The-Short-Story

von Jane Barlow (Copyright)

Mrs. Martin lived down a high-banked lane, which, as it led no whither in particular, was subject to little traffic, and which she occupied all by herself, though her cabin stood the middle one in a row of three. You could see at a glance that the left-hand dwelling was vacant, for the browned thatch had fallen in helplessly, and the rafters stuck up through it like the ribs of a stranded wreck. The other was less obviously deserted; still its plight could be easily perceived in weedy threshold and cobwebcurtained window. It testified strongly to the lonesomeness of the neighbourhood that no child had yet enjoyed the bliss of sending a stone crash through the flawed greenish pane. Both of them had, in fact, been empty for many months. From the ruined one the Egan family had gone piecemeal, following each other westward in detachments, until even the wrinkled parents were settled in California, where they blinked by day at the strange fierce sunshine, and dreamed by night back again under the soft-shadowed skies of the ould counthry. Soon after that, the O’Keefes had made a more abrupt flitting from next door, departing on the same day, all together, except little Kate and Joe, whose death of the fever was what had “given their poor mother, the crathur, a turn like agin the place.” Since then no new tenants had succeeded them in the row, which was, to be sure, out of the way, and out of repair, and not in any respect a desirable residence.

The loss of her neighbours was a very serious misfortune to Mrs. Martin, as she had long depended upon them for a variety of things, which she would have herself summed up in the term “company.” She had been early widowed and left quite alone in the world, so that through most of the inexorable years which turned an eager-eyed girl into a regretful-looking little old woman, she had found herself obliged to seek much of her interest in life outside her own small domestic circle—all forlorn centre. This was practicable enough while she lived under one thatch with two large families, who were friendlily content that their solitary neighbour should take cognisance of their goings out and comings in. Upon occasion, indeed, she had unforebodingly grumbled that the young Egans and O’Keefes “had her moidhered wid the whillaballoo they would be risin’ continyal.” But when they were gone a terrible blank and silence filled up their place, as well might be, since her kind had thus suddenly receded far beyond her daily ken. A weary Irish mile intervened between her and the nearest cottages of Clonmacreevagh, and it was only “of a very odd while” her rheumatics had allowed her to hobble that far, even to Mass. Seldom or never now did she make her way at all down the windings of the lane, where the grass from its tall banks encroached monthly more and more upon the ancient ruts; and other passengers were hardly less infrequent. The lands about lay waste, or in sheep-walks, so that there was nothing to bring farm-carts and horses and men lumbering and plodding along it, and to attract anybody else what was there but a mournful little old woman in a dark cavernous kitchen, where the only bright objects were the fire-blink and the few bits of shining crockery on the dresser, which she had not often the heart these times to polish up? So week out and week in, never a foot went past her door, as a rule with just one exception.

Michael O’Toole, a farmer on the townland, did her the kindness of letting his cart drive out of its way every Saturday and leave at her house the “loaves and male and grains of tay,” which her lameness would have otherwise made it difficult for her to come by. This was, of course, a great convenience, and ensured her one weekly caller. But, unluckily for her, Tim Doran the carter was a man quite singularly devoid of conversational gifts, and so grimly unsociable besides, that her provisions might almost as well have been washed up by the sea, or conveyed to her by inarticulate ravens. If he possibly could, he would always dump down the parcels on the road before her door, and jog along hurriedly unaccosted; and though Mrs. Martin could generally prevent that by keeping a look-out for him, she never succeeded in attaining to the leisurely gossip after which she hungered. Beyond monosyllables Tim would not go, and the poor little wiles by which she sought to inveigle him into discourse failed of detaining him as signally as if they had been gossamer threads stretched across his road. She had so often tried, for instance, to lengthen his halt by telling him she thought “the horse was after pickin’ up a stone,” that at least he ceased even to glance at the beast’s feet for verification, but merely grunted and said: “Oh, git along out of that, mare.” Then the mud-splashed blue cart, and sorrel horse, and whity-brown jacket, would pass out of sight round the turn of the lane, and the chances were that she would not again set eyes on a human face, until they reappeared jogging from the opposite direction that day week.In the long afternoons, which sometimes began for her before twelve o’clock if she got expeditiously through her “readyin’ up,” the lag-foot hours seemed dismally empty, and during them she was especially prone to crown her sorrow with memories of her happier things: of the time when she need only slip out at her own door, and in at Mrs. Egan’s or Mrs. O’Keefe’s, if she wanted plenty of company, and when “themselves or the childer would be runnin’ in to her every minute of the day. If there was nothin’ else,” she mused, “the crathurs of hins and chuckens foostherin’ about the place looked a thrifle gay like.” Mrs. Martin herself kept no fowl, for “how would she get hobblin’ after them, if they tuk to strayin’ on her?” And she had attempted vainly to adopt the O’Keefes’ cat, which became unsettled in its mind upon the departure of its late owners, and at length roamed desperately away into unknown regions. Thus, nowadays, when the little old woman gazed listlessly over her half-door, all she could see was the quiet green bank across the road, with perhaps a dingy white sheep inanely nibbling atop. Then she would sometimes feel at first as if it were only a dreary Sunday or holiday, when the silence and solitude being caused by her neighbours’ absence at Mass would end on their return; but presently she would be stricken with the recollection that they were irrevocably gone, and that, watch as long as she might, she would never more hear their voices grow louder and clearer coming up the lane, preluding their appearance anon, a cheerful company, round the turn fast by.

One afternoon, however, her hopeless lookout did result in something pleasant. It was a Christmas Eve, and dull, chilly weather, overclouded with fleecy grey, thinned here and there into silvery dimness, a sheath from which a fiery rose might flush at sun-setting. She was just turning away with a shiver from the draughty door when she caught a glimpse of Father Gilmore’s long coat flapping between the banks. It was a welcome sight, which she had missed through six tedious months and more, for his Reverence, after a severe illness in the spring, had been somehow provided with funds to go seek lost health abroad, and had fared southward upon that quest. His travels, indeed, seemed to have been inconceivably extended. When to Mrs. Martin’s question: “And was your Riverence, now, anythin’ as far as Paris?” he replied, with a touch of triumph, “A long step further,” her imagination recoiled from so wild a track, and she could only stare at him as if astonished to see no visible traces of such wanderings, except maybe a slight tawny tinge like the rust-wraith of many hot sunbeams, superimposed on the normal greenish hue of his well-worn cloth.

Father Gilmore spared her half-an-hour of delightful discourse, to which his own foreign adventures and the home news from Clonmacreevagh gave an animated flow. But when Mrs. Martin’s turn came to give an account of herself the conversation fell into a minor key. And the theme that ran through all her despondence was the plaint that she did be terrible short of company. “She had middlin’ good health, barrin’ the rheumatiz, thanks be to God, but sure she did be cruel lonesome. It’s lost she was there, wid niver sight nor sound of man or mortal from mornin’ till night; she might as well be an ould wether left fallen in a gripe for all she seen or heard of anythin.’ ’Deed now ’twas just the one way wid her as wid the waft of smoke there up her ould chimney that went fluttherin’ out on the width of the air, and sorra another breath anywheres nigh it, since ever the crathurs quit. Many a mornin’ she’d scarce the heart to be puttin’ a light to her fire at all, she was that fretted, ay bedad, she was so.”

To these laments Father Gilmore listened with a patience made more difficult by his consciousness that he could suggest no remedy of the practically appropriate sort which is to general consolatory propositions as a close and cordial hearth-glow to the remote and mocking sunshine of a wintry sky. If you want to warm your cold hands those league-long flames some millions of miles away are so much less immediately to the purpose than your neighbouring screed of ruddy coals. This drifted mistily through his mind, as for lack of a more satisfactory remark he said: “You wouldn’t think of moving into the town?” But he was well aware that he had spoken foolishly, even before Mrs. Martin answered: “Ah, your Riverence, how would I, so to spake, be runnin’ me head out from under me penny of rint?” For her husband, a gamekeeper up at the Big House of the parish, had lost his life by accident at a shooting party, and the family had pensioned off his widow with five weekly shillings and her cabin rent free.“True for you, Mrs. Martin,” said Father Gilmore, standing up. “But sure, lonely or no, we’re all under the protection of God Almighty, and I’ve brought you a little ornament for your room.” Mrs. Martin’s eyes sparkled at the last clause of his sentence, while he took out of his pocket a small parcel, and began to strip off its wrappages, which were many folds of bluish tissue-paper, with layers of grey-green dried grass between. “The man I got it from at Marseilles,” he said, “told me a lot of them came from Smyrna, and I never stirred these papers that were on it, thinkin’ I mightn’t be able to do it up so well again. I only hope it’s not broke on us.” As the thin sheets and light grass-wisps fell off, the blast whistling under the door-still whisked them about the uneven floor, and Mrs. Martin drew in her breath expectantly. At last the treasure was discovered in perfect preservation, an alabaster statuette of the Virgin, some two fingers high.

I do not know that it was a very fine work of art, but at worst you cannot easily make anything ugly out of alabaster. The Child lay placidly asleep, and the Mother looked young and happy and benignant. For a few moments Mrs. Martin’s admiration was quite incoherent, and when she found words Father Gilmore sought to stem the tide of ecstatic gratitude by saying, “And where will you put it? Why, here’s a niche looks as if it might have been made for it.” The place he pointed to was a little recess beneath a tiny window-slit, formed partly by design, but enlarged by the chance falling out of a fragment from the stone-and-mud wall. A long ray, slanted from the clearing west, reached through the half-door, quivered across the dark room, and just touched the white figure as he set it down. Against the background of grimy wall it shone as if wrought of rosed snow.

“Bedad, then, it’s there I’ll keep her, and nowhere else,” said the little old woman, and he left her in rapt contemplation. As he trudged home he felt sure that his few francs had been well bestowed, and his conviction strengthened with each tedious twist of the deserted ways which lay between Mrs. Martin and her company. By the time he had gained his own house his uppermost thought was a regret that such a trifle had been all he could do for the poor ould dacint body—the Lord might pity her.

It was, however, by no means a trifle to the poor old body herself. For the first few days after her acquisition of the image it took up a wonderful deal of her time and thoughts. Even when she was not standing at gaze in front of it she but seldom lost it from her sight. Her eyes were continually turning towards the niche, whence it seemed strangely to dominate the room. Its clear whiteness made a mark for the feeblest gleam of ebbing daylight or fading embers; it was the last object to be muffled under bat’s-wing gloom, and the first to creep back when morning glimmered in again. She dusted it superfluously many times a day, with a proud pleasure always somewhat dashed by the remembrance that she could exhibit it to no neighbours, who would say, with variations, “Ah! glory be among us, Mrs. Martin, ma’am, but that’s rael iligant entirely. Och woman, dear, did you ever see the like of that now at all, at all?”

Still, the most marvellous piece of sculpture ever chiselled would probably betray deficiencies if adopted as one’s sole companion in life; and Mrs. Martin’s little statuette had obvious shortcomings when so regarded. As the winter wore on the weight of her solitude pressed more and more heavily. The bad weather increased her isolation. Some days there were of bitter frost and snow, and some of streaming rain, and many of wild wind. Once or twice Tim Doran brought her a double supply of provisions, and did not return for a fortnight, and then she felt indeed cut adrift. By-and-bye her vague disconsolateness began to take shape in more definite terrors. She was beset with surmises of ill-disposed vagrants tramping that way to practise unforbidden on her wretched life, and she crept trembling to and from the pool where she filled her water-can. Or ghostly fears overcame her, and she thought at night that she heard the little dead children keening in the deserted room next door, and that mysterious shadows went past the windows, and unseen hands rattled the latch. But through all her shifting mist of trouble the alabaster Virgin shone on her steadily with just a ray of consolation. Every night she said her Rosary before the niche, and almost always her devotions ended in a prayer of her own especial wishing and wording.“Ah, Lady dear,” she would say, “wouldn’t you think now to be sendin’ me a bit of company? me that’s left as disolit as the ould top of Slieve Moyneran this great while back. Ah, wouldn’t you then, me Lady? Sure if that’s a thrue likeness of you at all, there’s the look on you that it’s plased you’d be to do a poor body e’er a good turn, ay, is there, bedad. And I couldn’t tell you the comfort ’twould be to me, not if I was all night tellin.’ Just a neighbour droppin’ in now and agin’, acushla, I wouldn’t make bold to ax you for them to be livin’ convenient alongside of me the way they was. Sure I know the roof’s quare and bad, and ’twas small blame to them they quit; but to see an odd sight of one, Lady jewel, if it wouldn’t go agin you to conthrive that much. Ah, darlint, supposin’ it was only a little ould poor ould wisp of a lone woman the same as meself, it’s proud I’d be to behould her; or if it was Crazy Christy, that does be talkin’ foolish, the crathur, troth, all’s one, the sound of the voice spakin’ ’ud be plisant to hear, no matter what ould blathers he tuk the notion to be gabbin’. For it’s unnathural still and quiet here these times, Lady dear, wid sorra a livin’ sowl comin’ next or nigh me ever. But sure ’tis the lonesome house you kep’ yourself, Lady dear, one while, and belike you’ll remimber it yet, for all you’ve got back your company agin, ay have you, glory be to God. And wid the help of the Lord it’s slippin’ over I’ll be meself one of these days to them that’s gone from me, and no fear but I’ll have the grand company then. Only it’s the time between whiles does be woeful long and dhrary-like. So if you wouldn’t think too bad, Lady honey, to send me the sight of a crathur—.” Thus she rambled on piteously, but in answer seemed to come nothing more companionable than the wide-winged gusts of the night wind roving the great grass lands at the back of her cabin where the tiny window-slit peered out. And day followed day with not a step or voice.

It was on a mild-aired morning midway in February that Mrs. Martin, when dusting her precious image, noticed a vivid green speck dotted on the grey wall near its foot. Looking closer, she saw two atoms of leaves pricked up through the cracked mud, belonging no doubt to some seedling weed, she thought, and she would have brushed them away had not some other trifle just then diverted her attention. A few days afterwards, when she happened again to take heed of them, they were crowning a slender shoot, fledged with other delicate leaflets, film-frail, and semi-transparent. She thought the little spray looked pretty and “off the common,” and next morning she was pleased to see that it had crept a bit further on the dark wall. Thence-forward she watched its growth with a deep interest. It throve apace. Every day showed a fresh unfolding of leaf-buds and lengthening of stalks, which seemed to climb with a purpose, as if moved by a living will. Their goal was indeed the narrow chink which let a wedge of light slant in just above the Virgin’s glistering head, and in making for it they caught boldly at anything that offered tendril hold. One morning the little old woman untwisted a coil of fairy cordage that was enringing the Virgin’s feet, and often after this she had to disengage the figure from the first beginnings of wreathings and windings amongst which it would speedily have disappeared. As it was, they soon filled up the niche with a tangled greenery, and overflowed in long trails and festoons drooping to the floor. Never was there a carven shrine wrought with such intricate traceries. When the early-rising sun struck in through them, the floor was flecked with the wavering shadows of the small fine leaves, whilst they themselves took a translucent vividness of hue that might have been drawn from wells of liquid chrysoprase and beryl; and amid the bower of golden-green steadily glimmered the white-stoled Virgin.

All this was the work of but a few weeks, scarcely stepping over the threshold of Spring. The little old woman watched its progress with pleasure and astonishment. She had never, she said, seen the like of any such a thing before. As the wonder grew, she felt more and more keenly the lack of someone to whom she might impart it. She did try to tell Tim Doran, but the opposite turf-bank would not have received the intelligence much more blankly, and could not have grunted with such discouraging indifference in reply. The man, she thought bitterly, was “as stupid as an ould blind cow. If you tould him you had the Queen of Agypt and the Lord Lieutenant sittin’ in there colloguin’ be the fire, he wouldn’t throuble himself to take a look in at the door.” However, no less stolid listeners were forthcoming. Father Gilmore was paying the penalty for his ill-timed return to northern climes in a series of bad colds, and the other neighbours never set foot up the lane.At last she bethought her of communicating with Father Gilmore by a letter, which Tim Doran might carry, and she laboriously composed one in time for his next weekly call. Whether he would deliver it or not was a point which his manner left doubtful; but he actually did so. Mrs. Martin’s letter was “scrawmed” on a bit of coarse brown paper, which, when I saw it some time ago, still smelt so pungently of tea, that I think it must have wrapped one of her parcels. The writing on it ran as follows:

Your Reverence,—Hopin’ this finds you in good health, thanks be to God. Plase your Reverence, the Quarest that ever you witnessed has got clamberin’ inside on the wall. I dunno what at all to say to it; never the like of it I seen. But the creelin’ of it and the crawlin’ of it would terrify you. Makin’ offers now and agin it does be to smoother the Houly Virgin, but sure I’d be long sorry to let it do that bad thrick, after all the goodness of your Reverence. And I was thinkin’ this long while your Reverence might be maybe steppin’ our way yourself some day, for creepin’ over all before it it is every minute of time. Such a terrible quare thing I never heard tell of, and the sorra another sowl except meself have I about the place.

Your obedient,
Mary Martin.

This letter caused Father Gilmore considerable uneasiness, for it filled him with misgivings about the mental condition of the writer. Her account of “the Quarest that ever you witnessed,” sounded, he feared, painfully like the hallucinations of a mind distempered by over long solitude. “Indeed it’s no way for the poor ould body to be left, if one could help it,” he mused. Even in his meditations I am sure that Father Gilmore must have used his soft southern brogue—“I’ve thought many a time it was enough to drive her demented—and now there’s some quare sort of delusion she’s taken into her head, that’s plain, goodness pity her. I’d have done right to go see after her before this, as I was intendin’, only somethin’ always happened to hinder me.”

He was determined now against any further delay, and he set out that very afternoon to visit his afflicted parishioner. The expedition was rather formidable to him, as he had a natural shrinking from stormy scenes, and he fully expected that he would find poor little Mrs. Martin if not downright “raving in no small madness,” at least labouring under some frightful delusion, in the shape, apparently, of a hideous monster infesting her abode. This prospect made him so nervously apprehensive that he was glad to fall in with a small youth, one Paddy Greer, who seemed inclined to accompany him upon his walk. All the way along, between the greening hedges of the lane, he remonstrated with himself for letting the gossoon share unwittingly in such an errand, yet he could not make up his mind to dismiss Paddy, or to feel otherwise than relieved by the continued bare-foot patter at his side.

But his relief was far greater when on reaching the cabin he saw its mistress in her little green plaid shawl and black skirt and white cap, standing at her door among the long westering sunbeams, without any signs of excitement or aberration in her demeanour; and his mind grew quite easy when he ascertained that the creeping thing indoors was no horrible phantasmal reptile, but only a twining tapestry of bright leaves and sprays, which trailed a fold of Spring’s garment into the dark-cornered room. Still, satisfactorily as the matter had been cleared up from his former point of view, he could suggest nothing to lessen Mrs. Martin’s wonder at the mysterious appearance of the creeper on her wall. His acquaintance with such things was slight, and he merely had an impression that the fashion of the delicately luxuriant foliage seemed unfamiliar to him. So he promised to return on the morrow with the national school-teacher, who was reputed a knowledgeable man about plants. Before that came to pass, however, Mrs. Martin had another visitor. For little Paddy ran home to his mother with the news that “the Widdy Martin was after showin’ his Reverence a green affair she had stuck up on her wall, and that he said it was rale super-exthrornary altogether, and he’d get Mr. Colclough to it.” At that hearing the curiosity of Paddy’s mother incited her to call without losing a moment at Mrs. Martin’s house, where she inspected the marvellous growth as well as the falling twilight permitted, and admired the gracious-looking little image quite to its owner’s content. Thus Mrs. Martin enjoyed a sociable cup of tea, and an enthralling gossip, which sent her to bed that evening in much better spirits than usual.Next morning arrived Father Gilmore with the schoolmaster, who was unable to identify the strange creeper, but called its appearance a phenomenon, which seemed somehow to take the edge off the admission of ignorance. His failure only served to heighten a sense of awe and wonderment among several of the neighbours, who also looked in on her during the day. For the village rapidly filled with reports of “the big wrathe of green laves that was windin’ itself round the Widdy Martin’s grand image of the Blessed Virgin, and it inside to grow at all.” And about the same time they discovered that the widdy’s house was “no such great way to spake of onst you turned down the lane; you could tramp it aisy in a little betther than ten minutes or so from the corner, if you had a mind.” In the days which followed numbers of them were so minded, vastly to the comfort of the little old woman, who welcomed them with unbounded joy, and as many cups of tea as she could by any means compass. She harboured no resentment on the score of their long and dreary defection. That was all ended at last. For as the spring weather mellowed into April, and the imprisoned creeper daily flung out profuser sprays and tendril-spirals, the fame of it spread far and wide over the townlands, until its habitation became quite a place of resort. So many people now turned down the lane that they soon wore a track, which you could see distinctly if you looked along a stretch of its grass-grown surface. The Doctor came, and the District-Inspector, and the Protestant clergyman. Even “higher-up Quality” arrived, and satin-coated steeds have been seen tossing their silver- crested blinkers at the little old woman’s door under the supervision of grooms resplendently polished. Seldom or never in these times had she to weary through a long, lonely afternoon; more often she held a crowded reception, when the clack of tongues and clatter of thick-rimmed delft cups sounded cheerily in her kitchen. They scared away all her fears of tramps and ghosts; and she no longer ended her Rosary with mournful petitions for company. Her company had duly assembled.

Towards the beginning of June a fresh development of the marvel occurred, for then the creeper blossomed. Thickly clustered bunches of pale green buds broke swiftly into fantastic curven-throated bugles of a clear-glowing apricot colour, which made gleams as of beaded light in the dark places where they unsheathed themselves. Mrs. Martin said it looked “like as if somebody was after tyin’ knots in a ray of the sunshine.” Just at this crisis a professor from one of the Queen’s Colleges, chancing to be in the neighbourhood, was brought to pronounce upon the case. As behoved a learned man, he gave it an ugly name, which we may ignorantly forget, and he said that it belonged to a species of plants, rare even in its far off oriental habitat, but totally unexampled beneath these northern skies.

However, soon after he had gone, leaving no luminous wake behind him, the little old woman made a brilliant discovery. It was on that same evening, while she was drinking tea with a few of her good gossips, for whom she entertained as strong a regard as did Madam Noah in the ancient morality. Naturally enough, the “quareness” and general inscrutability of the strange creeper had been under discussion, when Mrs. Martin suddenly said: “Ah! women, dear, what talk have we then at all, at all? Sure now it’s come clear in me own mind this instaint minute that whatever it may be, ’twas the Virgin herself, Heaven bless her, set it growin’ there wid itself, just of a purpose to be fetchin’ me in me company. For, signs on it, ne’er a day there is since folk heard tell of it, that there doesn’t be some comin’ and goin’ about the place, and makin’ it plisant and gay-like. And sorra a thing else is it brought them, except to be seein’ the quare new plant; aye, bedad, ’twas them twistin’ boughs on it streeled the whole lot along in here to me, same as if they were a manner of landin’-net. And sure wasn’t I moidherin’ her every night of me life to be sendin’ me some company? ’Deed was I so, and be the same token ne’er a word of thanks have I thought of sayin’ to her, after her takin’ the throuble to conthrive it that-away, more shame for me, but I was that tuk up wid it all.”“Thrue for you, Mrs. Martin, ma’am,” said Mrs. Brennan; “aiten bread’s soon forgotten, as the sayin’ is. Howane’er there’s nothin’ liker than that that was the way of it as you say. What else ’ud be apt to make it go clamber all round the image of her, as if ’twas her belongin’? And didn’t the gintleman tell you ’twas nothin’ that grows be rights next or nigh this counthry? Ah, for sure ’tis from far enough it’s come, if ’twas the like of Them sent it. And a kind thought it was too, glory be to God.”

Mrs. Martin’s theory gained almost unanimous approval, and was generally accepted by her neighbours, Father Gilmore sanctioning it with a half wistful assent. It had the effect of enhancing the interest taken in the flourishing creeper and the little withered dame, the pledge and recipient of so signal a favour from those who are still the recognised powers that be in such places as Clonmacreevagh. The idea gave a tinge of religious sentiment to the soon established custom of visiting Mrs. Martin, and on the weekly market days you often might have supposed some kind of miniature pattern in progress at her cabin, so great was the resort thither of shawled and cloaked and big-basketed country-wives. These guests seldom came empty handed—a couple of fresh eggs, or a roll of butter, or a cake of griddle- bread would be reserved for her at the bottom of the roomy creel. Other visitors were fain to carry off slips of the many trailing sprays, and would leave payment for them in silver coin, which sometimes had the comfortable portliness of half-crowns. But I do not believe that the little old woman valued these very highly, and I think most of them went in providing the strong black tea with which she loved to refresh her friends. And there was never an evening that she did not add to her Rosary: “And the Lord bless the kind heart of you then, Lady jewel, for sendin’ me the bit of company.”