Collected Stories (5 page)

“I couldn't help it, and she pushed in apast me into the bedroom with her face as white as that wall. The candle was lighting on the dresser. He turned to her roaring with the mad look in his eyes, and then went quiet all of a sudden, seeing her like that overright him with her hair all tumbled in the wind. I was coming behind her. I heard it. He put up his two poor hands and the red mark of the ropes on his wrists and whispered to her: ‘Winnie, asthore, isn't it the long time you were away from me?'

“‘It is, Denis, it is indeed,' says she, ‘but you know I couldn't help it.'

“‘Don't leave me anymore now, Winnie,' says he, and then he said no more, only the two eyes lighting out on her as she sat by the bed. And Sean Donoghue brought in the little stooleen for me, and there we were, the three of us, talking, and Denis paying us no attention, only staring at her.

“‘Winnie,' says he, ‘lie down here beside me.'

“‘Oye,' says Sean, humoring him, ‘don't you know the poor girl is played out after her day's work? She must go home to bed.'

“‘No, no, no,' says Denis and the terrible mad light in his eyes. ‘There is a high wind blowing and 'tis no night for one like her to be out. Leave her sleep here beside me. Leave her creep in under the clothes to me the way I'll keep her warm.'

“‘Oh, oh, oh, oh,' says I, ‘indeed and indeed, Miss Regan, 'tis I'm sorry for bringing you here. 'Tisn't my son is talking at all but the madness in him. I'll go now,' says I, ‘and bring Sean's boys to put the ropes on him again.'

“‘No, Mrs. Sullivan,' says she in a quiet voice. ‘Don't do that at all. I'll stop here with him and he'll go fast asleep. Won't you, Denis?'

“‘I will, I will,' says he, ‘but come under the clothes to me. There does a terrible draught blow under that door.'

“‘I will indeed, Denis,' says she, ‘if you'll promise me to go to sleep.'

“‘Oye, whisht, girl,' says I. ‘ 'Tis you that's mad. While you're here you're in my charge, and how would I answer to your father if you stopped in here by yourself?'

“‘Never mind about me, Mrs. Sullivan,' she said. ‘I'm not a bit in dread of Denis. I promise you there will no harm come to me. You and Mr. Donoghue can sit outside in the kitchen and I'll be all right here.'

“She had a worried look but there was something about her there was no mistaking. I wouldn't take it on myself to cross the girl. We went out to the kitchen, Sean and myself, and we heard every whisper that passed between them. She got into the bed beside him: I heard her. He was whispering into her ear the sort of foolish things boys do be saying at that age, and then we heard no more only the pair of them breathing. I went to the room door and looked in. He was lying with his arm about her and his head on her bosom, sleeping like a child, sleeping like he slept in his good days with no worry at all on his poor face. She did not look at me and I did not speak to her. My heart was too full. God help us, it was an old song of my father's that was going through my head: ‘Lonely Rock is the one wife my children will know.'

“Later on, the candle went out and I did not light another. I wasn't a bit afraid for her then. The storm blew up and he slept through it all, breathing nice and even. When it was light I made a cup of tea for her and beckoned her from the room door. She loosened his hold and slipped out of bed. Then he stirred and opened his eyes.

“‘Winnie,' says he, ‘where are you going?'

“‘I'm going to work, Denis,' says she. ‘Don't you know I must be at school early?'

“‘But you'll come back to me tonight, Winnie?' says he.

“‘I will, Denis,' says she. ‘I'll come back, never fear.'

“And he turned on his side and went fast asleep again.

“When she walked into the kitchen I went on my two knees before her and kissed her hands. I did so. There would no words come to me, and we sat there, the three of us, over our tea, and I declare for the time being I felt 'twas worth it all, all the troubles of his birth and rearing and all the lonesome years ahead.

“It was a great ease to us. Poor Denis never stirred, and when the police came he went along with them without commotion or handcuffs or anything that would shame him, and all the words he said to me was: ‘Mother, tell Winnie I'll be expecting her.'

“And isn't it a strange and wonderful thing? From that day to the day she left us there did no one speak a bad word about what she did, and the people couldn't do enough for her. Isn't it a strange thing and the world as wicked as it is, that no one would say the bad word about her?”

Darkness had fallen over the Atlantic, blank gray to its farthest reaches.

The Grand Vizier's Daughters

“T
HE
P
LOW
?” said my uncle's voice from the front gate. “Do you mean to say you don't know the Plow? That's the Plow, man, up there. And over there, low down, above the lighthouse—d'ye see?—the ruffian with the red head, that's Orion. Just so! Irish, of course; an old Tipperary family, armed to the teeth.”

I chuckled as his maudlin voice called it all up: the starlight over the sleeping town of which he was town clerk; the world's worst town clerk, but that's neither here nor there. For an hour or more I lay listening to himself and the maid gossiping in the kitchen, and their mumbling voices and the hissing of the range half lulled me to sleep. Then I heard him get up, and Nora began to whisper in protest till he grew crotchety. “Now, can't you—?” I heard him hiss. “I'm all right, girl. I won't say anything to her.” I wondered which of the girls he wanted to talk to. He came upstairs quietly; I knew he wasn't coming to bed because he hadn't locked the doors. As I heard him try the handle of the girls' door I slipped out of bed and put on a dressing gown.

“Halloaaa,” he said at last in a long, whimsical, insinuating drawl.

“Hallo,” piped my cousin Josie in her high-pitched, timid voice.

“Is Mom asleep?” he asked.

“She is.… No, she isn't, though. You're after waking her.”

“Oh, dear, dear!” he said.

“Is that you, Daddy?” said Monica, sleepy and cross, “what time is it?”

Curiosity was too much for me. I opened my bedroom door. He heard it, rushed out and clawed me in after him, beaming at me. I knew from the smell he must have been on the skite again. He was a tall, gaunt, melancholy-looking man. I worshipped him and he never saw it, the old idiot. Often when we met in town he went by without noticing me, lost in his own thoughts, his hands behind his back, his head bowed into the collar of his overcoat, while his lips moved as if he were talking to himself. If I stopped him he started out of his reverie with an animation and a wealth of gesture that was entirely fictitious, a laugh too loud, a glare of the deep-set fanatical eyes, a flush on the hollow temples and high cheekbones, while he leaned forward or sideways like a yacht in a gale in a long, raking, astonished line, clawing madly at his hat or at the flapping skirts of his coat. It wasn't wishing to me to break in on him.

“Come in, Willie,” he said, laughing, “come in, boy! I was only just saying to Nora that I hardly ever get the chance of a talk with ye.”

The candle on the dressing-table exaggerated the slashing line of his head with the high, bald, narrow cranium, the high cheekbones and sunken temples and eyes—the face of an El Greco saint. He swept the chair clean with a wave of his hand and held it out to me. Then he sat himself on the end of the bed and gave each of us a quizzical look, his mouth puckered up and his eyes in slits as if he was trying to keep in his laughter.

“And now what are we going to talk about?” he asked archly. “Here we are, the whole family. We have everything: the setting, the time, the company. What are we going to discuss?”

“Tell us a story, can't you?” said Josie. She had continued to gape at him with her big, scared brown eyes, the bedclothes drawn close under her chin, from modesty. I was sorry for her. She was always afraid of him when he had a drop taken. She was like that; a gentle, nunlike soul, not like Monica who went through town with a sailor stride, northeast, northwest, cracking jokes with everyone. On Sunday mornings poor Josie would come tapping at the Boss's door to tell him he'd be late for Mass, and then stand uncertainly in the hall with a flush on her cheeks and the same wide, uncomprehending stare in her great brown eyes. I liked Josie and I could have killed that little sugar, Hennessey, when he let her down.

“Story?” said the Boss with a laugh, drawing away from her in mock surprise. “Sure, my goodness, ye're too big for stories.”

“Not for good ones,” said Monica.

“What sort of story?” he asked, frowning and sucking in his cheeks till the whole hollow cage of his skull stood out.

“Well, for instance, what you and Owney Mac were up to tonight,” Monica said saucily.

“Me and Owney—?” he exclaimed with a worried look. “No, no, Mon, 'pon my soul, I wasn't. I just happened to drop in for a minute.” Then his face cleared; he smiled and winked. “Go away, you ruffian!” he said.

“A story?” he continued musingly with his head in the air. “I wonder now could I think of a little story that came into my head tonight. Let me think! What was it? About a young fellow, a rather simple young fellow, but nice.… I want you to remember that. He was nice.… Damn it, who was it told me or did I read it somewhere? Never mind, 'twill come back to me.… And a long time ago he came to live in a certain town. He had a job there; a good enough job for the town, but nothing much outside. Of course, he was hoping for promotion. We'll call him the Grand Vizier.”

“It must have been in Turkey so,” Monica cried, lifting herself on her elbow.

“Exactly!” my uncle exclaimed excitedly, punching his left palm with his fist. “‘Pon my word, Mon, you have it! Turkey! The very place. The name of the town will come back to me too in a minute. Not that 'twould mean anything to ye; a miserable place; a dirty old Eastern town with houses falling down at every step; mountains of dirt in the streets, and the unfortunate people living on top of one another, in filthy holes and corners, like savages—the way they live in Turkey. And this young fellow—he was a bit foolish, I told you that—thought he'd be a great fellow and change it all.”

“And marry the Sultan's daughter,” chimed in Monica with her ringing laugh.

“What Sultan's daughter?” my uncle exclaimed testily. “I said nothing about a Sultan's daughter! Now, my goodness, can't you let me tell the story my own way? This young fellow was married already—sure, I told ye he was simple.”

“Oh!” said Monica. She was disappointed.

“He was from Constantinople,” my uncle said impatiently, articulating every syllable and emphasizing it with his fist while his forehead took on a certain resemblance to Crewe Junction. “And as well as that he was after travelling a good deal: Paris, Vienna, Rome; the whole blooming shoot! Oh, he was none of your stick-in-the-muds at all, none of your country yobs, but a jing-bang, up-to-the-minute, Europeanized young Turk with plus-fours and horn-rimmed specs! He knew what he wanted; a fine, big, open town with wide streets and boulevards, big houses, libraries, schools and gardens; something he could show his butties from Paris.”

My uncle paused and looked away into a corner of the room while the brows darkened over his deep fanatical eyes.

“But there was one class of people in this town,” he went on gravely, “who didn't like what the Grand Vizier was up to. They were a very curious class of people. The like of them didn't exist outside Turkey. Muftis, they were called; men muftis and women muftis, and they lived in big houses like barracks all round the town. They never did anything for their living only go on pilgrimages to Mecca, and they were never happy only when they were spending millions building big, ugly old mosques or muezzins or whatever the devil they called them. A queer sort of life! Every evening up on top of their old chimney-stacks with their two arms out chanting ‘La laha, il Allah.'

“So begor, the Grand Vizier had a look at his books and what did he notice, only that for ten years the muftis weren't paying a ha'penny in taxes. The poor people were paying it for them. And there and then he sat down and he sent them a—they have a word for it!”

“They have,” said Monica, racking her brains.

“A fiat,” said my uncle. “No, that's not it. A firman! I have it now. He sent them a firman, and what do you think the muftis said? They said the Grand Vizier was trying to make the poor people restless, taking their minds off chimney-stacks and giving them notions above their station.”

“Ah, what ould guff you have!” Nora shouted from the kitchen. “Trouble enough I'll have trying to root you out to work in the morning!”

“Well, one day,” my uncle went on hastily, pretending not to hear, “one day while the Grand Vizier was sitting in state in his—his what you may call it—”

“Palace,” whispered Josie.

“I forget the Turkish word but that's what it comes to—there was a knock at the door. The young Grand Vizier opens the door himself, and who does he see only the Grand Mufti; a big, fat, red-faced man with a high fez on him and an umbrella tucked under his arm. Like this!” And my uncle raised his nose superciliously and held his arm as though he were clutching an umbrella.

“I didn't know they had umbrellas in Turkey,” said Monica suspiciously.

“Now, now, now, now,” shouted my uncle in anguish, shaking his fist at her, “order please, order! Of course they had umbrellas. The umbrella was a sacred thing, like the fez. 'Tis distinctly mentioned in all the history books. Rolled up of course, under the arm, just as I say.”

“Ah, this is a queer old story,” Josie said restlessly, her great brown eyes fixed on him in alarm.