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