The Death of an Irish Lass by Bartholomew Gill Read Free Book Online Page B

into the kitchen, where McGarr heard him phone a doctor.
    McGarr examined the postmark of the letter. It had been mailed in Boston five days earlier.
    When Quirk returned, McGarr asked him, “Can you tell me something about what your daughter did while she was here? When did she return? What were her habits? Did she visit friends? Do you remember anything remarkable about something she might have said or done?”
    Quirk reached over for the nearly full glass of whiskey. He wet his lips and winced. He was not a drinking man.
    McGarr said, “Let’s start with her friends.”
    “Male or female?”
    McGarr cocked his head. “Female first.” He wanted to get to know who May Quirk had been.
    “Ach—the whole house was cluttered with them what are left hereabouts now. And who would have thought there were so many of them her age. I had thought they had all flown, like May herself, but they came from all over the county they did. Kids and husbands and all. May had always been popular, you see. She had a way about her. Had—”
    It was plain the old man would give in to his grief if McGarr let him dote on her death. “And boys—I mean, men. Was she popular with the men?”
    “You’ve got the snapshot in your hand, sir. You can tell by the look of her she’d be a favorite with any man, but there was more, too. It was, like I said, the way of her that mattered. It was partly because of how winning she was that made her emigrate, I believe. That and her not wanting to be a farmer’s wife, like she told us then.”
    McGarr kept staring at the old man, awaiting further explanation.
    Again Quirk tried the whiskey but couldn’t take more than a sip. “There wasn’t a young man in the county who wouldn’t have willingly made a marriage with her. First, there’s the farm. Whoever married May got all of it, for we have no other children. Had—” He closed his eyes and continued speaking. “And then there was May, too. Nothing ever seemed to get her down. She was always May.
    “The fellow next door approached me around the time she left.”
    “Jim Cleary?” McGarr asked.
    “None other. His father had just died and left him over a hundred and fifty acres on both sides of the road. Some of his land was good then, and he had a tractor, a herd of milk cows, and even a truck, as well as an automobile. On the face of it, it seemed a proper match.”
    O’Malley said, “Why, he was nearly forty when May left for America. Right now he’s just another old man in the local.”
    “Well, what eligible farmer isn’t? Wasn’t I thirty-eight myself before my father yielded me this place?”
    O’Malley only took a sip from his glass.
    “Anyhow, I asked May her opinion of Cleary. She said she didn’t rightly have one. He was an old man. When I told her why I was asking she blushed and then laughed. I explained to her how it was a wise match, how in these parts Cleary was considered a rich farmer. He was a hard worker and, it seems, he fancied her. She said she liked Jim Cleary very much as a neighbor and, you know, as an older friend. But Jim Cleary was not the sort of man she intended to marry.
    “‘Well then, who is?,’ I asked her. She said somebody strong and young and wild. Somebody with a dream. And courage, she added. I don’t know—maybe she saw too many picture shows in Ennis, read too many books, or dreamed too many of her own dreams. One thing was for certain, she was never going to be a farmer’s wife.
    “‘And what’s so wrong with being a farmer’s wife?,’ I asked her. ‘Isn’t your mother one?’ And so she told me and it was the only thing she ever told me without so much as a smile or some playfulness about her. She said if she married Jim Cleary she wouldn’t even own the dishes on the table or the farm that was her inheritance from me. Everything would go to Cleary and she’d be at his mercy. Then she’d have one child after another until she was spent, and she’d know nothing from nine