Liam O'Flaherty - Irish Portraits - 14 Short Stories

“Away with you,” he thundered. “Begone from me, accursed one.”

The housekeeper opened the hall door. She was thrusting something into the girl’s hands, but the girl did not see her. As soon as she saw the open air through the doorway, she darted forward with a wild cry. She sprang down the drive and out into the road.

She paused for a moment in the roadway. To the right, the road led to the village. To the left, it led to the mountains. She darted away to the left, trotting on her toes, throwing her feet out sideways and swaying from her hips.

It was an August day. The sun was falling away towards the west. A heat mist hung high up in the heavens, around the dark spurs of the mountains.

She trotted a long way. Then she broke into a walk as the road began to rise. It turned and twisted upwards steeply towards the mountains, a narrow white crust of bruised limestone curling through the soft bog-land. The mountains loomed up close on either side…. There were black shadows on the grey granite rocks and on the purple heather. Overhanging peaks made gloomy caverns that cast long spikes of blackness out from them. Here and there the mountains sucked their sides inwards in sumptuous curves, like seashell mouths. Long black fences raced majestically up the mountain sides and disappeared on far horizons over their peaks, with ferocious speed. The melancholy silence of a dead world filled the air.

The melancholy silence soothed the girl. It numbed her. She sat down to rest on the stunted grass by the roadside. She cast one glance at the valley behind her, She shuddered. Then she hugged her baby fiercely and traversed its tiny face with kisses. The baby began to cry. She fed him. Then he fell asleep. She arose and walked on.

She was among the peaks, walking along a level, winding stretch of road that led to the lake, the Lake of Black Cahir. A great dull weariness possessed her being. Her limbs trembled as she walked. Her heart began to throb with fear. Her forehead wrinkled and quick tremors made her shiver now and again. But she walked fiercely on, driven forward towards the lake in spite of her terror.

She reached the entrance to the valley where the lake was. She saw the lake suddenly, nestling cunningly behind an overhanging mossy-faced cliff, a flat white dot with dark edges. She stood still and stared at it for a long time. She was delirious. Her eyes glistened with a strange light.

Then she shivered and walked slowly downwards towards the lake bank, stopping many times to kiss her sleeping child. When she reached the rocky bank and saw the deep dark waters, she uttered a cry and darted away. The child awoke and began to cry She sat down and fondled him. He ceased crying and beat the air feebly with his hands. She kissed him and called to him strange words in a mumbling voice

She took off her shawl, spread it on a flat, smooth rock, and placed the child in it. Then she tied the shawl into a bundle about the child. She placed the bundle carefully against another rock and knelt before it. Clasping her hands to her breast, she turned her face to the sky and prayed silently.

She prayed for two minutes, and then tears trickled down her cheeks, and she remained for a long time staring at the sky without thinking or praying. Finally she rose to her feet and walked to the lake bank quickly, without looking at her baby. When she reached the brink, she joined her hands above her head, closed her eyes, and swayed forward stiffly.

But she drew backwards again with a gasp.

Her child had crowed. She whirled about and rushed to him. She caught him up in her arms and began to kiss him joyously, laughing wildly as she did so.

Laughing madly, wildly, loudly, she rushed to the bank.

She threw back her head. She put the child’s face close against her white throat, and jumped headlong into the lake.

Mrs. Derrane was banging a sod of turf vigorously on the hearthstone. The sod was very hard, and when at last it broke one piece flew up in the air, hit the pot-hooks that hung on the chimney hanger and then descended on the half-baked cake that lay in the griddle.

“My soul from the devil,” said Mrs. Derrane angrily, picking it out of the griddle, “everything is upside down in this house. Poverty, poverty, poverty. Get out of that, you child of misfortune,” she cried, hitting the black cat that lay curled in the ashes with the piece of turf.

The cat me-owed, darted to the dresser, and looked at her viciously while he licked his paw. Then he shook his paw and fled out of the door.

“Phew!” said Mrs. Derrane’s husband, “we are in a temper this morning. Phew! You have a bad heart, my girl. By all the oaths in the Holy Book you have.” “Oh, you lazy lout of a man!” cried the woman, jumping to her feet and arranging her hair furiously. “It’s a pity ye didn’t find that out the day you married me. Troth it is. I wish to God it was on some other finger you put your threepenny-halfpenny ring!”

“Now, Mary-”

“Oh, hold yer tongue, Michael Derrane.”

Mary bustled around the kitchen doing nothing, dusting the dresser, rattling the milk can, throwing clothes about, banging the shovel that stood at the back door. Then she went to the door and stood with her arms akimbo, looking out. She was a handsome young woman, black-haired, red-cheeked and with high cheek-bones. Her dark eyes were flashing like a young colt’s. She wore a check apron over her red petticoat.

Her husband sat by the fire watching her and stroking his brown beard. Now and again he giggled, and his brown eyes sparkled with merriment. He, too, was handsome, and as he giggled his splendid muscles moved rhythmically beneath his blue sweater. Then he jumped to his feet and laughed. His wife took no notice of him, but kept looking out of the door, twitching her shoulders. “Mary, I say.” Mary did not reply. He moved up to her, smiling, and put his arm about her waist. “Go away from me,” she said, bending her head and at the same time turning around to him.

“Yerra, where can I go, Mary?” said Michael, crushing her to his bosom. “Amn’t I tied to you for life; oh, pulse of my heart?”

Mary raised her lips to his and they kissed passionately. The smile faded from his face and he looked into hers tenderly.

“What’s the trouble, my white love?” he said. “Oh, come in from the door,’ said Mary coyly, “the whole village will see us, and we six months married. Oh, Michael.”

He lifted her in his arms and sat on the hearth stool with her in his lap.

“Was it about the pigs, Mary?”

“Yes,” she gasped, fiddling with the breast of his jersey. “You know well I have nothing in the house, and I want to go to the mainland to buy a chair for the room and a warm blanket for the winter, and a stone of wool to make the frieze, and lots of things. And it’s time to sell them, Michael. They say prices are going to fall next week.”

“Well, well, now, and why didn’t you tell me that? Sure I thought it was how you were getting tired of me.”

They both laughed childishly. They were really a foolish couple and a disgrace to Inverara, where people never carry on like that after being married six months.

“Will ye sell them today, Michael?” murmured Mary, and her voice came up from somewhere in his chest.

“Yerra, I’d sell my soul to please you. Although they’d be in better condition in another month, But what the devil is the difference? Get up, you lazy girl, and boil the kettle. We better wash them right away. The jobber, I heard, is on his way over from Kilmurrage. Come on; move, lazybones !”

Michael, holding on to her apron-strings, began to caper around the kitchen.

“Let me go, you fool,” laughed Mary, “how can I do anything while you are hanging on to me? Go on and fix the fire, while I strain the milk. Kiss me first.”