Part 6

On the way back to the office, Hughey crossed Augier Street, and stalked into McClutch and Gullim's. He had business with the old woman, imminent business. Would the Ninth anti-Sassenach Bank of Belfast advance half of an annual interest? that is, would they allow him, Hugh O'Kinsella of Dublin, merchant's errand-boy, what was due on his receipts of purchases up to date? He found that circumstances over which he had no control prevented his waiting until May: please might he draw out the eleven odd pounds now? The old woman had recently had other queries of that nature, which proved that the victims were getting restless; that it would soon be advisable, in short, to strike camp, and betake herself and her nefarious concerns to Leeds or Manchester. Her sourness vented itself promptly on Hughey. Decidedly, the Ninth anti-Sassenach Bank would do nothing of the sort; it was against the rules; it never advanced cash except in case of death, when coupons from McClutch and Gullim's would hold good for a life-insurance policy to the corpse's relatives. "And now g'long to the divil wid ye, ye limb!" concluded Mrs. Gullim, in a burst of vernacular indignation.

Hughey fairly reeled out to the pavement, with wheels humming in his brain, and a large triangular rock, sharper than knives and smeared with poison (a not unfamiliar rock, of late), lodged in the middle of his throat. As he turned down the windy North Wall, among the sleek cattle waiting for exportation, and pushed open the warehouse door by the Liffey, Jibtopsails took his pen from behind his capacious ear, and peered over his spectacles.

"_Cead mille failthe, Brian Boruihme!_ and how is the royal fam----." He got no further; the young face opposite was so awry with the spirit's mortal anguish that Jibtopsails was truly sorry he had tried to be jocose. It was almost a first offence.

And now, with much introspection, and heart-searching, and resolve, Hughey's tragedy gathered itself together. On Sunday, after church, he had occasion to go out of town. As he wished to deal with Nora, he offered to give her a ride on the tram: a species of entertainment which she accepted with enthusiasm. When they were at the end of their route, they set forth on foot, up-hill, over two miles of exquisite moorland, to the house of the retired first mate of the Grace Greeley, who was summoned by the firm of Hoggett as witness in a lawsuit. Nora was in her usual spirits, and her brother tried to wait until they should show signs of flagging. O the heavenly freedom of the country! the pleasant smell of damp leaves! But Hughey's heart would not rise. As they passed the sheep-folds, the pretty huddled creatures made Nora laugh, standing still, agape, in her blue faded frock; and he grabbed her roughly by the arm, albeit his sad forbearing tone was not rough. "D'ye love me at all, Nora?"

"That Oi do, Hughey O'Kinsella; and ye needn't be scrunchin' of me to foind ut out."

"Nora!"

"Phwhat is ut?"

"There's somethin' Oi do be bound to say to ye." A pause.

"Can ye keep a secret?"

"Shure, Oi can."

"'Tis turrible."

"Niver ye moind, Oi'll keep ut!" said the loyal other.

Hughey lifted his face to the sweet blowy autumn afternoon, took breath, and increased his pace. "Mother is loike to be doyin' soon. Maybe ye didn't hear o' that. But she cud live a hunderd year if ut wasn't so cruel poor we are. Oi've been a-thinkin' wan reason of ut is she has too many childher. 'Tis good little Rosy is with the saints. Childher all eats and wears clothes, and isn't much use. If mother wasn't ill, there'd be nothin' the matther wid me; we cud go on along, and Oi'd have power to do the beautiful things, Nora dear. Ye'd all be proud as paycocks o' me whin next the cuckoo'll be in the green bush down be the Barrow; only mother wud be undher the ground. So 'tis long before that Oi must be doin' phwhat Oi'm meanin' to do. Now's the toime for her to be cured, and the toime for me to behave the usefullest to her is to-morrow, just afther Oi'm dead."

The younger child was bewildered, over-awed. "May the Lorrud have mercy upon your sowl, Hughey!" she murmured with vague solemnity, taking in the legendary word "dead" and nothing else. Her light feet ran unevenly beside his, up the slope and down the hollow, and over stiles and pasture-walls, bright with their withering vines. She was all ear when her brother began again, irrelevantly and more softly, on his tremendous theme, so old now to his thoughts that he was conscious of no solecism in the abrupt utterance of it. "Whin ye dhrown, ye niver look bad at a wake. A man kilt in the battle looks bad, but not a dhrowned man. 'Tis grand to be a marthyr to your counthry; howsomiver, the guns isn't convanient, and Oi must hould to the wather. The rest Oi can't tell, becaze ye're a woman, and wudn't undhersthand; but there's pounds and pince in ut, and 'tis the foine thing intoirely for mother." He turned upon her his most searching gaze. "Ye'll be constant and koind to her, now? Ye'll be runnin' and bringin' her a chair, and takin' the beef out o' your mouth for her as long as ye live? (Shure Oi forgot there's goin' to be tons o' beef for yez all.) Promus me, Nora." She looked at him, and her wide blue eyes filled; and presently she sank down all in a heap, her face in the grass, her heels in the air. It looked like revolt; but it was regret, or rather the utter helplessness of either. The boy never flinched. "Promus me, Nora." "Oh, Oi do, brother Hughey, Oi do!" she sobbed. He stood by her a moment, then with firmness followed the path out of sight, his slender withdrawing figure significant against the sky.

When he came back, the anxious Nora was on the road, whence she could see far and wide. Little was said as they returned home, through ways thickening with cabs and passers-by. But skirting Dean Swift's dark Cathedral, they heard the treble voices at evensong in the choir, and the grave sweetness of Tallis' old music seemed to thaw Hughey's blood. He drew his sister closer as they walked, and bent his curls over her. He had received a fresh illumination since he spoke last.

"You're what mother needs," he whispered, "and so's Dan, seein' he's no bigger than a fairy. But Oi'd be betther away, and so'd Winny, for the sake o' leavin' plenthy to eat and plenthy o' room. Ye'll give me Winny in her little coat whin Oi ax ye to-noight, will ye, Nora?" The child glanced up mournfully at her ruling genius, without a word, but with a look of supernatural submission. They went up the rickety stairs, arm in arm.

Mrs. O'Kinsella, who had had a trying day, had just said to Mrs. Drogan, rising with a view to supper for her husband: "Oi'm of that moind meself. Johanna Carr'd be a widdy contint in her ould age, if she'd had childher, if she'd had a son loike Hughey. Me blessid darlint! he's gould an' dimonds. By the grace o' God Almighty, Oi cud bow me head if He tuk the rest away from me, but He cudn't part me and the bhoy, me and the bhoy." She began to cough again.

Her son asked to sit up late. "Oi'd be writin', mother," he pleaded. Her pride in him came to her poor thin cheeks. "'Tis a Bard ye'll be yet, loike the wans your father read about in the histhory!" Hughey knew he had been misunderstood; but trifles were trifles, and must be ignored, now that the hour of action had struck.

Having taken off his shoes, he sat down in the broken chair by the table, with his pencil, and the paper which Jibtopsails had given him. The inmates of the room were all unconscious in half an hour, except himself and Nora. She, in a fever of excitement, kept vigil, lying as usual since consumption had come openly under their roof, between Winny and the baby. Winny, dirty, hungry, and tired out with dancing to a hurdy-gurdy, had fallen asleep in her clothes. Nora did not require her to undress. These were the three letters which Hughey wrote.

_Mr. Everard Hoggett, Limited._

DEAR SIR: Thank you for being kind to me. I was fond of you. I hope you won't be out of a boy long. There do be a very honest boy named Mickey McGooley goes to my school I used to go to. He has a iron foot, but he is good-looking in the rest of him. I think he would come if you asked him. Please tell the other gentilmen I won't forget him either.

Your respeckful friend, HUGH.

_Ninth Anti-Sassenach Bank, Belfast, Ireland._

SIR: My mother she is named Mrs. M. O'Kinsella, will send you the papers from McClutch and Gullim. As I will be dead you pay my money please to her. I let you know now so that it will be all rite. It began last May 28th and stops Saturday, October 21st. Yours truly, hoping you will send it soon,

Yours, H. O'KINSELLA.

11 ---- ST., DUBLIN. October 22nd, 1893.

DEAR MOTHER: You must cheer up and not cough. You can go to France or somewhere. You will find a heap of lengths of linen stuff in a box under the steps of old Tom's shop. He doesn't know about it. It is mine and the nicest they is, and if you don't be wanting it, you can sell it. Then you look in the lining of Danny's cap, and find some bank papers, and you send them to the Ninth anti-Sassenach Bank in Belfast and it will send you nigh twelve pound gold. You will find Winny and me by Richmond Bridge, and it will not be so expencive without us. I hope you won't be low for me, for Nora says she will be good. Dear mother, I dident know any other way to make you happy and well at this present. Goodbye from your loving son,

HUGH CORMAC FITZEUSTACE LE POER O'KINSELLA.

After that laborious signature, he folded and addressed the first two sheets, and after a plunge into the recesses of his pocket, stamped them. The last one he slipped beneath his mother's pillow. He looked at her wistfully, lying there on the brink of all compensation, at last! She turned over, and sighed feebly: "Go to bed, Hughey dear." He did not dare to kiss her, for fear she should become wide awake. Back into the shadow he shrank, and so remained a long time. A dim sense of defeat stole over him, like a draught through a crack, from a wind which pushes vainly without. But he had never in his life hugged any thought whose interest centred in himself; and immediately his whole being warmed again with the remembrance that his defeat meant victory for a life dearer to him than his own. When the great bell outside had struck two, he crept across the room.

"Is she ready, Nora?"

"She is, Hughey."

He stooped to the floor, and gathered the drowsy body in his arms. On the landing, one floor below, the little sister cried aloud. "No, no, no, no!" he crooned, in a passion of apprehension: "Brother will show Winny the bright moon."

They came safely to the street; the moon indeed was there, flooding the world with splendor. When Nora had buttoned Winny's coat, and the boy had posted his letters, they took her by either hand, and started.

Hughey had planned out his difficult campaign to the end, and his brain was quiet and clear. Passing through Church Street, he raised his hat with reverence, as he had always done since he came to Dublin, to a blank stone on the south side in the ancient yard of Saint Michan's; for under that stone, according to a tradition, Robert Emmett's sentinel dust reposes. There on the old Danish ground, at the crisis, Winny's fiery Gaelic temper came again to the fore. Struck with the solitude and the dark, the dread faces of unusual things, and jostled by the wind which pounced at her from its corner lair on the north bank of the river, she hung back and rebelled. "Let me go, let me--go! Hughey! Oh!..." The little silver lisp arose in very real, in irresistible alarm.

Never once, in all his mistaken planning, had Hughey paused to consider that she had a voice in the matter. If she were unwilling to die for his dearest, why, what right had he, Hughey, though scornful and disappointed because of it, to compel her? After all, she was only seven, and silly! He looked at Nora over the capped head between them. Then he fetched a deep, deep sigh, and the tears came to his eyelids, burned, and dried.

They went on, ever slower; and at Richmond Bridge Hughey spoke to Winny, as he felt that he could do at last, tenderly, and even with humorous understanding. "Now 'tis the end o' your walk, an' ye'll trot home wid Nora, and niver moind me at all, dear. Some day she'll be tellin' ye phwhat ye missed." But to Nora herself he said softly:

"Take care o' mother, mavourneen."

"Oi will, Hughey."

She kissed him twice; her smooth cheek against his was cold as a shell. He made a gesture of dismissal, which she did not disobey; and he watched them go, without further sign. The two childish figures were swallowed by the blue-black shadows, and the pavement under their naked feet gave forth no receding sounds. Yet Hughey, bereft of them so quickly and utterly, listened, listened, tiptoeing to the central arch of the bridge.

The autumnal Sabbath breath of the slumbering capital floated in a faint white mist against the brick and stone. Every high point was alive with light: the masts in port, the roof of the King's Inns, the Park, the top of the Nelson monument, the Castle standard, the nigh summits of the gracious Wicklow hills. Below were the dim line of Liffey bridges, processional to the sea, and the sad friendly wash of the chilly water. Clear of any regret or self-pity, he would have his farewell grave and calm, and he would set out with the sign of faith. So he knelt down, in prayer, for a moment, and with his eyes still closed, dropped forward.

In another eternal instant, he came into the air. He had a confused sense of being glad for Winny, and otherwise quite satisfied and thankful. There, next the wall, was a rotten abandoned raft, a chance of life within clutch; he saw it, and smiled. Then Hughey sank, and the black ebb-tide took him.

Nora's knowledge, meanwhile, was too torturing to be borne. No sooner had she left her brother than she caught the heavy little one into her slight arms, and ran. Breathless, and choked with sorrow, she told her mother all she knew, and roused the Drogans, who in turn called up the Smiths, the Fays, the Holahans, the McCarthys. From right and left the neighbors swarmed forth on a vain and too familiar trail: the Spirit of Poverty flying unmercifully ever to the rescue of her own, she

----"that would upon the rack of this rough world Stretch them out longer."

* * * * *

Two of Hughey's letters had to go undelivered: one belonging to a corporation which never existed, and one to a heartbroken woman who set sail for the Isles of Healing, before the dawn.

THE END.

THIS BOOK HAS BEEN PRINTED DURING DECEMBER 1895 BY JOHN WILSON AND SON OF CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Katharine Tynan Hinkson.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

Italicized words are surrounded with underscores: _italics_.

Obvious spelling and punctuation errors have been standardized.

This eBook is dedicated to the memory of Emmy Miller.

End of Project Gutenberg's Lovers' Saint Ruth's, by Louise Imogen Guiney