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Valley of the Squinting Windows

[Pg 253] <h2>CHAPTER XXX</h2> When John Brennan went to his room after his father's outburst it was with the intention of doing some preparation for the morrow's work at the college; but although he opened several books in turn, he could feel no quickening of knowledge in his mind.... There she was again continually recurring to his thoughts. And now she was far grander. This was the fear that had always been hidden in his heart,—that somehow her friendship with Ulick was not a thing that should have happened. But he had considered it a reality he could not attempt to question. Yet he knew that but for Ulick she must be very near to him. And Ulick had admitted his unworthiness, and so the separation was at an end. It was surprising that this should have happened now. His mind sprang back to all that tenderness with which his thoughts of her had been surrounded through these long days of dreaming, when he had contrived to meet her, as if by accident, on her way from school. All through the next day his heart was upon her; the thought of her would give peace. Into every vacant moment she would come with the full light of her presence. He had suddenly relapsed into the mood that had imprisoned him after the summer holidays. He stood aloof from Father Considine and did not wish to see him through the whole of his long day in the college at Ballinamult.... All the way home he pictured her. She was[Pg 254] luring him now as she had always lured him—towards a fairer vision of the valley. He noticed how the summer was again flooding over the fields like a great river spilling wide. It was a glorious coincidence that she should be returning to him now, a creature of brightness at a time of beauty. The road seemed short this pleasant afternoon, and the customary feeling of dusty weariness was not upon him as he leapt lightly off the bicycle at his mother's door. Mrs. Brennan came out to meet him eagerly. This was no unusual occurrence now that he had again begun to ascend the ladder of the high condition she had planned for him. She was even a far prouder woman now, for, somehow, she had always half remembered the stain of charity hanging over his uprise in England. Besides this he was nearer to her, moving intimately through the valley, a living part of her justification.... Her fading eyes now looked out tenderly at her son. There seemed to be a great light in them this afternoon, a great light of love for him.... He was moved beneath their gaze. And still she continued to smile upon him in a weak way as within the grip of some strong excitement. He saw when he entered that his dinner was not set out as usual on the white table in the kitchen.... She brought him into the sewing-room. And still she had the same smile trembling upon her lips and the same light in her eyes.... All this was growing mysterious and oppressive. But his mood was proof against sad influences. It must be some tale of good fortune come to their house of which his mother had now to tell. "D'ye know what, John? The greatest thing ever is after happening!" [Pg 255] "Is that a fact, mother?" "Though mebbe 'tis not right for me to tell you and you all as one as a priest, I may say. But sure you're bound to hear it, and mebbe a little knowledge of the kind might not be amiss even to one in your exalted station. And then to make it better, it concerns two very near friends of yours, Mr. Ulick Shannon and Miss Rebecca Kerr, I thank you!" John Brennan's mind leaped immediately to interest. Were they gone back to one another, and after what he had thought to-day? This was the question his lips carried inwardly to himself. "I don't know how I can tell you. But Father O'Keeffe was at school to-day in a great whet. He made a show of her before the children, Mrs. Wyse and Miss McKeon, of course, giving him good help. He dismissed her, and told her to go about her business. He'll mebbe speak of her publicly from the altar on Sunday." "And what is it, mother, what—?" "Oh, she's going to have a misfortune, me son. She's going to be a mother, God bless us all! and not married or a ha'porth!" "O God!" "But sure she put in for nothing else, with her going up and all that to Dublin to have her dresses made, instead of getting them done nice and quiet and modest and respectable be me. I may tell you that I was more than delighted to hear it." "Well now, and the—" John was biting his lips in passion, but she took another view of it as she interrupted him. [Pg 256] "Ah, you may well ask who he is, who but that scoundrel Ulick Shannon, that I was never done asking you not to speak to. You were young and innocent, of course, and could not be expected to know what I know. But mebbe you'll avoid him now, although I think he won't be long here, for mebbe Father O'Keeffe'll run him out of the parish. Maybe not though, for his uncle has bags of money. Indeed I wouldn't put it apast him if he was the lad encouraged him to this, for the Shannons were always blackguards in their hearts.... But it'll be great to hear Father O'Keeffe on Sunday. I must be sure and go to his Mass. Oh, it'll be great to hear him!" "Yes, I suppose it will be great to hear him." John spoke out of the gathering bitterness of his heart. "I wonder what'll become of her now. I wonder where'll she go. Oh, to Dublin, I suppose. She was always fond of it." His mother was in a very ecstasy of conjecture as to the probable extent of Rebecca's fate. And this was the woman who had always expressed a melting tenderness in her actions towards him. This was his mother who had spoken now with all uncharitableness. There was such an absence of human pity in her words as most truly appalled him.... Very quickly he saw too that it was upon his own slight connection with this tragic thing her mind was dwelling. This was to him now a token, not of love, but rather of enormous selfishness.... Her eyes were upon him still, watering in admiration with a weak gleam.... The four walls seemed to be moving in to crush him after the manner of some medieval torture chamber.... Within them, too, was beginning to rise a horrid stench as of dead human things.... This[Pg 257] ghastliness that had sprung up between mother and son seemed to have momentarily blotted out the consciousness of both. They stared at one another now with glassy, unseeing eyes. After three Rebecca took her lonely way from the school. Neither Mrs. Wyse nor Monica McKeon had a word for her at parting. Neither this woman, who was many times a mother, nor this girl who might yet be a mother many times. They were grinning loudly and passing some sneer between them, as they moved away from one another alone. Down the valley road she went, the sunlight dazzling her tired eyes. A thought of something that had happened upon this day last year came with her remembrance of the date. It was the first anniversary of some slight, glad event that had brought her happiness, and yet what a day it was of dire happening? Just one short year ago she had not known the valley or Ulick or this fearful thing.... There were friends about her on this day last year and the sound of laughter, and she had not been so far distant from her father's house. And, O God! to think that now she was so much alone. Suddenly she became aware that there was some one running by her side and calling "Miss Kerr! Miss Kerr!" "Oh, Janet Comaskey!" she said, turning. "Is it you?" "Yes, Miss Kerr. I want to tell you that I was talking to God last night, and I was telling Him about you. He asked me did I like you, and I said I did. 'And so do I,' said He. 'I like Miss Kerr very much,' He said, 'for she's very nice, very, very nice.'" [Pg 258] Rebecca had never disliked this queer child, but she loved her now, and bending down, warmly kissed her wild face. "Thanks, miss. I only wanted to tell you about God," said Janet, dropping behind. Rebecca was again alone, but now she was within sight of the house of Sergeant McGoldrick. It seemed to be dozing there in the sunlight. She began to question herself did those within already know ...? Now that the full publicity of her condition seemed imminent an extraordinary feeling of vanity was beginning to take possession of her. She took off her dust-coat and hung it upon her arm. Thus uncloaked she would face the eyes of Mrs. McGoldrick and her daughters, Euphemia and Clementina, and the eyes, very probably, of John Ross McGoldrick and Neville Chamberlain McGoldrick.... But when she entered the house she experienced the painful stillness of a tomb-like place. There was no one to be seen. She went upstairs with a kind of faltering in her limbs, but her head was erect and her fine eyes were flashing.... Even still was she soaring beyond and beyond them. Her eye was caught by a note pinned upon her door. It seemed very funny and, despite her present condition of confusion and worry, she smiled, for this was surely a melodramatic trick that Mrs. McGoldrick had acquired from the character of her reading.... Still smiling, she tore it open. It read like a proclamation, and was couched in the very best handwriting of Sergeant McGoldrick. <blockquote>"Miss Kerr, Rev. Louis O'Keeffe, P.P., Garradrimna, has given[Pg 259] notice that, on account of certain deplorable circumstances, we are to refuse you permission to lodge with us any longer. This we hasten to do without any regret, considering that, to oblige you at the instigation of Father O'Keeffe, we broke the Regulation of the Force, which forbids the keeping of lodgers by any member of that body. We hereby give you notice to be out of this house by 6 p.m. on this evening, May —, 19—, having, it is understood, by that time packed up your belongings and discharged your liabilities to Mrs. McGoldrick. Father O'Keeffe has, very magnanimously, arranged that Mr. Charles Clarke is to call for you with his motor and take you with all possible speed to the station at Kilaconnaghan. Sylvester McGoldrick (Sergeant, R.I.C.)." </blockquote> The official look of the pronouncement seemed only to increase its gloomy finality, but the word "magnanimously," fresh from the dictionary at the Barrack, made her laugh outright. The offense she had committed was unnamed, too terrible for words. She was being sentenced like a doomed Easter rebel.... Yet, even still, she was not without some thought of the practical aspect of her case. She owed thirty shillings to Mrs. McGoldrick. This would leave her very little, out of the few pounds she had saved from her last instalment of salary, with which to face the world. This, of course, if Ulick did not come.... And here was her dinner, set untidily in the stuffy room where the window had not been opened since the time she had left it this morning in confusion. And the whole house was quiet as the[Pg 260] grave. She never remembered to have heard it so quiet at any other time. It seemed as if all this silence had been designed with a studied calculation of the pain it would cause. There was no kindness in this woman either, although she too was a mother and had young daughters. It appeared so greatly uncharitable that in these last terrible moments she could not cast from her the small and pitiful enmity she had begun upon the evening of Rebecca's arrival in the valley. She would not come even now and help her pack up her things, and she so weary?... But it was easily done. The few articles that had augmented her wardrobe since her coming to the valley would go into the basket she had used to carry those which were barely necessary for her comfort when she went to that lonely cottage in Donegal.... The mean room was still bare as when she had first come to it. She had not attempted to decorate it. In a pile in one corner stood the full series of Irish School Weeklies and Weldon's Ladies' Journals she had purchased since her coming here. She had little use for either of these publications now, little use for the one that related to education or the other that related to adornment. There came a feverish haste upon her to get done with her preparations for departure, and soon they were completed. She had her trunk corded and all ready. She had no doubt that Ulick would meet her upon The Road of the Dead at 5.30, the hour she had named in the letter of this morning. It was lucky she had so accurately guessed her possible time of departure, although somehow she had had no notion this morning of leaving so[Pg 261] soon. But already it was more than 4.30 by her little wristlet watch. She put on her best dress, which had been left out on the bed, and redid her hair. It was still the certain salvage from the wreck she was becoming. Ulick or any other man, for all he had ruined her, must still love her for that hair of gold. It needed no crown at all, but a woman's vanity was still hers, and she put on a pretty hat which Ulick had fancied in Dublin. She had worn it for the first time last summer in Donegal, and it became her better than any hat she had ever worn.... What would they say if they saw her moving about in this guise, so brazenly as it seemed, when she might be spoken of from the altar on Sunday? Now fell upon her a melancholy desire to see the chapel. There was yet time to go there and pray just as she had thought of praying on her first evening on coming to Garradrimna. She took a final glance at the little, mean room. It had not been a room of mirth for her, and she was not sorry to leave it—there was the corded trunk to tell the tale of its inhospitality. She took the money for Mrs. McGoldrick from her purse and put it into an envelope.... Going downstairs she left it upon the kitchen table. There was no one to be seen, but she could hear the scurrying of small feet from her as if she were some monstrous and forbidden thing. As she went up the bright road there was a flickering consciousness in her breast that she was an offense against the sunlight, but this feeling fled away from her when she went into the chapel and knelt down to pray. Her mind was full of her purpose, and she did not experience the distraction of one single, selfish thought. But when she[Pg 262] put her hands up to her face in an attitude of piety she felt that her face was burning. It was a day for confessions, but there were few people in the chapel, and those not approaching the confessionals. The two young curates, Father Forde and Father Fagan, were moving about the quiet aisles, each deeply intent upon the reading of his office. They were nearer the altar than to her, but for all the air of piety in which they seemed to be enveloped, they detected her presence immediately and simultaneously. Soon they began to extend their back and forward pacing to include her within the range of their sidelong vision.... By the time she had got half way around her little mother-of-pearl rosary they were moving past her and towards one another at her back. She was saying her poor prayers as well as she could, but there they were with their heads working up and down as they looked alternately at her and at their holy books.... Just as she got to the end of the last decade she was conscious that they had come together and were whispering behind her.... It was not until then that she saw the chapel for what it stood in regard to her. It was the place where, on Sunday next, mean people would smirk in satisfaction as they sat listening in all their lack of charity and fulness of pride.... The realization brought the pulsing surge of anger to her blood and she rose to come away. But when she turned around abruptly there were the two curates with their eyes still fixed upon her.... She did not meet their looks full straight, for they turned away as if to avoid the contamination of her as she ran from the House of God. [Pg 263] When John Brennan reached a point in his disgust where further endurance was impossible he broke away from the house and from his mother. He went out wildly through the green fields. But he would see her. He would go to her, for surely she had need of him now.... If Ulick did not come.... And there was much in his manner and conversation of the previous night to make it doubtful.... If he did not take her away from this place and make her his own to protect and cherish, there was only one course left open.... He knew little of these things, for he knew little of the ways of life, but instinctively he felt that Rebecca would now cling to Ulick and that Ulick would be a great scoundrel if he spurned her from him. And what, he asked himself, would he, John Brennan, do in that case? No answer would spring directly to his thoughts, but some ancient, primeval feeling was stirring in his heart—the answer that men have held to be the only answer from the beginning of the world. But that was a dreadful thing which, in its eddying circles of horror, might compass his own end also. But, maybe the whole story was untrue. He had heard his mother speak many a time after the same fashion, and there was never one case of the kind but had proved untrue. Yet it was terrible that no answer would come flashing out from his wild thoughts, and already he had reached The Road of the Dead. His wandering eyes had at last begun to rest upon a wide, green field. He saw the wind and sun conspiring to ripple the grass into the loveliest little waves. He had loved this always, and even the present state of his mind[Pg 264] did not refuse the sensation of its beauty. He went and leaned across the field gate to gaze upon it. He turned suddenly, for there was a step approaching him along the road. Yes, surely it was she. It was Rebecca Kerr herself coming towards him down The Road of the Dead.... She was smiling, but from the dark, red shadows about her eyes it was easy to see that she had quite recently been crying. "Good evening, John Brennan!" she said. "Good evening, Miss Kerr!" There was a deep touch of concern, turning to anxiety, almost a rich tenderness in his words. She heard them for what they were, and there came to her clearly their accents of pity.... For the moment neither seemed capable of finding speech.... Her eyes were searching The Road of the Dead for the man she expected to meet her here. But he was not coming. In the silence that had fallen between them John Brennan had clearly glimpsed the dumb longing that was upon her.... He felt the final gloom that was moving in around her ... yet he could not find speech. "I'm going away from the valley," said Rebecca. He made some noise in his throat, but she could hear no distinct word. "It was not you I expected to meet here this evening. It is so strange how we have met like this." "I just came out for a walk," he stammered, at a loss for something better to say. "I'm glad we have met," she said, "for this is the last time." It was easy to see that her words held much meaning[Pg 265] for herself and him.... He seemed to be nearer the brink as her eyes turned from him again to search the road. "He will not come," she said, and there was a kind of wretched recklessness in her tones. "I know he will not come, for that possibility has never been." She grew more resigned of a sudden. She saw that John Brennan too was searching the road with his eyes.... Then he knew the reason why she was going away. He was such a nice boy, and between his anxious watching now for her sake he was gazing with pity into her eyes.... He must know Ulick too as a man knows his friend, and that Ulick would not come to her in this her hour of trial.... The knowledge seemed the more terrible since it was through John Brennan it had come; and yet it was less terrible since he did not disdain her for what she had done. She saw through his excuse. He had come this way with the special purpose of seeing her, and if he had not met her thus accidentally he must inevitably have called at the house of Sergeant McGoldrick to extend his farewell. She was glad that she had saved him this indignity by coming out to her own disappointment.... She was sorry that he had again returned to his accustomed way of thinking of her, that he had again departed from the way into which she had attempted to direct him. And now there loomed up for her great terror in this thought. Yet she could read it very clearly in the way he was looking so friendly upon her.... Why had he always looked upon her in this way? Surely she had never desired it. She had never desired him. It was[Pg 266] Ulick she had longed for always. It was Ulick she had longed for this evening, and it was John Brennan who had come.... Yes, how well he had come? It was very simple and very beautiful, this action of his, but in its simple goodness there was a fair promise of its high desolation. It appeared that she stood for his ruin also, and, even now, in the mounting moments of her fear, this appeared as an ending far more appalling.... She was coming to look at her own fate as a thing she might be able to bear, but there was something so vastly filled with torture in this thought.... Whenever she would look into the eyes of the child and make plans for its little future she would think of John Brennan and what had happened to him. She felt that they had been a long time standing here at this gate, by turns gazing anxiously up and down the road, by turns looking vacantly out over the sea of grass. Time was of more account than ever before, for was it not upon this very evening that she was being banished from the valley? "I must go now," she said; "he will never come." He did not answer, but moved as if to accompany her.... She grew annoyed as she observed his action. "No, no, you must not come with me now. You must not speak with me again. I have placed myself forever beyond your friendship or your thought!" As she extended her hand to him her heart was moved by a thousand impulses. "Good-by, John Brennan!" she said simply. "Good-by, Rebecca!" said he at last, finding speech by a tremendous effort.... And without another word they parted there on The Road of the Dead. [Pg 267] Outside the garden gate of Sergeant McGoldrick Charlie Clarke was waiting for her with his motor-car. Her trunk had been put in at the back. This was an unholy job for a saintly chauffeur, but it was Father O'Keeffe's command and his will must be done. When the news of it had been communicated to him he had said a memorable thing: "Well, now, the quare jobs a religious man has sometimes to do; but maybe these little punishments are by way of satisfaction for some forgotten and far-distant sin!" Rebecca understood his anxiety to have her off his hands as she saw him jump in behind the wheel at her approach. She got in beside her poor trunk, and presently the car would be ready to start. There was not a trace of any of the McGoldrick family to be seen.... But there was a sudden breaking through the green hedge upon the other side of the road, and Janet Comaskey stood beside the car. Rebecca was surprised by the sudden appearance of the little, mad girl at this moment. "Miss Kerr, Miss Kerr!" she called. "I got this from God. God told me to give you this!" The car started away, and Rebecca saw that the superscription on the letter she had been handed was in the pronounced Vere Foster style of Master Donnellan. Doubtless it was some long-winded message of farewell from the kind-hearted master, and she would not open it now. It would be something to read as she moved away towards Dublin. Just now her eyes were being filled by the receding pageant of the valley, that place of all earth's places which had so powerfully arrayed its villainy against her....[Pg 268] And to think that he had not come.... It was the Valley of Hinnom.... Yes, to think that he had not come after all she had been to him, after all the love of her heart she had given him. No word could ever, ever pass between them again. They were upon the very brink of the eternity of separation. She knew now that for all the glory in which she had once beheld him, he must shrivel down to the bitter compass of a little, painful memory. Oh, God! to think he had not replied to her letter, and the writing of it had given her such pain. They were at the station of Kilaconnaghan. Charlie Clarke had not spoken all through the journey, but now he came up to her indignantly, as if very vexed for being compelled to speak to her at all, and said: "The fare is one pound!" The words smote her with a little sense of shock. She had been expecting something by way of climax. She was very certain in her consciousness that the valley would not let her slip thus quietly away.—A pound for the journey, although it was Father O'Keeffe who had engaged the car.—She must pay this religious robber a huge price for the drive. There rushed through her mind momentarily a mad flash of rebellion. The valley was carrying its tyranny a little too far.... She would not pay.... But almost immediately she was searching for a note in her purse.... There were so very few of them now. Yet she could not leave the valley with any further little stain upon her. They would talk of a thing like this for years and years. With a deadly silence hanging over him and fearful thoughts coming into his mind Myles Shannon had kept[Pg 269] himself and his nephew Ulick at work all through the day. After tea in the lonely dining-room he fetched in his inky account books, which had been neglected for many a month. His nephew would here have work to occupy him for the remainder of the evening and probably far into the night. Ulick was glad of the task, for his mind was very far from being at ease. Then Mr. Shannon took £100 from the old-fashioned bureau in the parlor, which held, with the other things, all his papers and accounts, and while the evening was yet high went down towards the house of Sergeant McGoldrick to see Rebecca Kerr. Around a bend of the road he encountered Charlie Clarke on his way back from Kilaconnaghan, where he had been delayed upon bazaar business. The saintly chauffeur at once put on the brakes. This was Mr. Myles Shannon and some one worth speaking to. He bowed a groveling salute. "You're out pretty late?" said Mr. Shannon. "Oh, yes!" And then he went on to describe his work of the evening. He felt inclined to offer his condolence to Mr. Shannon in a most respectful whisper, but thought better of it at the last moment. "And no one knows where she has gone?" "No one. She has disappeared from the valley." "She went away very suddenly." "Yes, Father O'Keeffe saw that, in the public interest, she should disappear after this fashion. The motor was a help, you know." Charlie Clarke offered to drive Mr. Shannon to his home. No word passed between them as they drew up the avenue to the lonely house among the trees. [Pg 270] In the train, moving on towards Dublin, Rebecca Kerr had just opened the letter from Master Donnellan. It contained a £5 note.... This was like a cry of mercy and pardon for the valley.... The rich fields of Meath were racing by. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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