The Woman Thou Gavest Me | Page 6

rang out a merry peal.
"That'll beat 'em, I say," cried my father, and laughing in his triumph he
tramped the flagged floor with a firmer step than ever.
All at once the crying of the child ceased and there was a confused
rumble of voices overhead. My father stopped, his face straightened,
and his voice, which had rung out like a horn, wheezed back like a
whistle.
"What's going doing? Where's Conrad? Why doesn't Conrad come to
me?"
"Don't worry. He'll be down presently," said Father Dan.
A few minutes passed, in which nothing was said and nothing heard,
and then, unable to bear the suspense any longer, my father went to the
foot of the staircase and shouted the doctor's name.
A moment later the doctor's footsteps were heard on the stone stairs.
They were hesitating, halting, dragging footsteps. Then the doctor
entered my father's room. Even in the sullen light of the peat fire his
face was white, ashen white. He did not speak at first, and there was an
instant of silence, dead silence. Then my father said:
"Well, what is it?"
"It is . . ."

"Speak man! . . . Do you mean it is . . . dead?"
"No! Oh no! Not that."
"What then?"
"It is a girl."
"A gir . . . Did you say a girl?"
"Yes.
"My God!" said my father, and he dropped back into the chair. His lips
were parted and his eyes which had been blazing with joy, became
fixed on the dying fire in a stupid stare.
Father Dan tried to console him. There were thistles in everybody's
crop, and after all it was a good thing to have begotten a girl. Girls were
the flowers of life, the joy and comfort of man in his earthly pilgrimage,
and many a father who bemoaned his fate when a daughter had been
born to him, had lived to thank the Lord for her.
All this time the joy bells had been ringing, and now the room began to
be illuminated by fitful flashes of variegated light from the
firework-frame on the top of Sky Hill, which (as well as it could for the
rain that had soaked it) was sputtering out its mocking legend, "God
Bless the Happy Heir."
In his soft Irish voice, which was like a river running over smooth
stones, Father Dan went on with his comforting.
"Yes, women are the salt of the earth, God bless them, and when I think
of what they suffer that the world may go on, that the generations may
not fail, I feel as if I want to go down on my knees and kiss the feet of
the first woman I meet in the street. What would the world be without
women? Think of St. Theresa! Think of the Blessed Margaret Mary!
Think of the Holy Virgin herself. . . ."
"Oh, stow this stuff," cried my father, and leaping to his feet, he began

to curse and swear.
"Stop that accursed bell! Is the fool going to ring for ever? Put out
those damnable lights, too. Put them out. Are the devils of hell trying to
laugh at me?"
With that, and an oath at himself for his folly, my father strode out of
the room.
My mother had heard him. Through the unceiled timbers of the floor
between them the words of his rage had reached her. She was ashamed.
She felt as if she were a guilty thing, and with a low cry of pain she
turned to the wall and fainted.
The old lord died the same night. Somewhere towards the dead reaches
of the dawn his wicked spirit went to its reckoning, and a month
afterwards the new Lord Raa, a boy in an Eton jacket, came over to
take possession of his inheritance.
But long before that my father, scoring out his disappointment like an
account that was closed, had got to work with his advocates, bankers
and insular councillors on his great schemes for galvanising the old
island into new life.

THIRD CHAPTER
Out of the mist and veil of my own memory, as distinguished from
Father Dan's, there comes first the recollection of a big room containing
a big bed, a big wardrobe, a big dressing table, a big praying-stool with
an image of Our Lady on the wall above it, and an open window to
which a sparrow used to come in the mornings and chirp.
When I came to recognise and to classify I realised that this was my
mother's room, and that the sweet somebody who used to catch me up
in her arms when I went tottering on voyages of discovery round the
vast place was my mother herself, and that she would comfort