THE SURREE AT MAHON’S

THE SURREE AT MAHON’S

Few people, I think, can ever have been impressed by the liveliness of little Killymeen, set in its nook among the lonesome mountain and moorland, its one humble street forming the nucleus of a sparse cabin-sprinkling, which strews white flecks on the far sweeping green folds hardly plentier than hailstones on a grass plot half a sunny hour after a July thunderstorm. Yet to Bridget Doran, the girl who had lately taken service with the Caseys up at the Quarry Farm, it seemed a centre of fashion and gaiety, being, indeed, the most considerable place she had seen in all her seventeen years. For they had been spent up at Loughdrumesk, a hamlet fully ten miles deeper among the wildest townlands, with only a rough cart-track threading a black bog, and climbing endless shaggy slopes, and dropping over a purple mountain shoulder to connect it with Killymeen. She had left behind there, three months ago, her feeble old grandfather and alert old grandmother, in a tiny, high-perched cabin, which felt a world too wide for its other indwellers when this third of their lives had gone. And since then there had been much travelling of thoughts to and fro between it and the Casey’s prim whitewashed farmhouse at the foot of Slieve Glasarna. At first Bridget’s had made the journey as constantly as her grandmother’s, but she was young and busy and in a new place, and as the weeks went on she became more engrossed with what lay immediately before her.

The Surree at Mahon’s, fixed for a day in Christmas week, was the most exciting of the fresh prospects that unfolded themselves, and was looked forward to with much pleased interest by Killymeen at large. There had been no Surrees in the neighbourhood during a long spell of bad times, but this year matters were looking brighter, and old Barney Mahon, who had a thrifty turn and a commodious kitchen, was encouraged to make a venture which promised fair profits at a small risk. For a Surree, which has with quaint effect borrowed its name from polite French, is a sort of subscription dance, little more elaborate in its arrangements than are the kaleys, or conversazioni, that beguile so many wintry hours in Donegal homes, when all the dark out-of-doors hurtles and splashes with wind and rain, and the neighbours drift into their places round some appointed hearth as promiscuously as a wreath of dry leaves swept rustling together by an aerial eddy. At a Surree each couple pay a shilling, but no refreshment is expected save frugally-dispensed tea; and the fiddler is content to scrape for a modest fee and his chances of small coins from the dancers. Dark Hugh M‘Evoy, being Barney’s cousin, was willing to supply the music for this occasion on specially easy terms; and, in short, circumstances conspired to make it seem desirable that Barney should meet the often-expressed wish of his younger friends by announcing the first Surree of the season.

It would be Bridget’s first taste of any formal dissipation, and Rose Casey, her master’s niece, and Kate Duffy, his ploughman’s daughter, who lived in the yard, set her expectation on tiptoe extremely by their accounts of like entertainments. Kate and she were to go together, as it is the custom to attend Surrees in couples. These often are formed of a colleen with the boy who is “spakin’” to her, but often also a brother and sister make a pair, or any other two friends. Rose Casey was to marry Peter O’Donoghue at Shrovetide, so she would, of course, go with him—a fact of which she made a little parade to Bridget, who felt, however, perfectly content with Kate’s escort: a sweetheart of her own would have seemed, indeed, an alarming possession. Her mistress had advanced her a shilling out of her quarter’s wages—a whole pound—and she had expended the sixpence left after securing her admission to the Surree upon a splendid red glass brooch, which made her think her equipment very complete.

But just when everything seemed gliding most smoothly towards the delightful goal, an obstacle suddenly cropped up and threatened to overthrow all her plans with one disastrous jolt. On a certain frost-spangled morning the postman brought to Bridget a letter, whose contents agreed with her wishes as ill as a dash of vinegar would have done with the thick cream which she was churning when the mail arrived. Her grandmother wrote to say that “she thought bad of Biddy to be trampin’ the long way her lone from Killymeen to their place, and that old Bill Molloy was slippin’ over wid his pony and a gatherin’ of eggs to the Magamore on next Thursday morning, and’d give her a lift if she’d start along wid him when he would be goin’ back. So Biddy had a right to ax lave of her mistress, and come home wid ould Bill, who’d turn a bit out of his way to pick her up? and real glad they’d be to set eyes on her again.” For Mrs Casey had promised Biddy her choice of three days in Christmas week to spend at home, dairy work being slack. Bridget had looked forward to the holiday with a glow of pleasure, and meant to take it on the Friday, which would be Christmas Eve, and the day after the Surree. But her grandmother’s injunction was not compatible with this arrangement.

“Sure I’d miss all the fun and everythin’ if I took off and went wid ould Bill—I wish he and his baste of an ugly skewbald ’d keep themselves out of botherin’ where they arn’t wanted,” she said, half-crying, to her friends Rose and Kate, as she showed them the letter in the kitchen.

“Musha, good gracious,” said Rose, “you wouldn’t ever think of goin’? Just bid the ould man step along wid himself, and say you’ll come on Friday.”

“But me grandmother’d be rale vexed if I done that, and he after goin’ out of his road to call for me,” said Bridget doubtfully.

“Well, then,” said Kate, “you might write and tell her not to send him. This is only Tuesday; there’s plenty of time yet, and I’ve a stamp in me box this long while you’re welcome to.”

“Ay, to be sure,” said Rose, “and say me aunt can’t spare you convanient afore Friday.”

“But,” said Bridget, looking disconcerted, “I’m after sendin’ her word be Judy Flynn that I’d got lave to come any day at all this week.”

“Oh, botheration to it,” said Rose. “Then say you’re too bad with a cowld, and couldn’t be thravellin’ that far. Bedad, I heard you coughin’ this mornin’ fit to fall in pieces like the head of the witherdy geranium there. Morebetoken, the red one in the windy corner’s dhroppin’ itself into the pan of buttermilk where you’ve set it; you’d better be movin’ it out of that.”

“I have a heavy cowld on me sure enough,” said Bridget, coughing to convince herself, but her disconcerted expression remained, and she fidgetted about uneasily. “For the matter of writin’,” she said, “you see the time I was gettin’ me schoolin’ I did be mostly mindin’ the sheep, and I can make some sort of an offer at the readin’ if it’s wrote pretty big, but writin’ oneself is quare nigglety work.”

“Mercy on us, girl alive, if that’s all that ails you, I’ll write a letter for you meself in a minyit and a half,” said Rose with alacrity. “Bedad will I. Sure I’ve wrote to Peter times and again when he was stoppin’ away at Manchester. So don’t bother your head about it; lave the regulation of it to me. I’ve plenty of paper meself, and Kate’ll give me her stamp.”

Bridget agreed to this plan, though not without some qualms of conscience, which made her refrain guiltily from inquiring about the details of its execution, thereby giving Rose a free hand, of which she availed herself without much scruple. She had an imaginative turn of mind, and a taste for fiction, so her story grew under her scratching pen until in the end she produced a letter purporting to come not from Bridget, but from herself, and describing Bridget’s indisposition as not a simple cold, but an attack of “plussery-newmoney.” This formidable complaint would hinder her from returning with Bill Molloy. “But she’ll come,” wrote Rose, “as soon as ever she’s able. And that won’t be before Friday anyway, if she overs it at all.” The last clause struck her as giving an effective completeness to the composition, and she read it over with a complacency which did not take into account how it might be spelled out in the bleak little hillside cabin off away at Loughdrumesk.

The evening of the Surree arrived in due course, and with it a flutter of snow, swirling on rough and unruly blasts. Silver-white threads and stitches had begun to embroider the purple folds of Slieve Glasarna before the mists descended muffling and blurring; and the paths crunched crisply under brogues, and made cold clutches at bare feet by the time that the neighbours were approaching Barney Mahon’s door. They remarked to one another that it was hardy weather, and added that they were apt to have it “sevare,” which is some degree worse than hardy. Few people, however, had been daunted into staying at home, and there was much shaking of powder flakes out of shawl-folds and off rough coat-sleeves at the entrance to Barney’s lustily flickering room.

When Rose and Kate and Bridget got there, which they did as soon as ever they could finish “readying up” after tea, most of the company had assembled, and dancing was about to begin. Rose’s temper was somewhat ruffled because Peter O’Donoghue had not kept his promise of coming to escort her. But his sisters now hastened to explain how he had been delayed by the sudden illness of their calf. “Howane’er the baste was comin’ round finely when they left,” they reported, and Peter would be after them in no time. So his fiancée was appeased, and contented herself provisionally with Larry Sullivan for a partner. “Faix, now, it’s on’y an odd turn the rest of us boys gets wid you these times,” he said to her gallantly as the fiddler struck up. “Ne’er a chance we have at all, unless when the luck keeps him that’s luckier away.”

Do not suppose that the Surree danced jigs. Later on in the evening a couple might stand up and perform one while the others were recovering their breath; but at the outset it was a vigorous round dance that began to gyrate with a step which, though perhaps not recognised in any academy, kept time to Hugh’s music with much accuracy, and made light of the difficulties opposed by an uneven mud floor. The crockery on the dresser jingled merrily to the rhythmical beat of their feet; and each pair of bobbing heads that passed in front of it, might be seen to make an abrupt dip down and up again. This was caused by an unusually deep hollow which occurred in that part of the floor, and Barney Mahon, looking on with the elders from their circle round the hearth, observed it and said—“Begob, I must see to having that houle filled up before next time, or else somebody’ll be trippin’ up in it, and gettin’ a quare toss.”

The other spectators sat well content with their share of the entertainment. Pungently-puffing cutty pipes solaced the men, and the women kept their knitting-needles twinkling; in fact, they would almost as soon have left off breathing by way of rest and relaxation. For further amusement they had the affairs of the countryside to discuss, enlivened by an occasional anecdote or riddle. Dan Goligher had just propounded one of the latter which successfully puzzled everybody who had not heard it before—

and he was triumphantly explaining, “Sure a cup of tea,” when two people came bolting in at the door, which they forthwith began to secure behind them, as if they were shutting out some deadly peril. They said nothing, but their speechless hurry was more suggestive than words.

“Whethen now, Peter O’Donoghue and Ned Kinsella, what’s took you at all to be flouncin’ in on the people that a-way?” said Barney Mahon, somewhat affronted at their unceremonious entrance and dealings with his fastenings and furniture. “That’s a great ould slammin’ of the door you have—and what for would you be jammin’ the bench again it, unless you’re intendin’ the next body that comes thro’ it to be breakin’ his shins?”

“Troth, I on’y hope it may—and its neck too, between us and harm—if it’s offering to come in on us—I do so,” said Peter O’Donoghue, panting. He left his comrade to finish barricading the door, and pushed himself farther into the room, until several groups interposed between him and the dangerous point. “After us it may be this minyit of time,” he said. “Och, but that was the quare fright I got; the saints look down upon us this night!”

“It’s herself below at th’ ould gate there,” said Ned Kinsella, who was calmer than Peter, though evidently much alarmed. “And more-be-token it’s not inside she is this night, but sittin’ crouched up on the bank be the path, and the grab she made at Peter going by; ’deed, I thought he’d never get his coat-tail wrenched out of her ould hand.”

“It might as well ha’ been caught in a rat-trap the way she held on,” said Peter. “I give you me word me hair’s standin’ on end yet, fit to rise me hat off the roof of me head. What wid that and the onnathural screeches she let, I won’er you didn’t hear them here. And it’s my belief she set off leggin’ after us—goodness preserve us—on’y I was afraid of me life to look round and see.”

These tidings spread general consternation among the company, as under the circumstances they well might do. For only a few hundred yards down the loaning lay an ancient burying-ground, with its ruined chapel and weed-entangled tombstones, a place whose ghostly reputation had long been established at Killymeen. In particular the wraith of a little old woman was often to be seen of an evening peering out through the rusty gate-bars, and sometimes stretching forth a fearsome hand to pluck at the unwary passer-by. But her appearance out on the roadside was a new development, and one which made Peter and Ned’s report unpleasant hearing for people who would presently be obliged to take that route home. The dance came to a standstill, and in its stead a series of dismal ghost-stories began to circle round the room. Perhaps the most gruesome of them was Nick Carolan’s. He related how he had once lived in a place where there was in the middle of the yard a deep well, out of which on certain moon-lit nights a dark figure would emerge and go gliding round and round it, making a wider and wider circuit, until she reached the house, at whose door she rapped loudly as she passed by. And whenever that happened there would be a death in the family before the twelve-month was out as sure as fate. A general shudder followed this dénouement, and old Mrs Linders made a particular application of it by remarking gloomily that it was a poor case to have the likes of such crathurs about; but Mrs Coleman, a comely matron, who continued to sit by the fire unperturbed, said placidly in a pause, “Sorra a bit of harm there’s in it this night I’m a-thinkin’. If the lads seen anythin’, it’s apt to ha’ just been some poor body after missin’ her way in the snow.”

“Troth and bedad, then it was the quare body altogether,” Peter asseverated, “and the hair of me head, as I was tellin’ you, bristlin’ straight wid the dhread of her the first minyit I come nigh the place.”

“Ah, sure, some people’s as ready at that as a dog at cockin’ his ears,” said Joey Nolan. “Maybe we’d a right to go look is there e’er a one in it. Some crathur might be strayin’ about perishin’, and it snowin’ again as thick as sheep’s wool.”

“Begor you won’t persuade me to go foolin’ along wid you,” said Peter; “I couldn’t be gettin’ my heels out of it fast enough. May the saints have me sowl, but I thought I’d lose me life afore ever I landed inside—and here I’ll stop. Nobody need be axin’ me, for divil a fut I’ll stir.”

“Good people are scarce,” Joe observed sarcastically; but Peter went on in a half-complacent tone, “One while it’ll be afore I’m the better of that frightenin’ I got. Every mortal bit of me’s in a thrimble wid it yet.”

“Musha, then, you gaby, can’t you whisht about it, instead of to be tellin’ everybody the sort of ould polthroon you are?” Rose Casey whispered to him fiercely, ready to cry with mortification as she saw significant smiles passing round at the expense of her happily unconscious betrothed.

As she spoke, the door resounded with a heavy thump, which made those who were standing next it hop back with a scarcely dignified haste. Some of them tried to carry it off by pretending that they were merely getting out of one another’s way, while some shrieked unfeignedly, and above all ejaculations rose Peter O’Donoghue’s voice, shrill with undissembled terror, saying: “Oh to goodness, don’t open it for your lives. Run that other form again it, you that are widin raich. Mercy be among us, she’s apt to have us all destroyed.”

“Arrah, now, will you be lettin’ us in out of that, you jackasses, you?” shouted a voice reassuringly familiar and irate. It was young Larry Sullivan, who had slipped out through the back door a few minutes before, and whose impatience at being kept waiting had nothing supernatural about it. Despite Peter’s remonstrances, the door was thrown open, and disclosed Larry, standing tall against a background of glimmering white, in a gloom which, when you looked into it anywhere steadily, grew full of wandering flakes like scattered bread-crumbs. Beside him appeared a smaller figure, whom he pulled indoors along with him before anybody well had time for terrific surmises, and whom the firelight showed to be a little old woman, wrapped up in a powdered brown shawl. She was breathless and bewildered and forlorn-looking, as she peered round from face to face, all strange, all comfortless—but no! for the moment Bridget Doran set eyes on her she sprang at her and caught her in a great hug—

“Why, granny darlint, and is it yourself?” she said. “And how at all did you come this night in the snow? It’s kilt you are entirely. You can’t ever ha’ come wid ould Bill Molloy?”

“Ah, honey, I thramped it,” said old Mrs Doran. “Sure I couldn’t rest aisy, thinkin’ me little Biddy was took that bad away all her lone among the strange people. But finely you’re looking, glory be to goodness. ’Deed now me heart’s been fit to break frettin’ ever since I got the letter this mornin’, sayin’ that belike you wouldn’t get over it.”

“An’ I to be dancin’ round like a zany bewitched, and you all the while streelin’ through the snow,” said Bridget, with acute remorse. “It’s sorry I am that I let anybody send you such owld lies. But”—looking indignantly at Rose—“I only said to say that I had a cowld.”

“And I lost me way in the dark,” went on Mrs Doran plaintively, “and what at all I’d ha’ done I dunno, on’y for the dacint boy coming by, for nought else the other two’d do but let yells at me, and run away like scared turkeys.”

“Creepin’ along under the high bank she was, the crathur, when I met her,” Larry meanwhile was telling the others, “and scarce able to contind wid the blasts of the win’. And sez she to me, ‘For the love of God, just stop to tell me am I anywhere near the Casey’s house?’ And sez I to her, ‘Is it the Quarry Farm you’re wantin’?’ And sez she to me, ‘Ay, it’s where my poor Katey’s little daughter Bridget Doran’s in service, and dyin’ wid some manner of outlandish sickness: It’s to her, I’m goin’,’ sez she. So sez I to her, if it was Bridget Doran she was wantin’, I’d seen the girl three minyits ago, and ne’er a sign of dyin’ on her whatsome’er, and I just brought her along here. It’s perished and stupid the crathur is wid the cowld. You’d a right to get her a cup of hot tay, and a warm at the fire,” concluded Larry, thereupon bestirring himself to superintend the carrying out of this prescription. And a little later he prompted his mother to offer Mrs Doran a night’s lodging at their house close by, thus entailing upon themselves more hospitality than they had foreseen.

For of the Surree at Mahon’s all’s well that ends well could not quite be said, as some of the guests were disposed to say prematurely when the assembly was breaking up. To begin with, old Mrs Doran had caught a very bad chill during her snowy wanderings, and now had a severe illness which endangered her life, and obliged Bridget to pay many an anxious and conscience-stricken hour as a fee for her deceptive letter, while a difference which she had next morning with Rose Casey about the unauthorised mendacity of its contents led to a permanent cooling down of their friendship. Moreover, Rose, on the very same day, spoke in such scathing terms to Peter O’Donoghue with reference to his panic on the night before, that even his impenetrable self-satisfaction was touched, and a violent falling out ensued. The consequence was that no wedding took place at Shrovetide; and the last time I had news from Killymeen “there was no talk of it at all, at all,” so the breach may be considered final. In fact, it is commonly supposed that he has some notion of transferring his attentions to Bridget Doran. But I happen to know that the only one among the boys she thinks anything of is Larry Sullivan, whom she always remembers gratefully as the rescuer of her grandmother. Whereas, if Larry fancies anyone, it is Kate Duffy.

Whence it appears that some rather complicated cross currents in the stream of life flowing through Killymeen have started from this Surree at Mahon’s.