Collected Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

her own cheek the day she set foot in the school, and—’tis hard to believe but ’tis what they all said: I will not belie her—’twasn’t banished she was at all, but she came here of her own choice, for the great liking she had for the sea and the mountains. Now, that is the story, and with my own eyes I saw her, day in day out, coming down the little pathway you came yourself from the road and sitting beyond there in a hollow you can hardly see, out of the wind. The neighbors could make nothing of it, and she being a stranger, and with only the book Irish, they left her alone. It never seemed to take a peg out of her, only sitting in that hole in the rocks, as happy as the day is long, reading her little book or writing her letters. Of an odd time she might bring one of the little scholars along with her to be picking posies.
    â€œThat was where my Denis saw her. He’d go up to her of an evening and sit on the grass beside her, and off and on he might take her out in the boat with him. And she’d say with that big laugh of hers: ‘Denis is my beau.’ Those now were her words and she meant no more harm by it than the child unborn, and I knew it and Denis knew it, and it was a little joke we had, the three of us. It was the same way she used to joke about her little hollow. ‘Mrs. Sullivan,’ she’d say, ‘leave no one near it. It is my nest and my cell and my little prayer-house, and maybe I would be like the birds and catch the smell of the stranger and then fly away from ye all.’ It did me good to hear her laugh, and whenever I saw Denis moping or idle I would say it to him myself: ‘Denis, why wouldn’t you go out and pay your attentions to Miss Regan and all saying you are her intended?’ It was only a joke. I would say the same thing to her face, for Denis was such a quiet boy, no way rough or accustomed to the girls at all—and how would he in this lonesome place?
    â€œI will not belie her; it was she saw first that poor Denis was after more than company, and it was not to this cove she came at all then but to the little cove beyond the headland, and ’tis hardly she would go there itself without a little scholar along with her. ‘Ah,’ I says, for I missed her company, ‘isn’t it the great stranger Miss Regan is becoming?’ and Denis would put on his coat and go hunting in the dusk till he came to whatever spot she was. Little ease that was to him, poor boy, for he lost his tongue entirely, and lying on his belly before her, chewing an old bit of grass, is all he would do till she got up and left him. He could not help himself, poor boy. The madness was on him, even then, and it was only when I saw the plunder done that I knew there was no cure for him only to put her out of his mind entirely. For ’twas madness in him and he knew it, and that was what made him lose his tongue—he that was maybe without the price of an ounce of ’baccy—I will not deny it: often enough he had to do without it when the hens would not be laying, and often enough stirabout and praties was all we had for days. And there was she with money to her name in the bank! And that wasn’t all, for he was a good boy; a quiet, good-natured boy, and another would take pity on him, knowing he would make her a fine steady husband, but she was not the sort, and well I knew it from the first day I laid eyes on her, that her hand would never rock the cradle. There was the madness out and out.
    â€œSo here was I, pulling and hauling, coaxing him to stop at home, and hiding whatever little thing was to be done till evening the way his hands would not be idle. But he had no heart in the work, only listening, always listening, or climbing the cnuceen to see would he catch a glimpse of her coming or going. And, oh, Mary, the heavy sigh he’d give when his bit of supper was over and I bolting the house for the night, and he with