Part 5

Such is the equilibrium between the infinite and folly, that at this juncture, as he recalled afterwards, Mr. Openshaw was eating his cheese. He answered, marvelling at his own composure.

"I read about it in the newspapers. You are in great danger, my poor boy. Now listen. There is a ship sailing for Genoa from New York next Saturday; and on her I wish you to engage your passage. That will give you a week to adjust your little affairs here; and you must, moreover, see your excellent sweetheart, and persuade her to marry you and go with you. Will you do that?"

Rodolfo opened his fine eyes very wide, and then closed them. "Oh, voluptuous as it would be, I cannot. The Capitan he make Anne deny me until I shall have many riches. She is a handmaid of domestic service on Pleasanta Street; but the old one, he is proud for her, and with the mosta reason in all the world. I shall coop with thesea my brothers cooping always in Ferrara, and do my parta with my soul. For bye-and-bye we make a marriage; and then she will be content to live in the sympathetic Italy, where safeness is for me."

"But we mean to mend all that, Rodolfo. Your father, whom I know very well, is growing old, and has a great deal of property with no one to share it. The least he can do for you (I am sure he feels that), is to put you out of the reach of want. He will not ruin you, nor throw you into temptations of a kind other than those you have undergone; for you are his son, and as such he must love you. But he will hope to hear by next spring, that you have bought a farm and vineyard, and that your kind kins-people at home, and your wife, sometimes pray for him; yes, and for me. Trust me; we need say no more about it. He will have it all settled by law as soon as he is able, but certainly within a month." He passed his hand over his hair, absently, and resumed. "You will go across the ocean now; and if my friend lives, he may come to you; but he may not live, and he may not come. It is his punishment not so much to lose you, or what you might, after all, be to him, as to recognize that his awful breach of duty has established between you what I may call, perhaps, in the long run, an incompatibility." Poor Openshaw, on the rack of his own candor, groaned aloud.

Once more they were crossing Greenland Bay, and the lone and lovely miles seaward. Rodolfo crept up quietly to his strange benefactor, who was absently gazing far away, so quietly that the wherry moved not a muscle under him.

"It is you," he said. "The 'friend' is a made-up. I know. _Padre, si!_" He threw his arms about Mr. Openshaw, his old hatred melted away, and lay there on his knees like a little boy, sobbing, sobbing. "It is for nothing at all," he explained with his endearing semblance of good-breeding; "but the gentle goodaness of God. The beautiful Anne,--O you musta see her, and letta yourself be thank in so harmonious the voice of seventeen! she will taka me. Behold, I am so vera, vera happy." Quite overcome, he did not even raise his head when he was spoken to.

"Am I forgiven, Rodolfo? Can you forgive me for your poor mother's sake?"

For answer, the lad covered the hand he held with kisses of southern fervor, and pressed into it the little delicate charm from his watch-string.

At the touch of it, the tyranny of yesterday and to-morrow, and all his suffering present and to come, departed from Openshaw. A divine felicity began now to possess him; he was grateful, he was at peace; whatever his retribution was to be, he embraced it, in spirit, like a bride. In his revery, he seemed to stand before the everlasting tribunal, with inscrutable truth on his lips: "Of this that was mine I was heedless. Because of my heedlessness, Poverty and Ignorance and Inferiority and Exile took him by the hand, and led him to the pit. He is rescued from the worst; he will cling to the highest which he sees, with an elected soul to help him; but what he might have been he can never be. It was I that sowed; let it be mine to reap. The indelible blood that is shed is on my hands, not on his. Visit Thy wrath upon me, for here is it due. With body and soul, will, sense, and understanding, from first to last, in every fibre of my being, I affirm me accountable for this thing." To the tribunal on earth, its magnate of unblemished reputation had no explanation to offer. He foresaw only his arraignment, and the words with which to clinch it: "Gentlemen of the jury, I plead guilty."

Rodolfo spoke first. "I am so glad I guess, I guess from the teara in your eye, that time."

The tears welled up again as the other replied: "There is something else you will never guess, thank God."

"No?"

"No, my boy."

Rodolfo looked up, and smiled, without irrelevant curiosity. He was too content, afloat there.

The Honorable Langdon Openshaw took charge of the tiller, the son to whom he had twice given life still at his feet. With neither oar nor sail the guided boat came home from the upper waters to the port, in the mellowing afternoon, borne on the mighty ebb-tide of the Piscataqua.

THE PROVIDER.

NORA cried out: "'Tis so pretty to-day!" The barefooted children were threading the slopes of Howth towards Raheny. Far-off, the city, with its lights and stretches of glorified evening water, was lying there lovely enough between the mountains and the sea. It was Nora's tenth birthday, and, to please her, they had been on the march all afternoon, their arms full of rock-born speedwell and primrose. "'Tis so pretty!" echoed little Winny, with enthusiasm. But the boy looked abroad without a smile. "'T'd be prettier when things is right," he answered severely. Hughey was a man of culture; but his speech was the soft slipshod of the south. The three trudged on in silence, for Hughey was a personage to his small sisters; and Hughey in a mood was to be respected. He, alas, had been in a mood too long. He had carried Winny over the roughest places, and shown her Ireland's Eye, and, alongshore, the fishing-nets and trawls; he had given his one biscuit to be shared between them all; and lying in the velvet sward by the Druid stone, he had told them all he knew of the fairy-folk in their raths, for the seventieth time. But he was full of sad and bitter brooding the while, thinking of his mother, his poor mother, his precious mother, working too hard at home, for whom there never seemed to be any birthdays or out-of-door pleasures.

Hugh was nearly twelve now, and mature as the eldest child must always be among the poor. He could remember times in the county Wexford, before his father, who was of kin to half the gentry in the countryside, died; times when life had a very different outlook, and when his peasant mother, with short skirts and her sleeves rolled up, would go gayly between her great stone-flagged kitchen and the well or the turkey-hen's nest under the blackthorn hedge, singing, singing, like a lark. They had to leave that pleasant farm, and the thatched roof which had sheltered them from their fate, and move up to cloudier Dublin, to a stifling garret over a beer-shop; and it was a miserable change. Malachi O'Kinsella, the cheerful thriftless man, with his handsome bearing and his superfluous oratory, was gone; and his Hughey was too young to be of service to those he left behind. A fine monument, with _Glory be to God_ on it, had to be put up over him in the old churchyard, two years ago; and there had been since the problem of schooling, feeding, and clothing Hughey, Nora, and Winny. Then Rose, three years old, fell into a lime-kiln, and was associated with the enforced luxury of a second funeral; and Dan, the baby, born after his father's death, was sickly, and therefore costly too; and now the rent had to be paid, and the morrow thought of, on just nothing a week! All of which this Hugh, with his acumen and quick sympathy, had found out. He worshipped his mother, in his shy, abstinent Irish way; his heart was bursting for her sake, though he but half knew it, with a sense of the mystery and wrong-headedness of human society.

That April Tuesday night, when the wildflowers were in a big earthen basin on the table, like streaks of moonlight and moon-shadow, and the girls were in bed, Hughey blew out his candle, shut up his penny _Gulliver_, and went over to the low chair in their one room, where his mother was crooning Dan to sleep on her breast. It shocked him to see how thin she was. Her age was but three-and-thirty; but it might have been fifty. She wore a faded black gown, of decent aspect once in a village pew; her thick eyelashes were burning wet. Outside and far below, were the polluted narrow cross-streets, full of flaring torches, and hucksters' hand-carts, and drunken voices; and beyond, loomed the Gothic bulk of Saint Patrick's, not a star above it.

"Mother! 'tis not going to school any more Oi'll be." His tired, unselfish mother swallowed a great sigh, but said nothing. "Oi'll worruk for ye, mother; Oi'll be your man. Oi can do't."

There was another and a longer pause; and then Moira O'Kinsella suddenly bent forward and kissed her first-born. Like all the unlettered class in Ireland, she adored learning from afar, and coveted it for her offspring. That he should give up his hope of "talkin' Latin" touched her to the quick. "God love ye, Hughey darlint! Phwat can a little bhoy do?" But she slept a happier woman for her knight's vow.

As for Hughey, there was no sleep for him. By the first white light he could see the two pathetic pinched profiles side by side, the woman's and the babe's, both set in the same startling flat oval of dark locks. The faces on the mattress yonder were so round and ruddy! They had not begun to think, as Hughey had; even scant dinners and no warmth in winter had not blighted one rose as yet in those country cheeks. Up to yesterday, he had somehow found his mother's plight bearable, thanks to the natural buoyancy of childhood, and the hope, springing up every week, that next week she would have a little less labor, a few more pence. Besides, it was spring; and in spring hearts have an irrational way of dancing, as if a fairy fiddler had struck up _Garryowen_. But now Hughey was sobered and desperate.

There was no breakfast but a crust apiece. The McCarthy grandmother, on the stairs, gave Nora, starting for school, some fresh water-cresses. Just then Mrs. O'Kinsella happened to open the door. Poor Nora had yielded to temptation and filled her mouth, and pretended, holding her head down, to be much concerned about a bruise on her knee. She could not look in her mother's honest eyes, ignorant as these were of any blame in Nora. Mrs. O'Kinsella went wearily to her charing, and seven-year-old Winny set up housekeeping with Dan, the primroses and a teapot-shaped fish-bone for their only toys. Hughey had already gone, nor was he at his desk in the afternoon, when his teacher and Nora looked vainly for him; nor did he return to his lodgings until after sundown. When he came, he brought milk with him, earned by holding a gentleman's horse at the Rotunda; and with that and some boiled potatoes, there was a feast. Hughey's vocation, it would appear, had not yet declared itself. He had haunted Stephen's Green and its sumptuous purlieus in vain. He had not been asked to join partners with Messrs. Pim, nor to accept a Fellowship at Trinity. The next day's, the next month's history was no more heroic. There were so many of those bright, delicate-featured, ragged-shirted boys in Dublin, coming about on foggy mornings with propositions! The stout shop-keepers were sated with the spectacle of the unable and willing.

The days dragged. An affable policeman who had known Hughey's mother at home in New Ross, seeing him once gazing in a junk-shop door, finally presented him to the proprietor: "Toby, allow me t' inthroduce a good lad wants a dhrive at glory. Can ye tache um the Black Art, now? He can turrun his hand to most anythin', and his pomes, Oi hear, do be grand, for his age."

The junk-man, good-naturedly scanning Hughey, saw him burst into tears, and beat the air, though the giant of the law had passed on. That his chief and most secret sin should be mentioned aloud, to prejudice the world of commerce against him, was horrible. His mother had told on him! She must have found some lines on Winny's slate last Sunday, entitled _Drumalough: a Lament for the Fall of the Three Kings, Written at Midnight._ Worra, worra! Hughey was descended, on the paternal side, through a succession of ever-falling fortunes, from a good many more than three kings, and used to wonder where their crowns and sceptres were, not that he might pawn them, either. The O'Kinsellas were a powerful aboriginal sept in the old days, and lived in fortress castles, and playfully carried off cattle and ladies from their neighbors of the Pale. Malachi O'Kinsella's mother, a heroine of romance who ran away with a jockey lover, and never throve after, was of pure Norman blood, and most beautiful, with gray eyes, water-clear, like Hughey's own, and the same bronze-colored hair; and it was said she could play the harp that soft it would draw the hearing out of your head with ecstasy! Now the junk-man was fatherly, and presented Hughey, in default of a situation, with a consolatory coin; but foregoing events had been too trying for the boy's nerves: he dropped it, and fled, sobbing. He simply couldn't live where his po'try was going to rise up against him, and wail like a Banshee in the public ear. He charged, in his wrath and grief, across the crowded bridge, and down the line of quays east of it, straight into a fat, gray-headed, leather-aproned person directing a group of sailors unloading a boat.

This person, sent of Heaven, with miraculous suddenness, and with musical distinctness, exclaimed: "'Aven't I been a-wishin' of 'im, and directly 'e runs into me harms! Crawl into that barrel, sonny, and if you 'old it steady, I'll 'eave you tuppence." Hughey, foreordained likewise, crawled in. When he came out, Mr. J. Everard Hoggett looked him over, from his moribund hat to his slight patrician ankle. "I likes a boy wot's 'andy, and 'as little to sy, like you." He resumed critically, "'E don't appear to be from any of 'Er Marjesty's carstles, 'e don't. Perhaps 'e might like to 'ang about 'ere, and earn three bob a week?" Hughey hugged his twopenny piece, blushed, trembled, twisted his legs in the brown trousers too big for him, and replied in gulps: "O sir! Yes, sir." Whereby his annals begin.

This perfectly amazing luck befell towards the end of May. Mr. Hoggett, going home, beckoned him, took him into a little eating-house, sat him down, paid for a huge order, and departed. "There's a couple o' lion cubs hinside wot ought to be your westcot, needs 'am and heggs. Fill 'em full; and mind you come to-morrow at a quarter to ight. I'll 'ave no lyzy lubbers alongside o' me." With which fierce farewell, and disdaining thanks, Mr. Hoggett faded wholly away.

Hughey, half-dazed, sat at a table alone, sniffing celestial fragrances from the rear, with the joy in his breast jumping like a live creature in a box. To quiet it, while he waited, he took up a torn journal which was lying on the nearest chair. At first, what he read seemed to have no meaning, but when some moments had passed, still odorous only, and non-flavorous, Hughey's collected and intelligent eye had taken in the dramatic political crisis, the stocks, the African news, the prospects of Irish literature, and the latest London wife-beating. On the advertisement page, one especial paragraph in sensational print rooted his attention. This was it:--

"SERVANTS AND APPRENTICES, ATTENTION! Here is the best Chance of your lives. It will Never come again. _Trade with us, and you lay the_ FOUNDATION _of your_ FORTUNE! With every sixpenny worth of goods bought of us on any Saturday night, we give a COUPON on the Ninth anti-Sassenach Bank of Belfast. _Fifty of these_ entitle the Bearer at the end of the year to a gift of TEN POUNDS IN GOLD!! Honesty the best Policy our motto. Best Material at Lowest Prices; come and see. _Do not Neglect your own_ GOOD. McClutch & Gullim, Linen-drapers, No. 19-- ---- St."

Hughey, the innocent prospective capitalist, took a stubby pencil from the only sound pocket in his habiliments, and began to figure on the margin of the paper; for he had an inspiration. "Mother would be thundherin' rich!" was what flashed into his mind. Before he had done with his emergency arithmetic, ham and eggs, with all their shining train, were set before him. With them, he gallantly swallowed his conscience, for Hughey, like a nobler Roman before him, was resolving to be gloriously false, and, for piety's sake, to trade his soul. He foresaw vaguely that he would not be allowed, out of his royal wages of three shillings, to spend full half every Saturday night, at McClutch and Gullim's; yet to do it was the imperative thing now, and that he felt impelled to do it was his own super-private business, and his warrant. Therefore would he keep his secret close, and make what excuse he might. He could not even think of asking advice; how should any one else be able to realize how he must act towards his mother? The angels had given her into his hands; and he knew at last what was to be done for her. She should be rich and gay, and have a coach, perhaps, like a real lady; and Danny should have a goat, and a sash with stripes in it, like the little twin Finnegans; and the Misses Honora and Winifrid O'Kinsella should walk abroad with parasols! Proper manoeuvring now would fetch twenty-five pounds sterling next summer. But he would hide away what he bought, and never tell until the beatific hour when his mother should have the money, and the linen, and the truth about them, all together!

Hughey went home in a series of hops and whirls, like a kitten's. He brought a flood of riotous sunshine in with him. It was supper-time; the children had each a ha'penny bun, and some tea. Mrs. O'Kinsella was lying down, with an ache between her lungs and her spine, after a long day's lifting and scrubbing. She felt the good news, before the child spoke. "O mother! 'tis the most illigant thing's happened: ye niver heard the loike." Hughey's pale comely little face was radiant.

"Phwhere is ut, and phwhat d'ye get, dear?" Then Hughey screwed up his courage, and told his only, his masterly lie: "North Wall, mother; and a shillin' and six every week." "A shillin' and six!" shrieked Nora. "O Hughey!" But the critic for whose opinion he cared was not quite so enraptured. She smiled, and praised him, but took it too tamely, her son thought. However, he reflected that she little knew the felicities in store.

In the morning, his career began, and it maintained itself with vigor, inasmuch as by the autumn he was of real value to his employers. He had many duties and some trusts. His orders all came directly from the benevolent bluff Mr. Hoggett, or from his mild reflection and under-study, a small, bald, capable head-clerk from the north, who was known as Jibtopsails; for what reason, Hughey could never divine, unless it was that his ears were uncommonly large and flapping. Jibtopsails sent him here and there with parcels and messages, and he had been faithful; he had made no grave mistake yet, nor had he been unpunctual. But every Saturday of his life saw him posing as a purchaser at 19-- ---- Street, where a hard-featured old woman, supposed mother of the supposed junior partner, served him always with the same ironically deferent, "Good day, sir; and what can I show you?" Jibtopsails inquired occasionally after the health of Hughey's family, particularly after Hughey had told him that Mrs. O'Kinsella was not so well as she used to be. For the rest, the sympathy of that gentle cynic made the child's blood run cold: he had such a paralyzing fear that Jibtopsails might call there at the house, and talk to his mother, and say something about three shillings a week! Kind people in the parish, if they knew, would bring her in wood, and coal, and wine; but again, in the hallucination of his jealous determined heart, the boy prayed passionately that they might not know, and that he alone should be the deliverer. The dread of his secret being found out, little by little made his life intolerable. He had grown older since he had that to cherish in his bosom, and it seemed less delicious than while as yet it was nothing but a dream.

His mother broke down, and could toil no longer. Mrs. Drogan, who lived downstairs, began to come up with her mending, and sit between the bed and the window. Nora was clever, for so young a girl; but she stumbled a great deal in her roomy charity boots, and had to be scolded for awkwardness by Mrs. Drogan, who had brought up sixteen rebels, and was disposed to command. As for Winny and Dan, they made a noise, and therefore had to be exiled to the street, foul and dangerous as it was, almost all day, while the invalid slept the sleep of utter exhaustion. It occurred often to Hughey, and with increasing force, that to secure a future good, he was doing a very vicious wrong; that it would be far better for his mother to have the money now, to provide comforts and make her well, than for her to do without it now, and be too feeble in consequence to enjoy it when it would come, all in a lump. Heavy and sharp was this dilemma to the little fellow, as he labelled the great bales, or set Mr. Hoggett's dusted ledgers back on their shelves. "Phwhat ought I be doin'?" he would groan aloud, when he was alone. If he confessed to his mother, and handed over hereafter the total of his wages, there was an end to the big income sprouting and budding wondrously at Belfast, the income which would be hers yet, with ever so little patience. But if he should not confess, and, meanwhile, if she should not recover,--what would all the world's wealth be then to poor Hughey?

October was damp and dispiriting; Mrs. O'Kinsella coughed more, but apparently suffered little. Hughey still brought her, week by week, his pittance of a shilling and sixpence. Ill as she was, her alert instinct divined that something ailed him; she pitied him, and worried about him, and kissed his tears away with a blessing, very often. Doctor Nugent was called in for the first time, one rainy noon. He told Mrs. Drogan, laconically, that his patient was going to die, and stopped her gesture of remonstrance. "Say nothing to those children of hers," he added, aside, on the threshold; "there is no immediate need of it, and the eldest looks melancholy enough without it."

But the eldest was at his elbow. With a still ardor painful to see, he raised himself close to the tall doctor, and whispered into his ear. "Phwhat wud save me mother? Wudn't money do it, MONEY?" The boy looked so thrillingly, impressively earnest that the doctor rose to the occasion. "Perhaps! That is, a winter in France or Italy might delay the end. But dear me! how on earth--" His voice wavered, and he hurried down.