Cold Pastoral Read Free Page B

she was staunch and took a great deal of poking before she gave way to tears. When her lip went down in protest Josephine raised her voice. “Leave off, now, you great loons! You haven’t got the sense to see she’s not a great heifer like yourselves. I’ve a mind to raise my hand to the lot of you.” A few impartial cuffs would disperse them, and if any of them howled she placated them with slices of bread and molasses. There was no rancour in Josephine. She blew through her day like a high wind without edges.
    In Benedict’s world a woman could make or break a man. Had he been bound to a slattern the toil of his hands would have been for naught. Josephine made him! By encouraging him to a clean cure of his fish and being unsparing of her own energy they always made both ends meet. Benedict and his elder sons worked at the fish, while Josephine managed the house and the sloping square of garden. Decent she was and kept herself apart from the shiftless! In many improvident houses where six crowded under one set of bedclothes Josephine represented gentility. Her family slept two in a bed! Moreover, every person under her roof had two of everything. Others that liked the clean thing had to content themselves with turning a garment inside out. Nor was Josephine sombre in the meagre centre of her house. She could slave from morning till night and speak a civil word at the end of the day. Many dragged through their work with dejected bodies and joyless faces. They had inherited from their ancestry the dim twilight fear of the Celts, and the wind worried them when it filled the valley.
    When Mary Immaculate was big enough Dalmatius was allowed to carry her down to the sea. In sight of the beach her nostrils expanded and contracted with the smell of fish and offal. There was a definite expression of disdain on her face. When the wind lifted her hair she crowded into her brother’s shoulder. Carrying her inland she lifted her head and nearly danced out of his arms, straining towards the new green of the junipers and the white pear-blossom drifting uphill.
    Soon she began to waver round the kitchen in a blue dress of her mother’s fashioning. Josephine satisfied her yearning for colour by knitting wool the colour of the Virgin’s robe. Ready to pick up at odd moments, garments were always on the needles. Since the birth of her daughter the coarse garments for her husband and sons did not increase as quickly as the white shirts and pale blue dresses.
    Talking, she became Mary Mac’yate to herself, while developing decided tastes. The sea was full of soap, and the beach very “pooh-pooh.” The wind hindered her by lifting her drift of pale gold hair and diminishing the sight between her eyelashes. Dull days were passed in the kitchen, round her mother’s skirts, while sunny days found her playing on the granite slab at the back door, circling round the stacked-up wood-pile, round and round the wood-horse, or jumping backwards and forwards over the chopping-block. Her companions were her two youngest brothers and a few speckled hens, but both of their preferences lay on the beach. Leo and Pius trotted after their elder brothers, while the hens pecked their way down the valley, heading towards the sea. Growing more venturesome she would turn her face towards the land and wander down the slope, drawn to the waterfall at the head of the valley. Scarcely on her way her mother would screech: “Mary Immaculate, Mary Immaculate, come right back, now.” When she would not heed, her mother would swoop and catty her back to the kitchen. And always that strange ceremony would take place! Mary Immaculate could perform it instantly, as soon as her mother made her face the door.
    She grew tall and slender like the delicate scent-bottles growing at the edge of the forests. At a very early age her minute hands would bless herself before touching the simple fare of the village. There was always