III
SHE was coming back from the post-office and the loneliness weighed heavily upon her. She thought of the letter on its way to her own country. Soon the little slip of paper would be in the old home, would be pressed by her mother’s fingers; and she, poor little suffering Norah, would still be hemmed up in her narrow room, for all the world just like a bird prisoned in its cage; hearing nothing but the vacant laughter and sound of scurry and scuffle on the stairs and streets, and seeing nothing but the filthy lanes, the smoky sky, and the misery and squalor of the fetid Cowcaddens.
She went into a public-house and purchased a bottle of whisky. That night she got drunk and even happy; but the happiness was one of forgetfulness. She awoke from a heavy sleep in the middle of the night and lit her lamp. Then her eyes fell on the picture of the Virgin, the holy water stoup, the little black crucifix and the white Christ with extended arms and bleeding breast nailed upon it.
“I’ve prayed to ye for years,” she cried, clutching the picture of the Virgin in her hand. “And look at me to-night! It’s little good me prayers has done me; me a drunkard and everything that’s worse nor another!” So speaking, she flung the picture into the dead fire. A spiral of ashes rose slowly, fluttered round and settled on the floor. She brought down the holy water stoup, and resisting with a shudder the desire, bred of long custom, to cross herself, emptied the contents into the fireplace. Then she looked at the confidant of her innumerable vague longings—the crucifix.
“Sorrow!” she laughed. “Did ye ever know what a mother’s sorrow for her dead child was? That’s the sorrow, the sorrow that would make me commit the sins, the most awful in the whole world. But what am I saying? It’s me that doesn’t know all the meanin’ of many things. If the people at home, the master at school, the priest, any one at all had learned me all the things that every girl should know I wouldn’t be here now like something lost on a moor on a black night.”
She went back to her bed, leaving the light burning and the crucifix standing on the little shelf. She wondered why she had not thrown it into the fire as she intended to do, and wondering thus she fell into a deep and drunken slumber.
IV
SHE awoke early, dressed, and went down the stairs into the street. It was Sunday, solitary and silent, with a slight shower of snow falling. Glasgow looked drearier than usual with its grimy houses and the wet roofs, its dirty, miry streets where the snow dissolved as soon as it fell. Norah’s spirits were in sympathy with the sombre surroundings, and she felt glad that the oppressive noise of the week-days had abated.
Heedless of direction, she walked along and was passing a Catholic chapel when the worshippers who had been to early Mass showered upon her. It was too late to turn back; she walked hurriedly through the crowd, feeling that every eye was turned in her direction.
“Potato-diggers,” someone said. “They’re goin’ back to Ireland to-morrow.”