accustomed to work. Unlike many of the island women, she had never lent a hand in the fields.
“But what of her children?” I asked.
“Two o’ the sons, Jamie an’ Timothy uz married an’ be goun’ tull sea. Thot bug house close tull
the post office uz Jamie’s. The daughters thot ha’ no married be luvun’ wuth them as dud marry.
An’ the rest be dead.”
“The Samuels,” Clara interpolated, with what I suspected was a giggle.
She was Mrs. Ross’s daughter, a strapping young woman with handsome features and
remarkably handsome black eyes.
“’Tuz naught to be smuckerun’ ot,” her mother reproved her.
“The Samuels?” I intervened. “I don’t understand.”
“Her four sons thot died.”
SAMUEL
6
“And were they all named Samuel?”
“Aye.”
“Strange,” I commented in the lagging silence.
“Very strange,” Mrs. Ross affirmed, proceeding stolidly with the knitting of the woollen singlet
on her knees – one of the countless under-garments that she interminably knitted for her skipper
sons.
“And it was only the Samuels that died?” I queried, in further attempt.
“The others luved,” was the answer. “A fine fomuly – no finer on the island. No better lods ever
sailed out of Island McGill. The munuster held them up oz models tull pottern after. Nor was
ever a whusper breathed again’ the girls.”
“But why is she left alone now in her old age?” I persisted. “Why don’t her own flesh and blood
look after her? Why does she live alone? Don’t they ever go to see her or care for her?”
“Never a one un twenty years an’ more now. She fetched ut on tull herself. She drove them from
the house just oz she drove old Tom Henan, thot was her husband, tull hus death.”
“Drink?” I ventured.
Mrs. Ross shook her head scornfully, as if drink was a weakness beneath the weakest of Island
McGill.
A long pause followed, during which Mrs. Ross knitted stolidly on, only nodding permission
when Clara’s young man, mate on one of the Shire Line sailing ships, came to walk out with her.
I studied the half-dozen ostrich eggs, hanging in the corner against the wall like a cluster of some
monstrous fruit. On each shell were painted precipitous and impossible seas through which fullrigged
ships foamed with a lack of perspective only equalled by their sharp technical perfection.
On the mantelpiece stood two large pearl shells, obviously a pair, intricately carved by the
patient hands of New Caledonian convicts. In the centre of the mantel was a stuffed bird-ofparadise,
while about the room were scattered gorgeous shells from the southern seas, delicate
sprays of coral sprouting from barnacled pi-pi shells and cased in glass, assegais from South
Africa, stone axes from New Guinea, huge Alaskan tobacco-pouches beaded with heraldic totem
designs, a boomerang from Australia, divers ships in glass bottles, a cannibal kai-kai bowl from
the Marquesas, and fragile cabinets from China and the Indies and inlaid with mother-of-pearl
and precious woods.
I gazed at this varied trove brought home by sailor sons, and pondered the mystery of Margaret
Henan, who had driven her husband to his death and been forsaken by all her kin. It was not the
drink. Then what was it? – some shocking cruelty? some amazing infidelity? or some fearful,
old-world peasant-crime?
SAMUEL
7
I broached my theories, but to all Mrs. Ross shook her head.
“Ut was no thot,” she said. “Margaret was a guid wife an’ a guid mother, an’ I doubt she would
harm a fly. She brought up her fomuly God-fearin’ an’ decent-minded. Her trouble was thot she
took lunatic – turned eediot.”
Mrs. Ross tapped significantly on her forehead to indicate a state of addlement.
“But I talked with her this afternoon,” I objected, “and I found her a sensible woman –
remarkably bright for one of her years.”
“Aye, an’ I’m grantun’ all thot you say,” she went on calmly. “But I am no referrun’ tull thot. I
am referrun’ tull her wucked-headed an’ vucious stubbornness. No more stubborn woman ever
luv’d than Margaret Henan. Ut was all on account o’ Samuel, which was the name o’ her
youngest an’ they do say her favourut brother – hum oz died by hus own hond all through the
munuster’s mustake un no registerun’ the new church ot Dublin. Ut was a lesson thot the name
was musfortunate, but she would no take ut, an’ there was talk when she called her first child
Samuel – hum thot died o’ the croup. An’ wuth thot what does she do but call the next one
Samuel, an’ hum only three when he fell un tull the tub o’ hot watter an’ was plain cooked tull
death. Ut all come, I tell you, o’ her wucked-headed an’ foolush stubbornness. For a Samuel she
must hov; an’ ut was the death of the four of her sons. After the first, dudna her own mother go
down un the dirt tull her feet, a-beggun’ an’ pleadun’ wuth her no tull name her next one
Samuel? But she was no tull be turned from her purpose. Margaret Henan was always set on her
ways, an’ never more so thon on thot name Samuel.
“She was fair lunatuc on Samuel. Dudna her neighbours’ an’ all kuth an’ kun savun’ them thot
luv’d un the house wuth her, get up an’ walk out ot the christenun’ of the second – hum thot was
cooked? Thot they dud, an’ ot the very moment the munuster asked what would the bairn’s name
be. ’Samuel,’ says she; an’ wuth thot they got up an’ walked out an’ left the house. An’ ot the
door dudna her Aunt Fannie, her mother’s suster, turn an’ say loud for all tull hear: ’What for
wull she be wantun’ tull murder the wee thing?’ The munuster heard fine, an’ dudna like ut, but,
oz he told my Larry afterward, what could he do? Ut was the woman’s wush, an’ there was no
law again’ a mother callun’ her child accordun’ tull her wush.
“An’ then was there no the third Samuel? An’ when he was lost ot sea off the Cape, dudna she
break all laws o’ nature tull hov a fourth? She was forty-seven, I’m tellun’ ye, an’ she hod a child
ot forty-seven. Thunk on ut! Ot forty-seven! Ut was fair scand’lous.”
From Clara, next morning, I got the tale of Margaret Henan’s favourite brother; and from here
and there, in the week that followed, I pieced together the tragedy of Margaret Henan. Samuel
Dundee had been the youngest of Margaret’s four brothers, and, as Clara told me, she had wellnigh
worshipped him. He was going to sea at the time, skipper of one of the sailing ships of the
Bank Line, when he married Agnes Hewitt. She was described as a slender wisp of a girl,
delicately featured and with a nervous organization of the supersensitive order. Theirs had been
the first marriage in the “new” church, and after a two-weeks’ honeymoon Samuel had kissed his
bride good-bye and sailed in command of the Loughbank, a big four-masted barque.
SAMUEL
8
And it was because of the “new” church that the minister’s blunder occurred. Nor was it the
blunder of the minister alone, as one of the elders later explained; for it was equally the blunder
of the whole Presbytery of Coughleen, which included fifteen churches on Island McGill and the
mainland. The old church, beyond repair, had been torn down and the new one built on the
original foundation. Looking upon the foundation-stones as similar to a ship’s keel, it never
entered the minister’s nor the Presbytery’s head that the new church was legally any other than
the old church.
“An’ three couples was married the first week un the new church,” Clara said. “First of all,
Samuel Dundee an’ Agnes Hewitt; the next day Albert Mahan an’ Minnie Duncan; an’ by the
week-end Eddie Troy and Flo Mackintosh – all sailor-men, an’ un sux weeks’ time the last of
them back tull their ships an’ awa’, an’ no one o’ them dreamin’ of the wuckedness they’d been
ot.”
The Imp of the Perverse must have chuckled at the situation. All things favoured. The marriages
had taken place in the first week of May, and it was not till three months later that the minister,
as required by law, made his quarterly report to the civil authorities in Dublin. Promptly came
back the announcement that his church had no legal existence, not being registered according to
the law’s demands. This was overcome by prompt registration; but the marriages were not to be
so easily remedied. The three sailor husbands were away, and their wives, in short, were not their
wives.
“But the munuster was no for alarmin’ the bodies,” said Clara. “He kept hus council an’ bided
hus time, waitun’ for the lods tull be back from sea. Oz luck would have ut, he was away across