excerpt
“Yes Finn, I’m all right.” Her voice was tired. Her face and hands and bare feet were smeared with fire-dirt. Her hair was tangled like sheep’s wool in a thorn gap. Her eyes were red and moist. She wore over her small, round, billowy figure only a long, loose nightgown that was torn and smirched. One part of the hem was scorched.
“What happened?” Finn asked. “Did you break a lamp? Or have a fire in the chimney?” His eyes ranged over the damage.
“It was no accident, Finn.” Mother Ross turned her head to look at the blackened wreckage of her home.
“What do you mean, ‘It was no accident’?” Finn gave her an incredulous look. “You mean someone set fire to the house deliberately?”
“There must have been at least three of them, Finn.” Mother Ross’s eyes met those of the tall farmer. They held each other’s gaze in a bond of sympathy. “I heard all the windows breaking almost at the same time. Then the gurgle and splash and smell of paraffin. Then the lights. And whoosh! The whole place went up.”
“Hell roast them, Jinnie. Is it true?”
“As true as I’m sitting here, Finn.” Mother Ross glanced at her smeared hands as they lay clasped together in her lap. A tangle of matted red hair fell over her eyes. She brushed it to one side with the back of her hand and left a streak of dirt across her forehead.
“But why, Jinnie? Why you?” Finn took off his navy-blue jacket and draped it over her shoulders.
Mother Ross clutched each lapel and pulled the jacket round her. She was cold. Finn wished he had offered the jacket when he first arrived, but the shock of the scene had driven chivalry from his mind. Mother Ross looked at him, and her glance expressed her appreciation. She had always admired Finn MacLir, her “proud stag of Drumard” for qualities no other man in the village possessed. He was strong, independent, unconventional. He took delight in exasperating the narrow-minded and dogmatic and showed compassion for the unfortunate and the wronged. In another place or another age Finn MacLir would have been a leader, a chieftain, a king.
“Finn, you’re wise in the ways of men,” Mother Ross said. “You know we have people hereabouts who will not leave to God the judgement of sinners. They stand up on their self-righteousness and crow like cocks on a dunghill. Ach, Finn, they make me sick. What is it they call me? The whore of Tamnagh. And all because I live alone. What would they have me do? Move into the poor house?”
Libros Libertad 