“There’s nothin’ at all the matter with me,” murmured Katie dreamily, still looking at the floor.
Then she drew in a deep breath and shrugged herself. She became alive and energetic again, wide awake, with piercing eyes. She began to talk at an amazing speed, with her arms crossed on her breasts.
“Sure, Gypo,” she said in a loud, hilarious voice, “ye can sleep here till the crack o’ doom if ye like. Sure enough, Connemara Maggie tole me about Bartly Mulholland comin’ lookin’ for ye. She came into Biddy Burke’s as drunk as a lord, an’ she outs with a yarn about Bartly puttin’ a gun to ye’ head an’ drivin’ ye up the street in front o’ him.”
“Yer a liar, she didn’t,” growled Gypo, starting slightly.
“Maybe she didn’t say that exactly,” continued Katie, “but—”
“Did she give ye a quid I gave her to give ye?”
“A quid? Did ye give her a quid for me? Well, of all the liars! Well, of all the robbers! Of all the dirty sons of pock-faced tailors! She takes the cooked biscuit. Troth then, she only gev me ten bob an’ I had to fight her for that. O’ course I’m sayin’ nothin’ about things I might say a lot about, but—”
“Oh! less o’ yer gab,” growled Gypo, feeling behind him on the floor with his hand. “I’m not in humour for yer gab, Katie.”
“Don’t lie on the floor,” she cried solicitously. “Get into the bed. Lie in my corner. Don’t mind, Louisa. The corner is mine. I can let who I like int’ it. Louisa, if ye don’t lie still I’ll lave ye for dead as sure as Our Lord was crucified. So I will. Well what could ye expect? An’ I’m sayin’ nothin’ now, Gypo, seein’ the position yer in, but it’s the price o’ ye all the same. I hope ye don’t mind me speakin’ me mind out. It’s the price o’ ye for lavin’ them that were kind to ye, an’ throwin’ yer money away on a strap like that. But sure me poor mother used to say, Lord have mercy on her—”
“Get outa here, get outa here,” screamed the old woman, waving her stick.
Gypo had thrown himself on the bed on his back. The old lady began to beat him feebly about the body with her stick. He took no notice of her. He fumbled with the heap of tattered blankets, arranging them about his legs.
Katie Fox caught up the tongs and approached the bed sideways, making furtive signs to the old woman, urging her secretly to keep quiet.
The old woman subsided, muttering something. Katie went back to the fire and put down the tongs. She continued to talk. She was rapidly becoming more excited. Her eyes had now a look of insanity in them. Her lips were constantly becoming wreathed with smiles, after the manner of a lunatic who is thinking of some demoniac buffoonery in his muddled brain.
“Though few people know it,” she cried arrogantly, looking at the door, while she put a cigarette in her mouth, “me poor mother was a born lady. Put that in yer pipe, Louisa Cummins, and try an’ smoke it. Yev given me dog’s abuse since I came into yer rotten pigsty of a room, but still an’ all ye know yer not fit to wipe me shoes. So I don’t give a damn.”
“Yerra, d’ye hear her, d’ye hear her?” croaked Louisa Cummins.
She began to laugh, making a noise in her throat like a hen, that quaint, cunning, querulous sound, that a hen makes at night, when disturbed during her roosting hours.
Gypo had arranged the clothes to his satisfaction. The blankets covered his body up to his chest. His eyes began to close. His little, round hat still remained on his head, crushed down over his forehead. There was a continual murmur in his brain. The sounds, the talk, the smells about him no longer had any meaning.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
Danger, fear, everything was forgotten, but his desire to sleep.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
“Yerrah, is it an informer I’m lyin’ beside?” screamed the old woman again, trying to rise with fury. “Get out, get out. There’s blood on yer hands. There’s—”
“Lie down or I’ll brain ye,” hissed Katie, rushing once more to the bed.
With a weary sigh Gypo stretched out his left hand and dropped it across the body of the old woman. She subsided under the weight of the massive hand. It lay across her, relaxed and tired. She peered at it curiously, around the edge of her blankets. Maybe she peered at it in terror. Who knows what emotions were concealed behind that hideous skull?
Gypo did not look at her. His eyes were almost closed. His nostrils were expanding and contracting noiselessly.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
Then a mad rush to the mountains.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
“Blast it for a story,” cried Katie Fox, stamping on the floor.
She walked to the middle of the floor. Then she folded her arms and stood with her legs wide apart and her chest thrown out, gazing at the dim wall with glittering eyes. She threw back her head and laughed.
“Amn’t I the fool?” she cried. “Oh! amn’t I the fool? Me that could walk with the finest men in the land! Do ye know that me gran’father was the Duke o’ Clonliffey? Do ye know that? An’ me mother was related to royalty on her father’s side. Not to the King of England either, but to me bould King o’ Spain, where they grow oranges an’ ye can drink wine out of a well like water from the Shannon. Sure it’s there where I was born an’ reared, in a palace as big as the County Waterford, with archbishops waitin’ at table on me, with red napkins on their arms, an’ a rale lady—”
“Yerrah, will ye hould yer whist,” piped the old woman.
She tried to brandish her stick and to disengage herself from the hand that lay on top of her. But the hand stiffened for
