home. But the boy was healthy and happy, and the mother never had any
trouble with him. But the trouble came. One day she'd been working in
the field, and she came home, and as soon as she was in the house she
heard crying from the bed where the child used to sleep. She ran to
look at him, and he lay there, looking sick and thin and weak, the way
your boy does, and crying that he was hungry. He was like her child
and he was not like him. He'd grown so pale and bad-looking that she
thought he'd had a stroke from the Good People. But she went to get
him some bread and milk, and she asked her other boy, that was about
seven years old, when it was and how it was that he began to be sick.
"'I left him playing near the fire,' the boy said, 'and I was in the
other room. And I heard a rushing noise, like a great flock of birds
flying down the chimney, and then I heard a cry from my brother and
then again the noise, like the birds were flying out at the chimney
again. And then I ran in and found him there the way you see him
now.'
"Well, if the poor woman had never had trouble with the child before,
she had nothing but trouble now. Crying and squalling it was all the
time, and it nearly ate her out of house and home, and yet it seemed
always sick and weak and thin. The neighbors came and they told her it
was not her child at all, but one of the Good People that had been put
in the place of it, and it was all her own fault for not having it
christened in the right time. But not a word of it all would she
listen to, and she said all the time that, whatever was wrong with it,
it was her own child and she'ld hear nothing to the contrary.
"It was an out-of-the-way place where they lived, and there was no
priest near, or she never could have kept it from being christened as
long as she did. But at last the neighbors themselves said that if she
didn't see to it, they would. And they said to her: 'It's not your
child at all that's in it, and if you'll have it christened you'll
see. And if you won't take the child to the priest with us now, we'll
go to him ourselves and tell him all about it. It's not right to keep
it from him longer.'
"So with that she thought it was no use and she'ld have to do as they
said, and she took the child and tried to dress him, ready to take him
to the priest to be christened. But the roars and the screams that he
let out of him were more than anybody could bear, and at the last she
said: 'Oh, I can't do it; it's too terrible a thing for him; he won't
bear it, and how can I make him?'
"The next day when she came in from her work the other boy said to
her: 'Mother, it was uncommon quiet he was while you was away to-day.
And by and by I went in to see what was ailing him. And there he sat,
looking so like an old man that I was near afraid of him. And he
looked at me and he spoke as plain as an old man, and he says: "Pat,"
says he, "bring me a pipe, till I have a bit of a smoke. It's tired of
life I am, lying here without it."'
"'"Ah," says I, "wait till my mother gets home and I'll tell her of
this."'
"'"Tell her," says he, "and she'll not believe a word from you."'
"'And no more do I believe a word from you,' says the woman.
"Well, soon after that there came a letter from the father, saying
that he'ld be at home now in a few days. With that the woman set off
to town to buy things to eat and drink to welcome her husband home,
and she said: 'Now we'll have the christening, as soon as ever he
comes.'
"Then as soon as she was off, the neighbors said: 'Now is the time
that we'll be done with that imp. We'll take him and have him
christened while she's away, and we'll not give her the chance to put
it off again because he cries.'
"So they went to the house and one of the women came up to the bed and
clapped a quilt over him and had him wrapped up in it before he knew
what was happening to him, and away they all went down toward the
brook, on the way to the priest. Well, he kicked and he struggled to
get free, but the woman held him so tight it was no use. But when they
came to the running water, it was then he began bellowing like a herd
of bulls, and kicking and pulling so that it was all she could do to
hold him.
"She got her foot on the first of the stepping-stones, and it was then
he began to get heavy, as if it was a stone that she was carrying. But
she held hard and reached the second stone, and it seemed to her that
he was nothing but a lump of lead, only still roaring and struggling;
and, what with that and the rushing of the water below her, she began
to get dizzy, but still she held on, and she had her foot on the stone
in the middle of the stream when plump down he fell through the quilt
that he was wrapped in, as if it had been nothing but a muslin
handkerchief.
[Illustration: "PLUMP DOWN HE FELL THROUGH THE QUILT."]
"And there he went floating down the stream, and shouting and laughing
at them. For, you know, it's not being in running water that can
hurt one of the Good People, but only crossing it, and if they tried
to cross it they'ld be in awful pain till they got to the middle, and
then nothing could keep them from falling in.
"So they were rid of him, and you know when you're rid of a changeling
the Good People must send your own child back. And so the neighbors
had not got back to the house when they met the mother running to meet
them and bringing her own child, that she had found in its bed, when
she got back from the town, sleeping, as well and as sound as ever it
was.
"And now, Ellen," said Mrs. O'Brien, "will you let me try, in ways
that I know, that can do no harm, whether this is your own child or
not? And if it's not, you'll have your own back, as well as it was
last night."
"This is my own child," Ellen answered, "and it's not by any silly
tales like that that you can make me believe it isn't. I'll not have
you doing anything of the sort. If you know anything that can help a
baby when it's sick, you may do that, but nothing else."
"I do know one thing that can help a sick baby," Mrs. O'Brien answered
"and that I'll do, if you like it or not. If that thing there is one
of the Good People, as I think, it's not sick, and it will live for
thousands of years after we are dead. We can neither help it nor much
hurt it. But if that is your child, it doesn't look to me as if it
would live an hour. I'll not try whether it's yours or not, but if
it's yours I'll not stand by and see its soul die, that ought to be
the soul of a Christian. Ellen Sullivan, that child will be christened
before I leave this house."
"Christened!" poor Ellen cried in amazement. "And who's to christen
him? We couldn't get a priest here in an hour--maybe not to-day."
"There's no need of a priest," Mrs. O'Brien said; "I'll christen him
myself. Bring me some water there, Peter."
"But sure you can't do that," Peter protested. "Nobody but a priest
could christen a child."
"I can christen the child as well as a priest," said Mrs. O'Brien;
"you take a child to the priest to be christened, when it's easy and
convenient, but when there's no priest near, and the child is sick and
seems likely to die before one can come, anybody can christen it; and
that christening stands, and it never has to be christened after.
That's the law of the Church. Bring me the water. I never saw a child
that seemed more likely to die than this one, if it's a child at all."
And Peter brought the water.
"What do you call the child?" Mrs. O'Brien asked.
"I think we'll call him Terence," Peter answered. "That was my
grandfather's name, on my mother's side, and a decent man he was, and
uncommon fond of myself when I was a bit of a gossoon, till he died,
Heaven rest his soul! and I think I'd like to name the boy after him."
Now all that the child had been doing and all the noise that he had
been making before were simply nothing to what he had been doing ever
since Mrs. O'Brien first said the word "christen." He was screaming so
that all this talk could scarcely be heard, and it was almost more
than Mrs. O'Brien could do to hold him, when she took him in her arms.
But she did hold him for a moment with one arm, while she dipped up
some water with her hand and sprinkled it over him. Then the creature
gave one great jump and was away from her and fell on the floor.
Before anybody else could move, Mrs. O'Brien herself picked him up and
laid him on the bed. There was no sign that he was hurt. No child that
was hurt could have screamed as he did. "Come, John," said Mrs.
O'Brien, "we've done all that we can."
"May I walk back with you a piece?" said Peter. "There was something
more that I was thinking I would say."
"Come back with us, of course, and welcome," said John.
They left the house and walked along the street.
"I think it was right, what you done, Mrs. O'Brien," said Peter. "I
can't think about the child the way you think, but it was right what
you done."
Mrs. O'Brien made no answer. "John," said Peter, "there's something
that I was thinking of last night and this morning, and it was this:
You have a girl and I have a boy, that was both born on the one day.
It's good friends we've always been, and your father and your mother
and my father and my mother before us. And I was just thinking when
your girl and my boy grows up, supposing that they like each other
well enough, it might be pleasant to all of us that they'ld be married
some time.
"There's no man's son that I'd rather see a daughter of mine married
to than yours, Peter," said John, "if she herself was pleased. I'ld
not ask her to take anybody she didn't like, but if she came to love
him, and he came to love her, I'ld be as pleased as yourself."
"It was that I wanted to say," said Peter, "and I'd better go back to
Ellen now."
John and his mother said no more till they were at home. They both
went into the room where little Kathleen was. Mrs. Mulvey sat watching
the baby. She went out and left them. The child was sleeping as
peacefully as if there were no such thing in the world as sorrow or
loss or doubt, or a fairy to help or harm.
"John," said Mrs. O'Brien, "I'd think I might have done harm to that
child in trying to christen it, only I'm as sure as ever I was of
anything that it's not a child at all, but one of the Good People, so
I think there's no harm done. I don't know what would happen any of
the Good People if he was to be rightly christened. I think he'ld not
be able to stand it and would be driven out, so that they'ld have to
send back the real child. Now, if a priest ever sees that creature
that we've just seen, and asks: 'Has this child been christened?'
they'll have to answer 'Yes,' and he cannot be christened again. And
yet, with the jump that he gave out of my arms when I sprinkled the
water, it's not sure I am that a drop of it touched him."
[Illustration: ]
VII
A CHAPTER THAT YOU CAN SKIP
This is a chapter that you can skip, if you want to. And really I
should advise you to. Nothing of importance happened in the next
eighteen years. Of course I am obliged to write a little something to
fill in all that time, but you are not obliged to read it. That is
where you have such an advantage. I think it is much better for a book
to have some parts that can be skipped just as well as not, you get
through it so much faster. I have often thought what a good thing it
would be if somebody would write a book that we could skip the whole
of. I think a good many people would like to have such a book as that.
I know I should.
Then there is another reason why it will be well for you to skip a
little about here. When you get farther on, if you happen to come to
something that you don't understand, you can say: "Oh, this is
probably all explained by something in that part that I skipped," and
you can go right on. But if you had not skipped anything and then came
to something that you did not understand, you would have to say:
"There, now, I must have been reading carelessly and missed
something," and you would have to go back and read the book all
through again.
In these eighteen years Kathleen O'Brien and Terence Sullivan were
growing up. I don't suppose there ever was another such child as
Kathleen. And I should hope there never was another such child as
Terence. Kathleen's grandmother had the most of the care of her, of
course, but it was really no care at all. It would have been a
pleasure for anybody to have the care of Kathleen. Even when she was a
baby she was a perfect delight, and you know what babies are
sometimes. At any rate, you would know, if you had known Terence. And
when she got to be a few years older, say seven or eight--
Well, it is perfectly impossible for me to tell you how good and
lovely Kathleen was. It is all very well to try to describe
snow-capped mountains at sunrise, or a storm at sea, or moonlight at
Niagara, or a prairie on fire, or anything of that sort, but nobody
could tell you how good and lovely Kathleen was, so that you could
understand it. I suppose she was a good deal the sort of child that
you would be if you didn't put your elbows on the table, or your spoon
in your mouth, or slam the doors, or cry when your hair is combed, or
tease for things that you ought not to have, or whisper in company, or
talk out loud when there are older persons present, or leave your
playthings about when you are done with them, or get your clothes
soiled when you play out of doors, or want to play at all when you
ought to study your lessons, or ask to be allowed to sit up after
bed-time, or bite your nails, or cut your bread, or leave your spoon
in your cup instead of in your saucer, or take the biggest apple.
I don't say that Kathleen never did any of these things. I only say
that she was so good that you would have to leave off every one of
them or you would never catch up with her. If Kathleen had a fault, it
was that she was too good. If I were going to have anything to do with
her I would rather she should be a little bit worse than a single bit
better. I am so glad you are skipping this part, because I shouldn't
want you to try to be a bit worse than you are just for the sake of
pleasing me. And I don't mean by all this that Kathleen was one of
those children who are a bother all the time because they are so
good. She may have done things that she ought not to do sometimes. I
dare say she did. I know she did once. I will tell you all about that
in the next chapter. She was just a dear, sweet little girl, as bright
and merry and healthy as any little girl in the world ever was. And
you would think so yourself, if you had known her and were not so
jealous. If I should tell you that she was as pretty as she was good,
I don't suppose you would believe me. But she was, just as surely as I
am writing this book and you are reading it. I mean just as surely as
I am writing it. I am not sure yet whether you are reading it or not.
But Terence! Well, the less said about him the better. Still, I
suppose, I shall have to say something. He did every one of the things
that I have just mentioned. And it wasn't because he didn't know any
better; he seemed to like to do them, just because he knew that they
were wrong. When he was a baby he was more trouble than twins, and bad
twins at that. He cried all the time, except when he was eating or
sleeping, and he slept only a little of the time and ate a great deal
of it. He always seemed to be just about so sick, but it never hurt
his appetite and he never got any sicker. After a while Ellen got used
to his being sick, and she always said that he was delicate, poor
child, and that was why he was so cross and so much trouble.
"And is that why he eats so much?" Mrs. O'Brien would ask.
"I dunno about that," Ellen would answer; "I think it's the kind of
sickness that's on him that makes him eat so much."
"More likely it's eating so much that gives him the kind of sickness
that's on him," Mrs. O'Brien would say. "But I tell you again, it's no
sickness at all he has. He's just one of the Good People, and you
could be rid of him and have your own child back any time you would do
any of the things I would tell you."
But not a word of this would Ellen ever heed. Terence was her own
child, and he might be a bit troublesome, as any child might, but he
was not really bad at all, and it was Kathleen, that was always so
good, the Lord knew why, that made Mrs. O'Brien think that every child
ought to be that way. But there was one strange thing about Terence,
and Ellen herself had to admit it. After that very hour, when he was
one day old, when Mrs. O'Brien came to see him and christened him, or
tried to--she never felt sure till long afterward whether she had done
it or not--he was always quiet when she was near. He would drive poor
Ellen nearly crazy, in spite of all her excuses for him, when he was
alone with her, but the moment that Mrs. O'Brien came into the house
he would get as far away from her as he could, and then lie perfectly
still and watch her, for all the world, as John said once, like a rat
in a trap watching a cat. Ellen said that it was because he always
remembered that it was Mrs. O'Brien who had dropped him once. To this
John replied: "Then maybe he'ld be making you less trouble, Ellen, if
you was to drop him yourself once or twice." But Mrs. O'Brien said
that it was just because he knew what she would do to him if she had
the chance.
And there was another strange thing about Terence. As he grew a little
older, he never could be got inside a church. Father Duffy had never
even seen him, except when he came to the house while he was still a
baby, and then Terence would scream and kick so, when the good priest
came near him, that he never dared touch him. The first time that he
came, Ellen told him about Mrs. O'Brien's christening the child, and
asked him if it was right for her to do it.
"Was the child looking sick, and as if he was likely to die?" Father
Duffy asked.
"He was, father," Ellen answered; "I couldn't deny that."
"Then it was right for her to christen him," the priest answered,
"and he'll not need to be christened again. In fact, he can't be
christened again."
But long after that, when they tried to take him to church, he would
never go. If Peter and Ellen started for church with him he would run
away from them. They could not even hold him. He would get away from
them, and sometimes they could not tell how he did it, only he would
be gone. And then the only way that they could find him was to go home
again, and there he was sure to be, as safe as ever, only he had not
been at church. And so, after a while, they stopped trying to make him
go.
When the two children were old enough to play together, Terence never
seemed to be happy except when he was with Kathleen. He did not care
in the least to play with other boys. He did not seem to care in the
least to play at all. All he wanted was to be with Kathleen. Kathleen
never liked him, and she did not like to have him with her so much of
the time. But she was too kind-hearted to hurt anybody in any way,
even a boy whom she did not like, so she tried to treat him as nicely
as she could, and she told nobody but her grandmother, to whom she
told everything, that she was not as pleased to be with him as he was
to be with her.
Terence, in his turn, did not always treat Kathleen well, any more
than he did anybody else. He was ill-natured with her and he played
tricks on her that were not pleasant at all, and yet he wanted to be
always with her. Perhaps it was partly because she was more kind to
him than anybody else, except Ellen. For nobody else liked him. And if
he was bad-tempered and unkind to other people, it made other people
unkind and bad-tempered to him, but nothing could make Kathleen unkind
to anybody.
"It's not fair you all are to Terence," Ellen said once to Mrs.
O'Brien, "to think bad of him the way you do. There's things about him
that don't seem right, I know, but those things don't show the way he
really is. I dunno if I'm making you understand me. I'm his mother and
I know him better nor anybody else, and I know he's different from the
way he seems to you, and even the way he seems to me sometimes. And
I'll tell you how I know that. When I'm asleep I often dream about
him. And when I dream about him, he looks a little the way he does
other times, but he's taller and he's better-looking in the face, and
he looks stronger and brighter and healthier like. And he speaks to
me, and his voice is lower and pleasanter in the sound of it. And
that's the way he'ld be, I know, if he had his health, poor child, and
if everything was right with him. And you'ld all know that and you'ld
feel more for him, if you knew him the way I do."
This was when Terence was six or seven years old. And Ellen often
spoke in this way afterward. She saw Terence in her dreams, and he was
a very different Terence from the one who made her so much trouble
when she was awake, and yet he was partly the same.
And there was one thing that Terence did that almost everybody liked.
I might as well say everybody except Kathleen. He played the fiddle.
Nobody knew how he learned. There was a neighbor of the Sullivans who
came from the same county in Ireland that they did, and he played a
fiddle in an orchestra at a cheap theatre. One day Peter had gone to
see this man and had taken little Terence with him. The fiddle was
lying on the table. The two men went into another room and left
Terence by himself. They were talking busily and they forgot about
him. Then they heard a soft little tune played on the fiddle. "Who's
that playing my fiddle?" said the owner of it.
"Sure," said Peter, "we left nobody there but Terence."
They went quickly back into the room and found Terence hastily laying
the fiddle down where he had found it. "Ah, can't I leave you alone a
minute," said Peter, "but you must be meddling with things that don't
belong to you? What'll I do now if you've gone and hurt the fiddle?"
"Don't be talking that way to the child," said the musician; "sure he
did it no harm. But where at all did he learn to play that way? That's
what I'm thinking. Have you been letting him learn all this time and
never told me?"
"He never learned at all that I know of," Peter answered. "I never saw
him have a fiddle in his hand till this minute."
"It's a strange thing, then," the musician said. "Anybody that can
play a tune like he did that one has a right to play more and better.
Where did you learn it, my boy?"
"I never learned it at all," Terence answered; "I just saw the fiddle
there and I thought I'ld see could I play it. But it's little I could
be doing with it, I'm thinking."
Peter was surprised enough to find that Terence could play a tune on a
fiddle, and so was Ellen, when she heard about it. But they did not
wonder at it so much as they would have done if they had known more
about such things. They had a sort of notion that one person could
play the fiddle and another could not, much as one person can move his
ears and another cannot. So they thought little about it. But when
Terence begged them to buy him a fiddle of his own, they saved up
money a little at a time, and at last they bought him one.
Then for days Terence did nothing but play. He played simple little
tunes at first, but soon he began to play harder ones. Then he got
impatient with himself, as it seemed, and he began to play such music
as nobody who heard him had ever heard before. Often he would not play
when he was asked, but he would play for hours by himself, when he
thought that no one was listening. His father brought his friend the
musician to hear him, and he said that it was wonderful. He had never
heard the fiddle played so well. Nobody had ever heard the fiddle
played so well.
And Kathleen never cared to hear Terence play. She did hear him play,
many times, of course, and she listened politely, but she told her
grandmother that she did not care about it at all. She would much
rather hear the poor fiddler of the little orchestra, who had come
from their county in Ireland. Their neighbor the fiddler himself was
as much shocked as anyone to hear Kathleen talk like this. "Did you
ever hear anybody play the fiddle like Terence plays it?" he asked
her, when she said something of the sort to him.
"No," Kathleen answered. "I never heard anybody play it like Terence,
but I have heard some play it better than Terence. You play it
better."
"Oh, child," he said, "I'ld give all the money I'll be earning in the
next ten years if I could play like he does. Don't you see I can't do
half the things he does with it?"
"I know that," Kathleen said; "it isn't the way he plays a bit that
makes everybody talk so about him; it's just the things he does. When
he plays a tune it just doesn't mean anything, and when you play a
tune it does."
And that was as near as Kathleen could ever come to telling why she
did not care about Terence's playing. Everybody else said that it was
wonderful, but she said that it didn't mean anything. And when
Kathleen talked in this way they said that she was too critical. That
is what people will always tell you when you can see through a fraud
and they cannot.