A little pot-bellied man stepped briskly along the street of the village, one gloved hand grasping a stout stick, the other, also gloved, sunk in the capacious pocket of a heavy overcoat. He walked as if he lacked knee-joints, throwing the legs out from his hips, but, save for this, there was nothing remarkable about the man except perhaps his stoutness. The people of Greenanore, battling daily against the terrible spectre of hunger, had no time to grow fat, yet this man measured forty inches round the waist. In the midst of extreme poverty he, strange to say, had grown corpulent and rich. His name was Farley McKeown, now possessor of £200,000, part of it invested in South American Railways and part of it in the Donegal Knitting Industry, and nearly all of it earned in the latter.
Farley McKeown was now seventy years of age and unmarried. At one time, years before, he had his desires as most young men have, and the sight of a comely girl going barefooted to Greenanore imparted a fiery and not unpleasant vigour to his body and caused strange but not unnatural thoughts to enter into his mind. He was then a young man of twenty, thoughtful and ambitious. Although his father was poor, the boy, educated by some hedge schoolmaster, showed promise and evinced a desire to become a priest. “It is an easy job,” he said to himself, “and a priest can make plenty of money.” Farley McKeown desired to make money anyway and anyhow.
When the black potato blight, with the fever and famine that followed it, spread over Donegal, Farley McKeown saw his chance. By dint of plausible arguments he persuaded a firm of Londonderry grain merchants to ship a cargo of Indian meal to Greenanore and promised to pay for the consignment within two years from the date of its arrival. When the cargo was landed on Dooey Head the people hailed it as a gift from God and the priest blessed Farley McKeown from the altar steps. The peasants built a large warehouse for McKeown, and in return for the work they were allowed a whole year in which to pay for their meal. Meanwhile the younger generation went off to America, and money flowed in to Donegal and Farley McKeown’s pocket. At the end of two years he had paid the grain merchants, but the peasants found to their astonishment that they had only paid interest on the cost of their food. They were in the man’s clutches, always paying for goods received and in some strange way never clear of debt. This went on for years, and Farley McKeown, a pillar of the Church and the friend of the holy priest, waxed wealthy on the proceeds of his business.
Then he started a knitting industry and again was hailed by the priest as the saviour of the people. From far and near, from the most southerly to the most northerly point of Donegal the peasant women came to Greenanore for yarn, crossing arms of the sea, mountains and moors on their journey, and carrying back bundles of yarn to their homes. The journey was in many cases thirty miles each way, and these miles were tramped by women between a sleep and a sleep, often with only one meal in their stomachs.
The daughters of Donegal are splendid knitters. But how difficult to make are those wonderful stockings when there is nothing but the peat fire or the rushlight to show the women the dreary and countless stitches that go to make the whole marvellous work. How quick those irons flash in the firelight, how they tinkle, tinkle one against another as the nimble fingers wind the threads around them, but alas! how wearying the toil! And the time usually taken to make a pair of socks was sixteen hours, and the wages paid for sixteen hours’ work was a penny farthing.
II
FARLEY McKeown strutted along the street, inflating his stomach with dignity as he walked and casting careless looks around him. All those whom he met saluted him, the men raised their hands to their caps, the women bowed gravely, and the children, when they saw him coming, ran away. An old sow, black and dirty from her wallow in some near midden, rushed violently into the street and grunted as she mouthed at the grime in the gutter. A peasant boy, dressed in trousers and shirt, got hold of one of the young pigs and the animal squealed loudly. This startled the mother and she peered round, her little stupid eyes blinking angrily. On seeing that one of her young was possibly in danger she charged full at the youth, who, hurriedly dropping the sucker, sought the safety of a near doorway. A few hens rushed off with long, remarkable strides that made one wonder how the spider-shanked, ungainly birds saved themselves from toppling over. A rooster—a defiant Sultan—who did not share in the trepidacious exit of his wives, crowed loudly and looked valiantly at the sow, as much as to say: “I, for one, am not the least afraid of you.” The boy finding himself safe ventured out again into the street, but coming face to face with Farley McKeown hurried off even more rapidly than when pursued by the sow. The man noticed the doubtful mark of respect which the youth showed him, purred approvingly and smiled, the smile giving him the appearance of an over-fed, serious frog.
McKeown walked along the street towards a spacious three-storied building containing many large windows and heavy, painted doors. This was the warehouse in which he stored his yarn. One door was open, and in front of this a crowd of barefooted women and children were standing, most of them holding large bundles of stockings which they frequently changed from one hand to another. They did not dare to rest their bundles on the street, which was wet with the slabbery sleet of mid-November.
Farley McKeown came to the door and from there surveyed the women with a fixed stare. They shuffled uneasily, a few crossed themselves, and one, a young girl, ventured to say: “It’s a cold morning this, Farley McKeown, thanks be to God!”
The merchant made no answer. To see those creatures, shrinking before his gaze, filled him with a comfortable sense of importance. They were afraid of him, just as he was afraid of God, and he thought that he must be like God in their eyes. He fixed another withering glance on the crowd, then turned and hurried upstairs to the top floor, there to enter a room where two young men were seated over a desk struggling with long rows of figures in dirty ledgers. A peat fire blazed brightly in one corner of the room, and the cheerful flame was a red rag to the eyes of the proprietor. He looked sternly at the fire, then at the clerks, then at the fire, then back to the clerks again.