Chapter 1
Mrs Brennan took her seat again at the sewing-machine by the window. She sighed as she turned her tired eyes in search of some inducement to solace down the white road through the valley of Tullahanogue. The day was already bright above the fields and groups of children were beginning to pass through the morning on their way to school. Mrs Brennan beheld their passage, yet now as always she seemed to miss the small beauty of the little pageant.
‘God help them, the poor little things!’ she condoled to herself, ‘and may He enlighten the unfortunate parents who send them to that quare, ould, ignorant pair, Master Donnellan and Mrs Wyse, the mistress. Musha, sure they’re no teachers!’
From this it might seem that Mrs Brennan, the dressmaker of the valley and one well entitled to be giving out an opinion, did not think very highly of National Education. Yet it was not true that she failed to regard the lofty fact of education with all a peasant’s stupid reverence, for was she not the mother of John Brennan, who was now preparing for the priesthood at a grand college in England? A priest, mind you! That was what you might call something for a woman to be!
The pride of her motherhood struck a high and resounding note in the life of the valley. Furthermore, it gave her authority to assert herself as a woman of remarkable standing amongst the people. She devoted her prerogative to the advancement of the Catholic Church. She manifested herself as one intensely interested in its welfare. There was no cheap religious periodical, from The Catholic Times to The Messenger, that she did not regularly purchase. All these she read to her husband, Ned Brennan, in the long quiet evenings after the manner of one discharging a religious duty.
This was a curious side of her. She kept him in comfort and in ease, and yet when his body had been contented she must needs apply herself to the welfare of his soul. For, although he spent many a penny of her money in the village of Garradrimna, was he not the father of John Brennan, who was going to be a priest of God? She forgave him everything on this account, even the coarse and blasphemous expressions he continually let fly from his mouth while she read for him the most holy stories by Jesuit Fathers.
Just now she had given him two shillings with which to entertain himself. He had threatened to strike her in the event of her refusal … That was why she had been sighing and why the tears were now creeping into her great tired eyes as she began to set her machine in motion for the tasks of the day. Dear, dear, wasn’t he the cruel, hard man? … Yet beyond all this thought of him was her bright dream of the day when, with the few pounds she had saved so secretly from the wide grasp of his thirst, she must fit him out in a rich suit of black and go by his side proudly to attend the ordination of their son John. It was because she so dearly loved her dream that she bore him with immense patience.
Also it was because she had been thinking of that grand day and of the descending splendour of her son that she now commented so strongly upon the passage of the children to school. She had spoken bitterly to her own heart, but in that heart of hers she was a bitter woman.
This was such a sunny, lovely morning. It was the day of the June Races in the town of Mullaghowen, and most of the valley-dwellers had gone there. The winding, dusty road through Tullahanogue was a long lane of silence amid the sunlight. It appeared as an avenue to the Palace of Dreams. So it was not at all strange that Mrs Brennan was dreaming forward into the future and filling her mind with fancies of the past. She was remembering herself as Nan Byrne, the prettiest girl in the valley. This was no illusion of idle vanity, for was there not an old daguerreotype in an album on the table behind her at this very moment to prove that beauty had been hers? And she had been ruined because of that proud beauty. It was curious to think how her sister and she had both gone the same way … The period of a generation had passed since the calamity had fallen upon them almost simultaneously. It was the greatest scandal that had ever happened in these parts. The holy priest, whose bones were now mouldering beneath the sanctuary of the chapel, had said hard words of her. From the altar of God he had spoken his pity of her father, and said that she was a bad woman.
‘May God strengthen him, for this is the bitter burden to bear. Philip Byrne is a decent man for all his daughter Nan is a woman of shame. I pray you avoid her every one who has the trace of God’s purity in his heart. Let you go not into the house which she has made an abode of lust, nor allow the fair name of your own house to be blemished by the contamination of her presence within its walls.’
Yes, it was true that all this had been said of her by the holy father, and in the very spot beneath which his bones were now at rest. They were the hard words surely to have issued from the lips of God’s anointed. Even in the fugitive remembrance of them now they seemed to have left red marks like whip-lash weals across her soul. The burning hurt of them drove her deeper into remembrance. She had already come to the full development of her charms when her ambition had also appeared. It was, in short, to effect the ‘catch’ of one of the strong farmers of the valley. She entered into conspiracy with her sister and, together, they laid their plans. Henry Shannon was the one upon whom she had set her eye and Loughlin Mulvey the one her sister Bridget had begun to desire. They were both men of family and substance, and hard drinkers after the fashion of the fields. They often called at the house to see the sisters. Philip Byrne, whose occupation as head groom at the stables of the Moores of Garradrimna often took him away from Ireland, would always be absent during those visitations. But their mother would be there, Mrs Abigail Byrne, ambitious for her daughters, in great style. It was never known to happen that either of the strong farmers called to the house without a bottle of whiskey. Mrs Byrne always looked favourably upon them for their high decency, and the whiskey was good whiskey.
Here in this very room where she now sat remembering it all there had been such scenes! Her hair had been so thick and brown and there had been a rare bloom upon her skin as she sat here alone with Henry Shannon, talking with him of queer things and kissing his dark, handsome face. And all through those far, bygone times she used to be thinking of his grand house and of his broad fields and the way she would one day assert herself in the joy of such possessions over her less fortunate sisters of the valley. Yet, ever mixed with her bright pieces of imagination, there had been such torturing doubts … Her sister Bridget had always been so certain of her prey.
There had been times when Henry Shannon spent the night in the house. In those nights had been laid the foundations of her shame … Very, very clearly did she remember the sickening, dreadful morning she had come to her mother with the story that she was going to have a child. How angry the elder woman had been, so lit within her all the wild instincts of the female against the betrayer of her sex. Why had she gone so far? Why had she not played her cards like her sister? There was no fear of her yet, although she had got a proper hold of Loughlin Mulvey … What was she to do at all? She who had had great ambitions was to become lower than the lowest in the valley.
Yet the three of them had conferred together, for all the others were so angry with her because of her disastrous condition into which she had allowed herself to slip without having first made certain of Henry Shannon. The only course left now was to ‘make a show’ of him if he could not see his way to marry her.
She could now remember every line of the angry, misspelled letter she had sent to her whilom lover, and how it had brought him to the house in a mood of drunken repentance. He presented her with material for a new dress on the very same night, and, as she laughed and cried over it in turn, she thought how very curious it was that he should wish to see her figure richly adorned when already it had begun to put on those signs of disfigurement which announce the coming of a child. But he was very, very kind, and all suspicion fell away from her. Before he went he whispered an invitation to spend a few days with him in Dublin … What did it matter now, and it was so kind of him to ask her? It showed what was in his mind, and therefore no talk of marriage passed between them. It did not seem necessary.
Then had followed quickly those lovely days in Dublin, she stopping with him as ‘Mrs Henry Shannon’ at a grand hotel. He had given her a wedding ring, but while it remained upon her finger it was ever the little accusing symbol, filling her with an intense conviction of her sin.
This great adventure had marked the beginning of her acquaintance with the world beyond the valley, and, even now, through the gloom of her mood, she could remember it with a certain amount of gladness coming back to her mind. But it was queer that the brightest moment of her life should also have been the moment of darkest disaster … She recreated the slight incidents of their quarrel. It was so strange of him after all the grand kindness he had just been showing her … She had returned to the valley alone and with her disgrace already beginning to be heavy upon her … She never saw Henry Shannon or spoke with him again. When she wrote referring distantly to their approaching marriage and making mention of the wedding ring, the reply came back from Mr Robinson, the solicitor in Garradrimna, who was his cousin and sporting companion. She knew how they had already begun to talk of her in the valley for having gone off to Dublin with Henry Shannon, and now, when an ugly word to describe her appeared there black and plain in the solicitor’s letter, she felt, in blind shame, that the visit to Dublin had been planned to ruin her. The air of the valley seemed full of whispers to tell her that she had done a monstrous thing. Maybe they could give her jail for having done a thing like that, and she knew well that Henry Shannon’s people would stop at nothing to destroy her, for they were a dark, spiteful crew. They were rich and powerful, with lawyers in the family, and what chance would she have in law now that everyone was turned against her? So that night she went out when it was very dark and threw away the wedding ring. The small, sad act appeared as the renunciation of her great ambition.
She remembered with a surpassing clearness the wide desolation of the time that followed. Loughlin Mulvey had been compelled to marry her sister Bridget because he had not been clever enough to effect a loophole of escape like Henry Shannon. Already three months after the marriage (bit by bit was she now living the past again) the child had been born to Bridget, and now she herself was waiting for the birth of her child … Indeed Bridget need not have been so angry.
She had been delirious and upon the brink of death, and when, at last she had recovered sufficiently to realize the sharpness of her mother’s tongue once more, the child had disappeared. She had escaped to England with all that was left of her beauty. There she had met Ned Brennan, and there had her son John Brennan been born. For a short while she had known happiness. Ned was rough, but in his very strength there was a sense of security and protection which made him bearable. And there was little John. He was not a bit like her short, wild impression of the other little child. Her disgrace had been the means of bringing Philip Byrne to his grave; and, after six or seven years, her mother had died and she had returned to the valley of Tullahanogue. It was queer that, with all her early knowledge of the people of the valley, she had never thought it possible that some of them would one day impart to him the terrible secret she had concealed so well while acting the ingenuous maiden before his eyes.
Yet they were not settled a month at the cottage in the valley when Ned came from Garradrimna one night a changed man. Larry Cully, a loafer of the village, had attacked him with the whole story … Was this the kind of people among whom she had brought him to live, and was this a fact about her? She confessed her share, but, ill-treat her how he would, she could not tell him what had been done with the child.
Henceforth he was so different, settling gradually into his present condition. He could not go about making inquiries as to the past of his wife, and the people of the valley, gloating over his condition, took no pains to ease his mind. It was more interesting to see him torture himself with suspicion. They had hardly fancied she had told him all. It was grand to see him drinking in his endeavours to forget the things he must needs be thinking of.
Thus had Mrs Brennan lived with her husband for eighteen years, and no other child had been born to them. His original occupation of plumber’s labourer found no opportunity for its exercise in the valley, but he sometimes lime-washed stables and mended roofs and gutters. For the most part, however, she kept him through her labour at the machine.
Her story was not without its turn of pathos, for it was strange to think of her reading the holy books to him in the long, quiet evenings as all the while he despised her for what she had been with a hatred that all the magnanimous examples of religion could not remove.
She was thinking over it all now, and so keenly, for he had just threatened to strike her again. Eighteen years had not removed from his mind the full and bitter realization of her sin … They were both beginning to grow grey, and her living atonement for what she had been, her son John who was going on for the Church, was in his twentieth year. Would her husband forgive her when he saw John in the garb of a priest? She wondered and wondered.
So deep was she in this thought that she did not notice the entrance of old Marse Prendergast, who lived in a cabin just across the road. Marse was a superannuated shuiler and a terror in the valley. The tears had been summoned to her eyes by the still unchanging quality of Ned’s tone. They were at once detected by the old woman.
‘Still crying, are ye, Nan Byrne, for Henry Shannon that’s dead and gone?’
This was a sore cut, but it was because of its severity that it had been given. Marse Prendergast’s method was to attack the person from whom she desired an alms instead of making an approach in fear and trembling.
‘Well, what’s the use in regretting now that he didn’t marry ye after all? … Maybe you could give me a bit of Ned’s tobacco for me little pipe, or a few coppers to buy some.’
‘I will in troth,’ she said, searching her apron pocket, only to discover that Ned had taken all her spare coppers. She communicated her regrets to the old woman, but her words fell upon ears that doubted.
‘Ah-ha, the lie is on your lip yet, Nan Byrne, just as it was there for your poor husband the day he married you, God save us all from harm – you who were what you were before you went away to England. And now the cheek you have to go refuse me the few coppers. Ye think ye’re a great one, don’t you, with your son at college, and he going on to be a priest. Well, let me tell you that a priest he’ll never be, your grand son John. Ye have the quare nerve to imagine it indeed if you ever think of what happened to your other little son … Maybe ’tis what ye don’t remember that, Nan Byrne … The poor little thing screeching in the night-time, and someone carrying a box out into the garden in the moonlight, and them digging the hole … Ah, ’tis well I know all that, Nan Byrne, although you may think yourself very clever and mysterious. And ’tis maybe I’ll see you swing for it yet with your refusals and the great annoyance you put me to for the means of a smoke, and I a real ould woman and all. But listen here to me, Nan Byrne! ’Tis maybe to your grand son, John Brennan, I’ll be telling the whole story some day!’
