CHAPTER IX
It is on his passage through the village of Garradrimna that we may most truly observe John Brennan, in sharp contrast with his dingy environment, as he goes to hear morning Mass at the instigation of his mother, whose pathetic fancy fails to picture him in any other connection. It is a beautiful morning, and the sun is already high. There is a clean freshness upon all things. The tall trees which form a redeeming background for the uneven line of the ugly houses on the western side of the street are flinging their rich raiment wildly upon the light breeze where it floats like the decorative garments of a ballet dancer. The light winds are whipping the lightness of the morning.
The men of drink are already stirring about in anticipation. Hubert Manning is striking upon the door of Flynn's, the grocery establishment, which, in the heavy blindness of his thirst, he takes to be one of the seven publichouses of Garradrimna. He is running about like some purged sinner, losing patience at last hard by the Gate of Heaven. In the course of her inclusive chronicles his mother had told John Brennan the life history of Hubert Manning. For sixty odd years he had bent his body in hard battle with the clay, until the doubtful benefit of a legacy had come to change the current of his life. The fortune, with its sudden diversion towards idleness and enjoyment, had caused all the latent villainy of the man, which the soil had subdued, to burst forth with violence. He was now a drunken old cur whom Sergeant McGoldrick caused to spend a fortune in fines.
"Just imagine the people who do be left the money!" said Mrs. Brennan, as she told the story.
John Brennan passes on. He meets the bill-poster, Thomas James. His dark, red face displays an immense anxiety. He is going for his first pint with a pinch of salt held most carefully in his hand. His present condition is a fact to be deplored, for he was famous in his time and held the record in Garradrimna for fast drinking of a pint. He could drink twenty pints in a day. Hence his decline and the pinch of salt now held so carefully in his hand. This is to keep down the first pint, and if the operation be safely effected it is quite possible that the other nineteen will give him no trouble.
Coming in the valley road are Shamesy Golliher and Martin Connell. In the distance they appear as small, shrinking figures, moving in abasement beneath the Gothic arches of the elms. They represent the advance guard of those who leave the sunlit fields on a summer morning to come into the dark, cavernous pubs of Garradrimna.
On the side of the street, distant from that upon which John Brennan is walking, moves the famous figure of Padna Padna, slipping along like some spirit of discontent and immortal longing, doomed forever to wander. He mistakes the student for one of the priests and salutes him by tipping his great hat lightly with his little fore-finger.
And here comes yet another, this one with speed and determination in his stride, for it is Anthony Shaughness, who has spent three-fourths of his life running away from Death.
"Will you save a life; will you save a life?" he whispers wildly, clutching John by the arm. "I have a penny, but sure a penny is no good, sir; and I want tuppence-ha'penny to add to it for the price of a pint; but sure you won't mind when it's to save my life! I know you'll give it to me for the love of God!"