"Is it a fact, Miss Kerr, that John Brennan bees going as a kind of a charity teacher or something to the college at Ballinamult?"
"Well, if it's a fact, it is a fact," said Rebecca in a tired, dull voice and without showing any interest whatsoever. But even this attitude did not baulk the sergeant's wife, for she hurried on:
"Ah, God help his innocent wit, but sure he'll never be a priest, he'll never be a priest! 'Tis a pity of his mother, but sure she could hardly expect it to be so, for she wasn't a good woman, they tell me, and she ought to know, you know, that she could hardly expect it to be so!"
Rebecca saw at once that her landlady was in one of her fits of garrulousness, so she concluded in consequence that there would not be much pleasure in her dinner to-day. She passed it untasted and went upstairs wearily. There was a certain grim comfort in thinking that she had left Mrs. McGoldrick with her harangue unfinished and a great longing upon her to be talking.... She flung herself upon the bed in the still untidied room. She was weary with some great, immeasurable weariness this blessed evening.... Her corset hurt her, and she sat up again to take it off. She caught sight of herself reflected in the mirror opposite.... How worn she looked! Her brows, with their even curves, did not take from the desolation that had fallen upon her forehead, where it was grown harder as beneath the blows of some tyrannic thought. And it seemed as if the same thought had plowed all the lines which were beginning to appear there now.... It must be that she had long since entered into a mood of mourning for the things she had lost in the valley.
She fell to remembering the first evening she had come to it, and of how she had begun to play with her beauty on that very first evening. It had appeared then as the only toy in her possession in this place of dreary immensity. And now it seemed to have run through many and sudden vicissitudes. She had allowed Ulick Shannon to play with it too.... But his language had been so sweet when he had praised her in the silent woods.... And in the lonely cottage in Donegal, where he had gone to see her after Christmas, there had been abiding joy, while outside the night swept wild and dark upon the cold, gray sea.... Here there came sudden qualms as to whether she had helped to ruin him by taking him away from preparation for his final exam. But there was such an urge of dear remembrance upon her that her mind sprang quickly back again to all the thoughts they had had between them then.... Back into her mind too were thronging the exact words he had used upon that night they had spent together in the cottage.
And by the side of all this, was it not queer that he came so seldom to see her now although he lived distant from her by only a few fields? Even when he came their partings were so abrupt, after a little period of strained conversation, when he always went with a slight excuse in his mouth to Garradrimna. Yet all the time she longed for his presence by her side with an even greater longing than that she had experienced in Donegal.... It was also painfully notable how he gave shifty answers to her every question. And had she not a good right to be asking him questions now?... And surely he must guess by this time.
She threw her head back upon the pillow once more, and once more she was weeping. She thought, through the mist of her tears, of how she had so bitterly wept upon the first evening of her coming to this room. But on that evening also she had prayed, and she could not pray now. Nor could she sleep. She remained there upon the bed, inert in every sense save for her empty stare up at the discolored ceiling. It was broken only by the queer smile she would take to herself ever and again.... At last she began to count upon her fingers. She was simply counting the number of times she had seen Ulick since his return to his uncle's house.
"Oh, dear, dear, and what have I done to him?" she muttered incessantly, biting her lips occasionally between her words as if in a very ecstasy of desire for the pain he was causing her.... There came moments, winged and clean like shining angels, to bring her comfort, when she wildly fancied it was the very loveliest thing to endure great pain for his sake.
But the powers of her mind for any wild gladness were being gradually annihilated by dark thoughts coming down to defeat her thoughts of beauty. She turned from contemplation of the ceiling and began to glance around the room in search of some distraction. In one corner she saw an old novelette thrown aside in its gaudy covers. The reading of rubbish was Mrs. McGoldrick's recreation when she was not sewing or nursing the baby.
She had called the girls after heroines of passionate love-stories, just as her husband, the sergeant, had seen that the boys were called after famous men in the world of the police. Thus the girls bore names like Euphemia McGoldrick and Clementina McGoldrick, while the boys bore names like John Ross McGoldrick and Neville Chamberlain McGoldrick. The girls, although they were ugly and ill-mannered, had already been invested with the golden lure of Romance, and the boys were already policemen although they were still far distant from the age when they could put on a belt or a baton.