assenting to her plan, and the sympathy inspired by a sincere commiseration for her dilemma, caught as she was between two scathing fires of pride, enabled me, I believe, to convince her that I really expected to derive some benefit from the proposed arrangement, as I pointed out how, only for her presence there, the house would be left empty all the afternoon, a probable prey to passing tramps. I mentioned also that, if I happened to appear upon the scene, it might be in the character of her lodger. These suggestions seemed to relieve her mind. But as she was turning to go, a difficulty occurred to me.

“How will your nephew find his way here, Mrs Daly?” I said. “If he asks it, you know, they’ll direct him to the wrong place.”

“Why, sir,” she said, “I was intindin’ to step over wid meself and meet him at the Newtownbailey station. I’ll get him aisy enough, for there does mostly be no such great throng on the platforrm”—(arrivals generally averaged about three)—“that I’d have much throuble sortin’ him out. And then I could bring him along back wid me as handy as anythin’.”

“It’s a long walk for you, though,” said I, for Newtownbailey is a good two miles from Carrickcrum, and a mile was a mile indeed, at the little old woman’s “gait o’ goin’.”

“Sure I’m well used to it,” said she, “I do be thravellin’ it these times every Saturday after me few sugar-sticks. At Gaffney’s here I was gettin’ them for a great while, but ever since I set up the Sentrall Imporum, they’re chargin’ me fi’pince a dozen, and that I couldn’t afford. Ould Gaffney himself he sez to me the laste they could do was to be puttin’ on a pinny to the price, now that I’d took to keep such a grand place. But fourpince is all I have to pay at Newtownbailey.”

“That was a spiteful trick,” I said. And a reply came from without, as the speaker departed over the slippery, wet flags:

“What can you get from a hog but a grunt?” said Mrs Daly.

The morrow was not wet, as she had foreboded, but rather sultry and showery. In the morning, with the help of my friend the Doctor’s wife, I made some preparations for my coming guest. Part of these consisted in hanging up on my wall-hooks sundry warm woollen skirts and bodices, and a fine lilac-ribboned cap, with respect to which I cherished designs. Also I spread a table with the materials for a tea, comprising a richly-speckled barn-brack, and a seed-cake pinkly frosted.

I meant to go a-sketching for the day, but had not yet started when, about noon, I saw Mrs Daly toiling up to the door laden with a large basket—come, no doubt, to make final arrangements, before proceeding to fetch her nephew from the station. I was in the little room adjoining the kitchen, and, as the door stood slightly ajar, I could watch her unpack her basket. Evidently she had determined to trespass upon my hospitality only to the extent of house-room, for she produced several sods of turf, besides cups, saucers, and teapot (which held a drop of milk), paper wisps of tea and sugar, and half a loaf of bread. These being set on the table, I saw her, to my mortification, remove from it the cakes and other eatables, and stow them away carefully out of sight in a press. I noticed, too, that she laid on the shelf along with them a pair of her knitted socks, which, I conjectured—rightly, as I afterwards learned—were a present to me and a peace-offering to her pride. I blamed myself for not having foreseen this preliminary visit, and deferred my preparations until a time when she would have no opportunity to cancel them. And at first I thought of lingering behind, and re-arranging the tea-table when she had gone; but upon reflection it seemed more forbearing to leave her to her own devices; so I slipped away unobserved.

The picture of the Sentrall Imporeom still lacked a few finishing touches, which I had, fortunately, resolved to give it in the course of that day; and I was at work down there towards three o’clock, when Mrs Daly drove by on a car, sitting beside a well-dressed, middle-aged man. She wore her fine Sunday shawl, whose ample folds of cream and fawn colour could charitably cover many defects in a body’s toilette, and she held up her head with an air of resolute dignity, which grew almost defiant at sight of her residence and business premises. She gave me a stately nod as she passed, turning then to her companion with some remark which was, I fancied, explanatory and apologetic. I watched them round the corner, regretting that they were on their way to such frugal fare, and hoping that the entertainment might go off satisfactorily, despite Mrs Daly’s refusal of my contributions to its success.

The afternoon slid by rapidly on the rollers of my work, which was interrupted by the occurrence of more than one sharp thundery shower. I was still struggling to catch the effect of a sunbeam blinking Turneresquely on a little pile of shrivelled oranges, and snatched away capriciously by shifting clouds, when the car re-appeared, trotting back very fast with the same load as before.

“Sure, me nephew,” Mrs Daly told me afterwards, “found himself so comfortable up above there, and was in such an admiration of the grand little room, that he sted talkin’ of all manner till he’d left himself scarce betther than a short quarther of an hour to git his thrain, so he bid the man dhrive for every cent he was worth. He’s a queer, outlandish way of spakin’. And I sez to him I had some shoppin’ to do in the village, so he was givin’ me a lift.”

Just as the car passed between my easel and the beech, a fierce flicker of lightning quivered through the boughs, causing the horse to shy with a wide-sweeping swerve, which brought the car-wheel full tilt against the rickety table, whose flimsy boards fell asunder, strewing their burdens around, while the sudden jerk flung the old woman on the road.

For a moment I feared some damage more tragical than that sustained by the ruined stall; but Mrs Daly picked herself up with great promptitude, and without any apparent injury. Her presence of mind was evidently unscathed, for she at once remarked, calmly surveying the wreck—

“Bedad, now, that’ll be a loss to whatever poor body owns it.”

“I expect it will, indeed,” said her nephew, who looked much more perturbed than she. “It’s considerable of a smash, anyway. But look here, Aunt Anne, perhaps you’d have no objection to taking charge of the dollars to make all square? Because, if you’re really none the worse for your fall, I must be making tracks for the depôt, or I’ll not get on the cars this evening at all; and I wouldn’t miss them for a long figure, and that’s a fact.”

He was pulling out a bank-note, but his aunt waved it away superbly.

“Ah, no, lad; not be any manner of manes,” she said. “Sure, what matter about it? They were on’y a thrash of ould sticks.”

“Speak for yourself, Mrs Daly,” I said. “The person they belong to wouldn’t thank you.”

“That’s so, sir,” said the stranger, who was obviously divided between anxiety to do justice and to avoid delay. “I wonder now would you have the goodness to pass this on to the proper party?”

I assented to the proposal with an alacrity which, had it not been for his own hurry, might have struck him as suspicious; whereupon he handed me the note, and drove away. He had placed, I was gratified to learn, ten pounds’ worth of confidence in me at first sight.

Long and elaborate, however, were the arguments which I had to use before Mrs Daly would permit me to execute his commission. They were tedious to recapitulate, and the most effective of them was probably the least logical—that, namely, which urged the exultation to be presumed in the mean Gaffneys at her unretrieved disaster. Her scruples yielded to a judicious insistence upon this, and she suffered the making of her fortune. For her acquisition of ten pounds was nothing less than that, as will be readily understood by anyone who has tried to live, for any length of time, on the profits arising from the sale of a dozen half-penny sugar-sticks. It enabled her to rent a much superior dwelling with a window, and to invest in quite a large assortment of miscellaneous goods for exhibition behind the panes, besides adding to her stock of “chuckens”; and, according to latest reports, she was doing grandly. But the Sentrall Imporeom no longer exists. A few days after the accident, the gaudy blue-and-red board was found to have been removed from the beech-trunk—a deed with which the parodied Gaffneys were credited, and at which Mrs Daly felt rather aggrieved, as she had wished to set it over her new door, having given up the hardships of an open-air stall. However, she has plenty of things to pride herself on these times. And, as she moralised: “It’s the quare low-lived tricks people does be at by way of settin’ themselves up.”

THE END