FOR the rest of that evening, between short periods of sleep, one bright vision merged with another in front of Norah’s eyes, and in every vision the face of Dermod Flynn stood out distinctly clear. She spoke to him; talked of home, of the people whom both had known, of the master of Glenmornan schoolhouse, of Maire a Glan, of Micky’s Jim and the squad, Willie the Duck, and all those whom they had known so well a few short years before. But for all she spoke, Dermod never answered; he looked at her in silence where she lay, the life passing from her as a spent fountain weakens, as an echo dies away.

The candle threw out a fitful flame in the room, shadows rushed together on the ceiling, forming and breaking free, dancing and capering in strange antics. Steps could be heard on the stairs; the tap was running outside and the water fell with a hissing sound. Ellen was still out; the room was deserted; nothing there but the shadows on the ceiling and the sick girl on the bed by the window.

She was asleep when Dermod Flynn came, and wakened to find him standing by her bed, looking down at her with eyes full of love and pity. There was no surprise written on her face when she saw him; to Norah for days he had been as near in dreams as he was now in real flesh and blood.

“I was dreamin’ of ye, Dermod,” she said in a low voice, sitting up with one elbow buried in the pillow and her bare shoulders showing white and delicate under her locks of brown hair.

“Ye took the good time in comin’,” she went on, but there was longing, not protest, in her voice. “Ellen told me that ye were lookin’ for meself.”

Dermod was down on his knees by the bedside. “‘Tis good to see you again, darling,” he said. “I have been looking for you for such a long time.”

“Have ye?” she asked, her voice, tinged with a thousand regrets, rising a little as if in mute protest, against the shadows dancing on the roof. Sobbing like a child, she sank back in the bed. “It’s the kindly way that ye have with ye, Dermod,” she said in a quieter voice. “Ye don’t know what I am, and the kind of life I’ve been leadin’ for a good lot of years, to come and speak to me again. It’s not for a decent man like yerself to speak to the likes of my kind. It’s meself that has suffered a big lot too, Dermod, and I deserve pity more than hate. Me sufferin’s would have broke the heart of a cold mountainy stone.”

“Poor Norah!” Dermod said, half in whispers; “well do I know what ye have suffered. I have been looking for you for a long while, and now, having found you, I want to make you very happy.”

“Make me happy!” she exclaimed, withdrawing her hands from Dermod’s grasp as if they had been stung. “What would ye be doin’, wantin’ to make me happy? I’m dead to ev’rybody, to the people at home and to me own very mother. What would she want with me now, her daughter and the mother of a child that never had the priest’s blessin’ on its head. A child without a lawful father! Think of it, Dermod! What would the Frosses and Glenmornan people say if they met me now on the streets? It was a dear child to me, it was. And ye are wantin’ to make me happy! Every time ye come ye say the same.... D’ye mind seem’ me on the streets, Dermod?”

“I remember it, Norah.”

He looked at her closely, puzzled no doubt by her utterances. She was now rambling a little again. Dreams intermingled with reality and her fingers were making folds in the sheets. Dermod remembered how in Glenmornan this was considered a sign of death. She began to talk to herself, her head on the pillow, one erring tress of hair lying across her cheek.

“It was the child, Dermod,” she said, a smile playing over her features; “it was the little boy and he was dyin’, both of a cough that was stickin’ in his throat and of starvation. As for meself, I hadn’t seen bread or that what buys it for many’s a long hour, even for days itself. I couldn’t get work to do. I would beg, aye, Dermod, I would, and me a Frosses woman, but I was afeared that the peelis would put me in prison. In the end there was nothin’ left to me but to take to the streets.... There were long white boats goin’ out and we were watchin’ them from the strand of Trienna Bay. The boats of our own people. Ah! my own townland, Dermod!... I called the little child Dermod, but he never got the christenin’ words said over him, nor a drop of holy water.... Where is Ellen?... Ellen, ye’re a good friend to me, ye are! The people that’s sib to myself don’t care what happens to me, one of their own kind; but it’s ye yerself that has the good heart, Ellen. And ye say that Dermod Flynn is comin’ to see me? I would like to see Dermod again.”

“I’m here, Norah,” said the young man, endeavouring by his voice to recall her straying fancy. “I’m here, Norah. I’m Dermod Flynn. Do ye know me now?”

There was no answer.

“Norah, do ye remember me?” Dermod repeated. “I am Dermod—Dermod Flynn. Say ‘Dermod’ after me.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him with a puzzled glance. “Is it ye indeed, Dermod?” she exclaimed. “I knew that ye were comin’ to see me. I was thinkin’ of ye often, and many’s the time I thought that ye were standin’ by me bed quiet like and takin’ a look at me. Ye’re here now, are ye? Say ‘True as death.’”

“True as death!”

“But where is Ellen?” she asked, “and where is the man that came here this mornin’, and left a handful of money to help us along? He was a good, kindly man; talkin’ about fives too, just the same as Micky’s Jim. Joe was his name.”

She paused.

“There were three men on the street and they made fun of me when I was passin’ them,” she went on. “Then they made a rush at me, threw me down and tramped over me. I was left on the cold streets, lyin’ like to die and no one to help me. ’Twas Ellen that picked me up, and she has been a good friend to me ever since; sittin’ up at night by my side and workin’ her fingers to the bone for me through the livelong day. Ellen, ye’re very good to me.”

“Ellen isn’t here,” Dermod said, the tears running down his cheeks. With clumsy but tender fingers he brushed back the hair from her brow and listened to her talk as one listens to the sound of a lonely breeze, the mind deep in unfathomable reflections.

Gourock Ellen entered the room and cast a curious look round. Seeing Dermod kneeling at the bedside the woman felt herself an intruder. She came forward, however, and bent over the girl, her shoulder touching the head of the young man.

Norah’s eyes were closed and a pallor overspread her features.

“Are ye asleep, lassie?”

There was no answer to her question; the woman bent closer and pressed Norah’s breast with her hand.

“Are ye come back, Ellen?” Norah asked without opening her eyes. “I was dreamin’ in the same old way,” she went on. “I saw him comin’ back again. He was standin’ by me bed and he was very kind like he always was.”

“But he’s here, little lass,” said Ellen, turning to Dermod Flynn. “Speak to her, man,” she whispered. “She’s been wearin’ her heart away for you, for a long weary while. Speak to her and we’ll save her yet. She’s just wanderin’ in her head.”

Norah opened her eyes; the candle was going out and Dermod could mark the play of light and shade on the girl’s face.

“Then it was not dreamin’ that I was!” she cried. “It’s Dermod himself that’s in it and back again. Just comin’ to see me! It’s himself that has the kindly Glenmornan heart and always had. Dermod, Dermod! I have a lot to speak to ye about!”

Her voice became strained; to speak cost her an effort, and Dermod, who had risen, bent down to catch her words.

“It was ye that I was thinkin’ of all the time, and I was foolish when I was workin’ in Micky’s Jim’s squad. It’s all my fault and sorrow is on me because I made you suffer. Maybe ye’ll go home some day. If ye do, go to me mother’s house and ask her to forgive me. Tell her that I died on the year I left Micky’s Jim’s squad. I was not me mother’s child after that; I was dead to all the world. My fault could not be undone; that’s what made the blackness of it. Never let yer own sisters go to the strange country, Dermod, never let them go to the potato squad, for it’s the place that is evil for a girl like me that hasn’t much sense.... Ye’re not angry with me, Dermod, are ye?”

“Norah, I was never angry with you,” said the young man, and he kissed her. “You don’t think that I was angry with you?”

“No, Dermod, for it’s yerself that has the kindly way,” said the poor girl. “Would ye do something for me if ever ye go back to yer own place?”

“Anything you ask,” Dermod answered, “and anything within my power to do.”

“Will ye hev a mass said for me in the chapel at home; a mass for the repose of me soul?” she asked. “If ye do I’ll be very happy.”

These were Norah Ryan’s last words. As she spoke she looked at Gourock Ellen, and by a sign expressed a wish to speak to her. She sat up in bed, but, as she opened her mouth, shivered as if with cold, looked at Ellen with sad, blank eyes and dropped back on the pillow. Dermod and Ellen stooped forward, not knowing what to do, but feeling that they should do something. The girl was still looking upwards at the shadows on the ceiling, but seeing far beyond. Then her eyes closed slowly, like those of a child that falls into a peaceful sleep.

Norah Ryan was dead.

THE END