though his wary habit had kept him from taking the public into
his confidence. He was rich, though not rich enough to give up
saloon-keeping and become a contractor or a broker, and he had lately
got the notion that he was growing old. But this successful politician,
who so long before had landed in New York a homesick emigrant, had
one great ambition unfulfilled. It was the common ambition of the
exile--to see his home once more. When first elected to the council,
after toiling years to save enough for his first small saloon, he had
found, in the sentimental manner of his race, his chief joy in the
fact that it was in the character of an ex-alderman he could go home
to Ireland. Fate, of course, with her usual irony, had embittered his
joy; Molly had died that very spring, she had not been spared even
long enough to see him take his seat in the council chamber behind the
one pathetic floral piece his constituents had placed upon his desk,
but had left him to sit beside the candles at her wake, with lonesome
little Nora crying at his knee. He felt that he had earned a rest. He
had worked hard, mastered the intricate details of the water office and
the special assessment bureau; he had done his part in making a town of
wooden sidewalks a city of steel and stone; he had never betrayed his
party or his friend. As for certain of his methods, well--if he thought
of them at all--they were direct, and they won. So now that Nora was
grown and had finished her education at St. Aloysius, he had decided
to retire and take her with him on the long-dreamed-of trip back to
Ireland--Ireland, where it was really spring that very morning.
But he wished to retire gracefully, to name his successor before he
went, and how could he do this with the reformers making the fight
of their lives against him? It would take Malachi Nolan some time to
decide a question like that. He must think. Nora was young; after all,
another term would make little difference; if he concluded to give some
more lessons in practical politics to the reformers, she could take
some more lessons on the piano.
Meanwhile, like a wise statesman, Malachi Nolan set about his day’s
work. He had enough to keep him busy, so, drawing out his gold watch
he carefully compared it with the clock, grasped the hour, rose
deliberately, settled his ponderous body on his thick legs, and
withdrew behind the partition. When he emerged to view again he was
wrapped in his frieze overcoat, with his square-crowned hat pulled down
to his eyebrows, ready for his morning visit to the city hall.
His progress over the great building was constantly impeded by men who
stepped out of the rushing throngs of lawyers and lawyers’ clerks, city
employees, court officials and politicians to shake hands with him, to
whisper to him. He halted each time in a way that did not impair his
Hibernian dignity, heard them with gravity, and walked on. He went to
the water office to see why young Hennessey had been laid off; to the
civil service commission to find out what opportunities the sixty-day
list afforded; to the commissioner of public works to have some
laborers put on the pay-roll; to the board of election commissioners to
give in a list of certain constituents he desired to have appointed as
extra clerks during the spring rush of work. He dropped in on the chief
of police to get Murphy on the force; he saw the city clerk about a
good fellow who had to be taken care of; he even followed the long hall
to the court-house wing, where he whispered an instant to Judge Peters
and had a friend excused from the jury.
And then he called on the mayor. A lieutenant of police, in gold
stripes and stars, the velvet cuffs of his blue coat scrupulously
brushed, was just going in. When the officer came out, the big
policeman standing guard at the door raised his hand in a semi-military
salute, and he kept a finger at his forehead until Malachi entered,
thus declaring his abiding faith in the alderman’s political star, and
his concern for his own official one.
The mayor sat at his great, square desk, with that look of nervous
weariness Chicago gives the faces of its successful men, though the
morning was young and the day’s strain scarce begun.
“Well, Alderman,” he said with a sigh, “what can I do for you?”
“Misther May’r,” said Nolan, “I come fer to ask a favor.”
The shade of weariness under the mayor’s eyes enveloped his brow,
although he tried to wipe it out with his palm. Everybody came every
day to ask favors.
“Now, Alderman,” he said, turning away fretfully, “I know. Please don’t
ask me to interfere in your fight this spring. I’ll promise to keep
hands off and leave you alone. Ain’t that enough?”
“Who said annything about my fight?” said Malachi. “It’s time enough to
saay good marnin’ to th’ divil whin ye meet ’im, Jawn.”
The mayor looked a bit relieved, and turned toward Malachi with half a
smile.
“Excuse me, Alderman, I supposed, of course--But what can I do for
you?” He repeated his formula.
Malachi seated himself, and dangling his hat between his knees, he said:
“They’s a laad from my waard in the Bridewell, Jawn, an’ he’s a mother
who’s wallopin’ a wash-board be th’ daay an’ night fer to make a
livin’. His name’s James McGlone, an’ I’m afther a paardon fer ’im.”
The mayor scowled. “What’s he in for?”
“Damned if I know,” said Malachi; “he’s all the time in wan shcrape or
anither with some o’ thim bla’gyaards down there.”
The mayor was turning a long blue pencil over and over, end for end,
between his white fingers, making a series of monotonous tappings on
his desk.
“Can’t you wait till after election?” he said at last.
“His time’ll be served out befoore that,” said Malachi, “an’ ph’at
good’ll a paardon do ’im thin?”
The mayor continued the thoughtful tapping with his long blue pencil.
“Well, Alderman,” he said after a while, “I’d rather not issue any
pardons before election, if I can help it. These reformers are going to
raise hell this spring, sticking their noses into everybody’s business,
and--”
Malachi’s little eyes contracted until their blue twinkle was almost
hidden.
“But, Jawn,” he said, “so much the more r’ason why ye’ll want the
Firsht in th’ convintion.”
“Oh, well,” said the mayor, “if it’s important--” And he pressed a
button under his desk. Before his secretary appeared he added:
“You say you don’t know what he’s in for?”
“I dinnaw,” Malachi replied, “Mallett sint him up befoore I could git
over.”
“You ought to watch those things more closely, Alderman,” chided the
mayor peevishly.
* * * * *
Malachi Nolan sat at twilight with a glass of hot toddy on the leaf
of his desk, and he sipped it with heavy sighs, for he had taken cold
out in the March weather, with pores opened by the relaxations of the
night before. Through his windows he could see the lights glimmering
in the rain that had followed the moist snow of the early morning, and
thousands of feet trudging by under rolled-up trousers or skirts held
ankle high. At intervals the feet would line up along the curb waiting
for North Side cable-cars, and seeing them paddle in the dirty slush,
Malachi in the selfish spirit of contrast, more than ever coddled in
the warmth of the room, of the toddy over which he smacked his lips,
and of the cigar he smoked so slowly and comfortably. As he sat and
smoked and sipped, he thought again of Limerick--the breath of spring
blows the fragrance of the hawthorne, white upon the bough; he hears
the song of the mavis; he is walking homeward along the black path
through the bog, and up the green boreen, and there before him is the
little cottage, its thatch held down by sticks and stones, a long ash
pole propping up its crumbling gable; there is the mud shed with the
thills of the old cart sticking out of it; the donkey is standing by,
sad as ever; and up the muddy lane little Annie in her bare feet is
driving the cows to the byre; and then he sees his mother sitting in
the low doorway, all at once he catches his first whiff of the peat
smoke, and with the strange spell that odors work upon the memory, it
makes him a boy again; again he is sheltered on a rainy day in the mud
shed, playing shoot-marbles with Andy Corrigan and Jerry O’Brien; again
he is in the little chapel with the leaky roof; he sees all the boys
and girls--Mary Cassidy among them--standing on the bare clay floor; he
brings his bit of stone to kneel on during mass, he even runs out for a
piece of slate to give to Mary, who lays it in the puddle at her feet
and spreads her handkerchief over it before she kneels. And when the
mass is over he will take little Nora--little Nora? He placed his hand
to his forehead in confusion, and then in a gasp it all comes over
him--Mary is old, Andy and Jerry are old, little Annie is old and he is
old--they are all gone away. He bowed his head.
And yet Nora yearned to go. Should he turn the ward over to Brennan
and take her this spring? He could run for the legislature when he
came back in the fall; a senator would be elected by the next general
assembly, and the graft would be very good then. The compromise
attracted Malachi, for at once it acquitted him of indecision, a
quality of statesmanship he hated, and kept for him the life of power
that had become as the very breath of his nostrils. He would have been
happy but for this stuffy cold, and even as it was he smacked his lips
and fetched a long sigh, as he put down the glass.
And then the door opened, and a chill, wet wind blew in, causing him
to start up out of his chair. He looked to see who it was that thus
broke upon his reveries--and it was a woman! Now, a woman had never
been in Malachi Nolan’s place before. It was a thing he could never
tolerate, if he could ever imagine it even, and he hastily glanced
around to see how many men were at the bar, and who they were. His face
showed positive alarm. But the woman entered. She was accompanied by
a boy, who slouched in behind her, shutting the door at her solicitous
command, and halted there, hanging his head. His eyes shifted
suspiciously under the hat brim that shadowed his sallow, prematurely
wrinkled face; his lips curled in an evil sneer that seemed habitual.
The woman fluttered her shawl about her shoulders, clutched it to her
thin breast with one hand, while the other she stretched forth with a
blessing, as it were, for Malachi, and as she spoke, her seamed and
scarred old Irish face, bleached in the steam of many wash-days and
framed in withered black bonnet strings, glowed with the light of
mother-love.
“Praise be, Mal’chi Nol’n,” she began, in a high voice that immediately
stifled the clinking of glasses and the laughter behind the partition.
“May God bless ye--ye’re th’ foinest man in th’ whole town! To think
of yer l’avin’ th’ laad out th’ way ye did--an’ so soon afther me
havin’ th’ impidence to ask ye, too--shure a mither’s blessin’ an’ th’
blessin’ of th’ Vargin’ll be on ye fer gettin’ th’ paardon fer ’im.
Shtep up here, Jamesy, and t’ank Misther Nol’n yersilf--he’s th’ best
man--”
“Aw, tut, tut, tut, now, Misthress McGlone,” said Malachi, his face
flaming with something more than the exertion of craning his neck to
peer behind the partition, “tut, tut, now, don’t be goin’ on like that.”
But the woman, brave in the one subject upon which she could dispute
the alderman, persisted:
“Shure, Mal’chi Nol’n, ye know it yersilf--shtep up here, Jamesy, an’
make yer t’anks to ’im. Th’ laad’s a bit bashful, ye must excuse ’im,
sor, he’s th’ best b’y ever lived, though it’s mesilf says it p’hat
oughtn’t to.”
The boy still hung back, but the old woman hitching up the shawl that
was shamelessly revealing the moth-eaten waist she wore, plucked him
by the sleeve, and dragged him to the rail that separated them from
Malachi. The boy jerked away from his mother’s grasp, yet lifted his
unsteady eyes for an instant to blurt out:
“Well, I’m much obliged, see?”
And then, as if ashamed of so much politeness, he hung his head and
squeezed the toe of his shoe between the spokes of the railing. The old
woman folded her arms in the shawl and gazed on him with a fond smile
that showed the few loose, yellow teeth that always wobbled in their
gums when she spoke. Presently she turned to Malachi again:
“Ye mustn’t think haard o’ him, Misther Nol’n, he’s a bit back’ard
shp’akin’ to th’ loikes o’ ye, ye moind, but he’s a good b’y, an’
he’d never got into throuble if it hadn’t been for this bad comp’ny
he be’s dhragged into. Shure, he niver shtays out later’n tin o’clock
o’ noights widout tellin’ me p’here he’s been. This afthernoon Oi was
shcrubbin’ awaay all alone, an’ who should come in all o’ a suddint but
him, bless th’ b’y, an’ saay, ‘Ma,’ he says, ‘Alderman Nol’n got me a
paardon an’ Oi--’”
“That’s all right, Misthress McGlone--”
“An’ God’ll bless ye, sor,” the old woman broke in, unable to restrain
the flood of tears that filled her filmy eyes and zigzagged down her
cheeks. She cried softly a moment, then suddenly looked up in a crafty,
cunning way.
“They’s wan thing, Misther Nol’n,” she said, “some wan was so good,”
she looked all about to make sure that none was within hearing, and
lowered her voice to a rough whisper, “as to sind me a ton o’ coal in a
pushcaart th’ day. Oi wonder now who could that be?”
The alderman raised his heavy face with fine innocence.
“Where did it come from?” he asked.
“Misther Degnan’s yaards,” the woman answered.
“Thin I suppose’t was Degnan himsilf sint it.”
“Aw, there now!” the old woman cried, with the triumph of a vindicated
prophet. “Oi knowed ye’d saay that, Oi knowed ye’d saay that--but,
shure Oi think’t was yersilf done it.”
“L’ave off, l’ave off, now,” said Malachi almost roughly, “’tis no
place, do ye mind, fer a woman, an’ no place fer th’ laad.” He gave the
boy a penetrating glance that made the shifting eyes fall suddenly.
“An’ ’tis late--did ye come down on th’ caar?”
The old woman’s tears running down her cheeks had left stains in
the wrinkles, and she began plucking at something under her shawl.
Presently she drew forth a handkerchief folded in a soft little white
square, fresh and clean from the iron, and shaking it out she dabbed
at her weak old eyes and wiped away the tear stains. Her voice was a
whisper again.
“Aw, Misther Nol’n,” she began, “it’s been a haard winther on the poor,
an’ Oi’ve had to save th’ pinnies, shure they’re scarce enough, an’
th’ laad with no job an’ me a poor widow woman. God forgive me”--her
voice sank still lower, and into the whisper came a hard, rebellious
note--“but some noights Oi’ve gone without me supper--”
“But why didn’t ye tell?” asked Malachi, looking up in concern.
“Oi’d die first!” she whispered hoarsely, while her wet eyes blazed.
“It’ll niver be said Oi’m a beggar, an’ Oi wouldn’t have tould anny wan
but you, sor”--she gave him a coaxing smile through her tears, and bent
her head to one side in a way that seemed to recall her girlhood--“an’
maybe, sor, ye’d not saay annything ’bout it--there’s a good man, now.
Oi’ve kep’ up th’ insurance an’ there’ll be enough to give me a dacent
bur’al whin Oi die. Ye’ll excuse me fer”--she stretched a hand from
the shawl and touched him on the shoulder--“fer runnin’ on loike this,
but Oi couldn’t shlape th’ noight till Oi’d come down to thank ye--God
bless ye, sor, Oi’ll pray fer ye every noight. We’ll be goin’ now.” She
took a step toward the door, but turned back again, with that pleading
inclination of the head, that smile, showing her long, wabbling teeth.
“Ye must excuse me, sor,” she said, “fer throublin’ ye so, but ye’re a
koind, saft-hearted man--ye couldn’t git th’ laad a job now--shure Oi
know ye couldn’t--he’s an hones’ b’y an’ a willin’ worker, sor, whin he
can git annything to do--ye must excuse me, sor.”
Malachi was deeply chagrined. He actually got up and peeped again
around the corner of the partition, and then said hastily, so as to
close a painful and scandalous incident:
“Let th’ b’y come down an’ see me in th’ marnin’, ma’am, an’ here’s a
bit o’ caar fare fer ye. Do ye go now an’ take th’ caar home. ’Tis a
long waays fer ye to walk, ye niver ought a done it.”
The old woman objected at first, but finally consented to accept the
coin on the basis of a loan, and then, blessing him again and again,
courtesied herself in an old-fashioned, rheumatic way out of the door.
And then Malachi tilted up his glass and drained the last drop. The
toddy had grown quite cold.
The law of moral reaction sent the gang home early that evening, and
by ten o’clock it was plain that the day’s work was done. Malachi had
the bartender help him on with the frieze overcoat, and was adjusting
his hat to a skull that still was sore, when the door opened. Malachi
turned with a scowl, when the draft struck him, and saw Sullivan, the
ward committeeman, and Brennan, Malachi’s political residuary legatee.
Brennan’s eyes were sparkling merrily, his red face was round with
laughter, and he came in with a breeze like the March day.
“Hello, Mal’chi,” he called, smiting the bar with the thick of his
fist, “ain’t goin’ home, are you? It’s just the shank of the evening.
What’ll you have?” Then, as one who likes to think he has special
privileges, he said to the bartender aside: “Give’s a nice little drink
of whisky.”
Malachi neither moved nor spoke. Brennan felt his coldness and flashed
the intelligence to Sullivan.
“Just saw Jim Degnan,” he said, grasping the sweating whisky bottle.
“You did, did you?” said Malachi, in a challenging tone.
“Yes,” said Brennan, determined to be genial. “He tells me you’re
goin’ back to Ireland in the spring.”
“He does, does he?” again challenged Nolan.
“Didn’t you tell ’im?”
“If I did, did I tell ’im phat spring?”
“Well, I s’posed as a matter of course he meant this spring.”
Brennan bent over to measure his drink and to hide some confusion. “And
I thought--you know what you said, Mal’chi--I was goin’ to have Mike
here call the convention and round up the nomination--”
“Th’ hell you was! Th’--hell--you--was!” Malachi’s growing amazement
lengthened the pauses between his words.
“Why, didn’t you say you’d t’row the nomination to me when you quit?”
Brennan’s color deepened to an angry red.
“Did ye iver see such narve!” said Malachi, ignoring the question.
“Mike’ll call th’ convintion fer soon enough, but whin I’m not a
candydate in me own waard, I’ll tell ye mesilf, Willum Brennan.”
“Well, don’t get mad about it, Mal’chi,” said Brennan, who was getting
mad himself. He shoved the bottle on to Sullivan, and blinked his
small eyelids a moment. “Of course, Mal’chi, it’s just as you say.”
“Well, now, ye’re talkin’, Willum.” Malachi never could brook anything
like interference in his ruling of the First Ward. “Whin I’m done,
ye can have th’ nomination, same’s I told ye, but this spring I’m a
candydate mesilf, do ye mind that now?” He drew closer to the bar in
his softened humor, and now that the question at last had been decided,
and in the only way it could have been decided, he suddenly became
himself again.
“When do you want the convention called for, Mr. Nolan?” asked Sullivan.
“Sathurday,” replied Malachi promptly.
“Where?”
“Oh, same as usual--in the back ind of th’ plaace here.” Malachi jerked
his thick thumb toward the rear end of the saloon, where the gloom was
deep. “Prim’ries fer Friday.”
“All right,” said Sullivan.
Then no one spoke for a while. Finally, however, Brennan said, in a
hesitating way:
“If you’re goin’ back to the council, Mal’chi, what’s the matter with
me takin’ the legislative nomination in the district?”
“It’s time enough to saay good marnin’ to th’ divil whin ye meet ’im,
Willum.”
There was silence again, until Brennan said:
“Well, I can’t help thinkin’ it’s a fine trip to Ireland you’re losin’.”
“’Tis so,” assented Malachi.
“Yes,” sighed Brennan. And he saw his ambition pass from him. But
presently he was saying in his old, cheery tone:
“Ain’t you goin’ to take somethin’?”
Malachi leaned his big body against his bar, and over his shoulder, out
of the corner of his mouth, he said:
“Seegaar.”
The bartender slid the box along the counter and rang up another ten
cents on the cash register.
“Well, here’s lookin’ at you,” said Brennan, raising the little tumbler.
“Dhrink heaarty,” said Malachi Nolan.
* * * * *
The long day was done, and Malachi, in shirt-sleeves and stockinged
feet, sat in his big plush rocking-chair, his legs stretched out
before him, taking his ease at his own hearth. When he had come home at
midnight, Nora, who always sat up for him, had insisted upon brewing
him a cup of tea, under the impression, common to a certain class
of women, that it has great medicinal qualities. Malachi had sipped
it obediently, though he had not cared for it after all the mineral
waters he had drunk that day, and had enjoyed far more than the tea the
freckled Irish face of his daughter, as he gravely goggled at her over
the rim of the saucer into which he had poured the beverage to cool
it. They were in what Malachi called the parlor of their flat, though
Nora had lately taken to calling it the drawing-room. It was furnished
mostly in pieces upholstered in plush. Over the mantelpiece hung a
large crayon portrait of a woman whose face, despite the insipidity the
canvasing artist had given it, still showed the toil she had endured,
if it told little of her strong character, while that disregard for
expense which was expressed in the gilt frame marked it as a memorial
of the dead. It was, of course, the face of Malachi’s wife, and when
Nora, in her new culture, had hinted at hanging it in his bedroom, she
had, for the first time in her life, quailed before that stubborn
spirit with which her father ruled the First Ward. The few books on
the center-table treated mostly of religious subjects, though there
were queer bound volumes of Irish poetry, and on the wall there were
one or two etchings in oaken frames. In a corner was a crucifix with a
candle before it. But the one object in the room that dominated all the
rest with its aggressive worldliness, was an upright piano, and Nora
now sat swinging on the stool, her back to the instrument, her elbows
behind her on the keys. She had partly prepared for bed, for she wore a
flannel wrapper and her brilliant black hair hung in a braid down her
back. Celtic blue eyes lighted up her face, and now they smiled under
their long, black lashes upon this big saloon-keeper whom half the city
feared, as if the simple sight of him were reward enough for her long
hours of waiting.
Malachi finished his cup of tea and hurriedly inserted a cigar in the
hole at the corner of his mouth, and thus confirmed in comfort, he said:
“Nora, child, do ye sing now--phat was that--it wint hummin’ t’rough me
head th’ daay. Well, well, well, let me see now--hum-m-m-m--it goes
something like--”
And he hummed a quavering old tune:
“‘I saw the Shannon’s purple flood
Flow by the Irish town.’”
Then he stopped and shook his grizzled head. “Shure, now, I’m
forgettin’ it intirely; ye know, though, somethin’ about:
“‘Whin down the glin rode Sarsfield’s min,
And they wore the jackets green.’
“Sing it onct, fer th’ ould man.”
“But, father,” the girl laughed, though she began screwing up the piano
stool, “it’s too late, the neighbors will object.”
“Niver mind th’ neighbors,” commanded the alderman in the tone he used
at a primary, “sing it.”
“But it’s forbidden in the lease after ten o’clock,” the girl
protested, leafing over her music. “What if the landlord--”
“It’s time to say good marnin’ to th’ divil, Nora, whin ye meet ’im.”
Nora fixed herself on the stool, fingered the keys, finding a soft
minor chord. The old man closed his eyes, slid farther down in his
plush chair, and just as he was prepared to listen, she suddenly
stopped in the provoking way amateur musicians cultivate, to say:
“But, father, that’s such an old song, wouldn’t you rather I’d sing the
Intermezzo from _Cavalerie_?”
Malachi opened his eyes with a start and sat bolt upright.
“Naw,” he said, “none o’ thim fur’n op’res--phat’s the use of yer goin’
to th’ convint all those years?” But his voice quickly softened. “Do ye
go on now, Nora, darlin’, there’s a good gur-rl.”
And so she sang, and the alderman sank in his chair, with his big arms
in their shirt-sleeves thrown over his head, closed his eyes again,
stretched out his stockinged feet. The smoke from his cigar ascended
to the chandelier, and now and then when he remembered the words of a
line, he hummed them behind closed lips, in unison with his daughter.
When the song was done Nora whirled around, clasped her hands in a
school-girl’s ecstasy and said:
“Oh, father, that song makes me homesick--homesick for a place I never
saw. You won’t run again, will you, father, will you? And we’ll go to
Ireland in the spring, won’t we? Tell me, in the spring?”
A pain struck through Malachi Nolan’s heart, a pain that was made only
more poignant when, with her American fear of the sentimental, Nora
joked:
“I must see our ancestral cabin.”
Malachi could not open his eyes. For once he was afraid. He did not
move for a long time. But at last he sighed and set his jaw, and said:
“Well, Nora--if ye saay so--in the spring.”
* * * * *