PAGE 3
A Lost Recruit
by
“But that’s a grand regulation they have,” said Mick, “wid the short service nowadays. Where’s the hardship in it when a man can quit at the ind of three year, if he’s so plased? Three year’s no time to speak of.”
“Sure, not at all; you’d scarce notice it passin’ by. Like Barney Bralligan’s song that finished before it begun–isn’t that the way of it, ma’am?”
“It’s a goodish len’th of a while,” said Mrs. Doherty.
“But thin there’s the lave; don’t be forgettin’ the lave, Paddy man. Supposin’ we–“
“Tub be sure, there’s the lave. Why, it’s skytin’ home on lave they do be most continial. And the Edenderrys is movin’ no farther than just to Athlone; that’s as handy a place as you could get.”
“You’d not thravel from this to Athlone in the inside of a week, if it was iver so handy,” said Mrs. Doherty.
“Is it a week? Och! blathershins, Mrs. Doherty, ma’am, you’re mistook intirely. Sure, onst you’ve stepped into the town yonder, the train’ll take you there in a flash. And the trains do be oncommon convenient.”
“Free passes!” prompted Mick.
“Ay, bedad, and free passes they’ll give to any souldier takin’ his furlough; so sorra the expense ‘t would be supposin’ Mick here had a notion to slip home of an odd day and see you.”
“MICK!” said Mrs. Doherty.
“Och well, I was just supposin’. But I’m tould” –the many remarkable facts which Paddy had been tould lost nothing in repetition–“that they’ll sometimes have out a special train for a man in the army, if he wants to go anywhere partic’lar in a hurry; there’s iligance for you. And as for promotion, it’s that plinty you’ll scarce git time to remimber your rank from one day to the next, whether it’s a full private you are, or a lance-corporal, or maybe somethin’ greater. Troth, there’s nothin’ a man mayn’t rise to. And then, Mrs. Doherty, it’s the proud woman you’d be–ANYBODY’D be–that they hadn’t stood in the way of it. And pensions–he might be pensioned off wid as much as a couple of shillin’s a day.”
“Not this long while yet, plase the pigs,” broke out Mick, squaring his shoulders, as if Time were a visible antagonist, and momentarily forgetting the matter immediately in hand. “But there’s chances in it–splendid–och, it’s somethin’ you may call livin’.”
“And,” said his friend, “the rations, I’m tould, is surprisin’ these times. The top of everythin’ that’s to be got, uncooked, widout bone.”
Paddy and Mick discoursed for a good while in this strain about the dignities and amenities of a military life, and Mrs. Doherty had not much to say on the subject. During the conversation, however, she continued to rinse one of her aprons, and wring it dry very carefully, and drop it back into the water, like a machine slightly out of gear, which goes on repeating some process ineffectually. The two friends read in her silence an omen of acquiescent conviction, and congratulated each other upon it with furtive nods and winks. Mick went off to the bog in high feather, believing that the interview had been a great success, and that his mother was, as Paddy put it, “comin’ round to the notion gradual, like an ould goat grazin’ round its tetherin’ stump.” His hopes, indeed, were so completely in the ascendant that he summed up his most serious uneasiness when he said to himself: “She’ll do right enough, no fear, or I’d niver think of it, if Thady was just somethin’ steadier. But sure he might happen to git a thrifle more wit yet; he’s no great age to spake of.”
But when he came home about sunsetting, his mother was feeding her few hens outside their cabin, the end one of a mossy-roofed row, with its door turned at right angles to the others, looking out across the purple brown of the bog-land to the far-off hills, faint, like a blue mist with a waved pattern in it, against the horizon. Mick, brought up short by the group, woke out of his walking dream, in which he had been performing acts of valour to the tune of the “Soldier’s Chorus” in Gounod’s Faust, the last thing the band had played yesterday; and he noticed a diminution in the select circle of fowls, who crooned and crawked and pecked round the broken dish of scraps.