THE EMPTY CORNER
When I walked into Pogue's entry about fifteen years later, it seemed
like walking into another world--I was a foreigner.
"How quare ye spake!" Jamie said, and Mary added demurely:
"Is it quality ye are that ye spake like it?"
"No, faith, not at all," I said, "but it's the quality of America that
makes me!"
"Think of that, now," she exclaimed.
The neighbors came, new neighbors--a new generation, to most of whom I
was a tradition. Other boys and girls had left Antrim for America,
scores of them in the course of the years. There was a popular
supposition that we all knew each other.
"Ye see th' Wilson bhoys ivery day, I'll bate," Mrs. Hainey said.
"No, I have never seen any of them."
"Saints alive, how's that?"
"Because we live three thousand miles apart."
"Aye, well, shure that 'ud be quite a dandther!"
"It didn't take ye long t' git a fortune, did it?" another asked.
"I never acquired a fortune such as you are thinking of."
"Anna said ye wor rich!"
"Anna was right, I am rich, but I was the richest boy in Antrim when I
lived here."
They looked dumbfounded.
"How's that?" Mrs. Conner queried.
"Because Anna was my mother."
I didn't want to discuss Anna at that time or to that gathering, so I
gave the conversation a sudden turn and diplomatically led them in
another direction. I explained how much easier it was for a policeman
than a minister to make a "fortune" and most Irishmen in America had a
special bias toward law! Jamie had grown so deaf that he could only hear
when I shouted into his ear. Visitors kept on coming, until the little
house was uncomfortably full.
"Wouldn't it be fine," I shouted into Jamie's ear, "if Billy O'Hare or
Withero could just drop in now?"
"God save us all," he said, "th' oul days an' oul faces are gone
foriver." After some hours of entertainment the uninvited guests were
invited to go home.
I pulled Jamie's old tub out into the center of the floor and, taking my
coat off, said gently: "Now, good neighbors, I have traveled a long
distance and need a bath, and if you don't mind I'll have one at once!"
They took it quite seriously and went home quickly. As soon as the house
was cleared I shut and barred the door and Mary and I proceeded to
prepare the evening meal.
I brought over the table and put it in its place near the fire. In
looking over the old dresser I noticed several additions to the
inventory I knew. The same old plates were there, many of them broken
and arranged to appear whole. All holes, gashes, dents and cracks were
turned back or down to deceive the beholder. There were few whole pieces
on the dresser.
"Great guns, Mary," I exclaimed, "here are two new plates and a new cup!
Well, well, and you never said a word in any of your letters about
them."
"Ye needn't get huffed if we don't tell ye all the startlin' things!"
Mary said.
"Ah!" I exclaimed, "there's _her_ cup!" I took the precious thing from
the shelf. The handle was gone, there was a gash at the lip and a few
new cracks circling around the one I was familiar with twenty years
previously.
What visions of the past came to me in front of that old dresser! How
often in the long ago she had pushed that old cup gently toward me along
the edge of the table--gently, to escape notice and avoid jealousy.
Always at the bottom of it a teaspoonful of _her_ tea and beneath the
tea a bird's-eye-full of sugar. Each fairy picture of straggling tea
leaves was our moving picture show of those old days. We all had tea
leaves, but she had imagination. How we laughed and sighed and swithered
over the fortunes spread out all over the inner surface of that cup!
"If ye stand there affrontin' our poor oul delf all night we won't haave
aany tea at all!" Mary said. The humor had gone from my face and speech
from my tongue. I felt as one feels when he looks for the last time upon
the face of his best friend. Mary laughed when I laid the old cup on a
comparatively new saucer at my place. There was another laugh when I
laid it out for customs inspection in the port of New York. I had a set
of rather delicate after-dinner coffee cups. One bore the arms of
Coventry in colors; another had the seal of St. John's College, Oxford;
one was from Edinburgh and another from Paris. They looked aristocratic.
I laid them out in a row and at the end of the row sat the proletarian,
forlorn and battered--Anna's old tea-cup.
"What did you pay for this?" asked the inspector as he touched it
contemptuously with his official toe.
"Never mind what I paid for it," I replied, "it's valued at a million
dollars!" The officer laughed and I think the other cups laughed also,
but they were not contemptuous; they were simply jealous.
Leisurely I went over the dresser, noting the new chips and cracks,
handling them, maybe fondling some of them and putting them as I found
them.
"I'll jist take a cup o' tay," Jamie said, "I'm not feelin' fine."
I had less appetite than he had, and Mary had less than either of us. So
we sipped our tea for awhile in silence.
"She didn't stay long afther ye left," Jamie said, without looking up.
Turning to Mary he continued, "How long was it, aanyway, Mary?"
"Jist a wee while."
"Aye, I know it wasn't long."
"Did she suffer much?" I asked.
"She didn't suffer aany at all," he said, "she jist withered like th'
laves on th' threes."
"She jist hankered t' go," Mary added.
"Wan night whin Mary was asleep," Jamie continued, "she read over again
yer letther--th' wan where ye wor spakin' so much about fishin'."
"Aye," I said, "I had just been appointed missionary to a place called
the Bowery, in New York, and I wrote her that I was no longer her
plowman, but her _fisher of men_."
"Och, maan, if ye cud haave heard her laugh over th' different kinds ov
fishes ye wor catchin'! Iv'ry day for weeks she read it an' laughed an'
cried over it. That night she says t' me, 'Jamie,' says she, 'I don't
care s' much fur fishers ov men as I do for th' plowman.' 'Why?' says I.
"'Because,' says she, 'a gey good voice an' nice clothes will catch men,
an' wimen too, but it takes brains t' plow up th' superstitions ov th'
ignorant.'
"'There's somethin' in that,' says I.
"'Tell 'im whin he comes,' says she, 'that I put th' handles ov a plow
in his han's an' he's t' let go ov thim only in death.'
"'I'll tell 'm,' says I, 'but it's yerself that'll be here whin he
comes,' says I. She smiled like an' says she, 'What ye don't know,
Jamie, wud make a pretty big library.' 'Aye,' says I, 'I haaven't aany
doubt ov that, Anna.'"
"There was a loud knock at the door."
"Let thim dundther," Mary said. He put his hand behind his ear and asked
eagerly:
"What is 't?"
"Somebody's dundtherin'."
"Let thim go t' h----," he said angrily.
"Th' tuk 'im frum Anna last time, th' won't take 'im frum me an' you,
Mary."
Another and louder knock.
"It's Misthress Healy," came a voice. Again his hand was behind his ear.
The name was repeated to him.
"Misthress Healy, is it; well, I don't care a d--n if it was Misthress
Toe-y!"
For a quarter of a century my sister has occupied my mother's
chimney-corner, but it was vacant that night. She sat on my father's
side of the fire. He and I sat opposite each other at the table--I on
the same spot, on the same stool where I used to sit when her cup
toward the close of the meal came traveling along the edge of the table
and where her hand with a crust in it would sometimes blindly grope for
mine.
But she was not there. In all my life I have never seen a space so
empty!
My father was a peasant, with all the mental and physical
characteristics of his class. My sister is a peasant woman who has been
cursed with the same grinding poverty that cursed my mother's life.
About my mother there was a subtlety of intellect and a spiritual
quality that even in my ignorance was fascinating to me. I returned
equipped to appreciate it and she was gone. Gone, and a wide gulf lay
between those left behind, a gulf bridged by the relation we have to the
absent one more than by the relation we bore to each other.
We felt as keenly as others the kinship of the flesh, but there are
kinships transcendentally higher, nobler and of a purer nature than the
nexus of the flesh. There were things to say that had to be left unsaid.
They had not traveled that way. The language of my experience would have
been a foreign tongue to them. _She_ would have understood.
"Wan night be th' fire here," Jamie said, taking the pipe out of his
mouth, "she says t' me, 'Jamie,' says she, 'I'm clane done, jist clane
done, an' I won't be long here.'
"'Och, don't spake s' downmouth'd, Anna,' says I. 'Shure ye'll feel fine
in th' mornin'.'
"'Don't palaver,' says she, an' she lukt terrible serious.
"'My God, Anna,' says I, 'ye wudn't be lavin' me alone,' says I, 'I
can't thole it.'
"'Yer more strong,' says she, 'an' ye'll live till he comes back--thin
we'll be t'gether.'"
He stopped there. He could go no farther for several minutes.
"I hate a maan that gowls, but--"
"Go on," I said, "have a good one and Mary and I will wash the cups and
saucers."
"D'ye know what he wants t' help me fur?" Mary asked, with her mouth
close to his ear.
"No."
"He wants t' dhry thim so he can kiss _her_ cup whin he wipes it! Kiss
her _cup_, ye mind; and right content with that!"
"I don't blame 'im," said he, "I'd kiss th' very groun' she walked on!"
As we proceeded to wash the cups, Mary asked:
"Diz th' ministhers in America wash dishes?"
"Some of them."
"What kind?"
"My kind."
"What do th' others do?"
"The big ones lay corner-stones and the little ones lay foundations."
"Saints alive," she said, "an' what do th' hens do?"
"They clock" (hatch).
"Pavin' stones?"
"I didn't say pavin' stones!"
"Oh, aye," she laughed loudly.
"Luk here," Jamie said, "I want t' laugh too. Now what th' ---- is't yer
gigglin' at?"
I explained.
He smiled and said:
"Jazus, bhoy, that reminds me ov Anna, she cud say more funny things
than aany wan I iver know'd."
"And that reminds me," I said, "that the word you have just misused
_she_ always pronounced with a caress!"
"Aye, I know rightly, but ye know I mane no harm, don't ye?"
"I know, but you remember when _she_ used that word every letter in it
was dressed in its best Sunday clothes, wasn't it?"
"Och, aye, an' I'd thravel twinty miles jist t' hear aany wan say it
like Anna!"
"Well, I have traveled tens of thousands of miles and I have heard the
greatest preachers of the age, but I never heard any one pronounce it so
beautifully!"
"But as I was a-sayin' bhoy, I haaven't had a rale good laugh since she
died; haave I, Mary?"
"I haaven't naither," Mary said.
"Aye, but ye've had double throuble, dear."
"We never let trouble rob us of laughter when I was here."
"Because whin ye wor here she was here too. In thim days whin throuble
came she'd tear it t' pieces an' make fun ov aych piece, begorra. Ye
might glour an' glunch, but ye'd haave t' laugh before th' finish--shure
ye wud!"
The neighbors began to knock again. Some of the knocks were vocal and as
plain as language. Some of the more familiar gaped in the window.
"Hes he hed 'is bath yit?" asked McGrath, the ragman.
We opened the door and in marched the inhabitants of our vicinity for
the second "crack."
This right of mine own people to come and go as they pleased suggested
to me the thought that if I wanted to have a private conversation with
my father I would have to take him to another town.
The following day we went to the churchyard together--Jamie and I. Over
her grave he had dragged a rough boulder and on it in a straggling,
unsteady, amateur hand were painted her initials and below them his own.
He was unable to speak there, and maybe it was just as well. I knew
everything he wanted to say. It was written on his deeply furrowed face.
I took his arm and led him away.
Our next call was at Willie Withero's stone-pile. There, when I
remembered the nights that I passed in my new world of starched linen,
too good to shoulder a bundle of his old hammers, I was filled with
remorse. I uncovered my head and in an undertone muttered, "God forgive
me."
"Great oul bhoy was Willie," he said.
"Aye."
"Och, thim wor purty nice times whin he'd come in o' nights an' him an'
Anna wud argie; but they're gone, clane gone, an' I'll soon be wi'
thim."
I bade farewell to Mary and took him to Belfast--for a private talk.
Every day for a week we went out to the Cave hill--to a wild and lonely
spot where I had a radius of a mile for the sound of my voice. The thing
of all things that I wanted him to know was that in America I had been
engaged in the same fight with poverty that they were familiar with at
home. It was hard for him to think of a wolf of hunger at the door of
any home beyond the sea. It was astounding to him to learn that around
me always there were thousands of ragged, starving people. He just gaped
and exclaimed:
"It's quare, isn't it?"
We sat on the grass on the hillside, conscious each of us that we were
saying the things one wants to say on the edge of the grave.
"She speyed I'd live t' see ye," he said.
"She speyed well," I answered.
"Th' night she died somethin' wontherful happened t' me. I wasn't as
deef as I am now, but I was purty deef. D'ye know, that night I cud
hear th' aisiest whisper frum her lips--I cud that. She groped fur m'
han; 'Jamie,' says she, 'it's nearly over, dear.'
"'God love ye,' says I.
"'Aye,' says she, 'if He'll jist love me as ye've done it'll be fine.'
Knowin' what a rough maan I'd been, I cudn't thole it.
"'Th' road's been gey rocky an' we've made many mistakes.'
"'Aye,' I said, 'we've barged (scolded) a lot, Anna, but we didn't mane
it.'
"'No,' says she, 'our crock ov love was niver dhrained.'
"I brot a candle in an' stuck it in th' sconce so 's I cud see 'er
face."
"'We might haave done betther,' says she, 'but sich a wee house, so many
childther an' so little money.'
"'We war i' hard up,' says I.
"'We wor niver hard up in love, wor we?'
"'No, Anna,' says I, 'but love dizn't boil th' kittle.'
"'Wud ye rather haave a boilin' kittle than love if ye had t' choose?'
"'Och, no, not at all, ye know rightly I wudn't.'
"'Forby, Jamie, we've given Antrim more'n such men as Lord Massarene.'
"'What's that?' says I.
"'A maan that loves th' poorest craithers on earth an' serves thim.'
"She had a gey good sleep afther that."
"'Jamie,' says she whin she awoke, 'was I ravin'?'
"'Deed no, Anna,' says I.
"'I'm not ravin' now, am I?'
"'Acushla, why do ye ask sich a question?'
"'Tell 'im I didn't like "fisher ov men" as well as "th' plowman." It's
aisy t' catch thim fish, it's hard t' plow up ignorance an'
superstition--tell 'im that fur me, Jamie?'
"'Aye, I'll tell 'im, dear.'
"'Ye mind what I say'd t' ye on th' road t' Antrim, Jamie? That "love is
Enough"?'
"'Aye.'
"'I tell ye again wi' my dyin' breath.'
"I leaned over an' kiss't 'er an' she smiled at me. Ah, bhoy, if ye
could haave seen that luk on 'er face, it was like a picture ov th'
Virgin, it was that.
"'Tell th' childther there's only wan kind ov poverty, Jamie, an' that's
t' haave no love in th' heart,' says she.
"'Aye, I'll tell thim, Anna,' says I."
He choked up. The next thought that suggested itself for expression
failed of utterance. The deep furrows on his face grew deeper. His lips
trembled. When he could speak, he said:
"My God, bhoy, we had to beg a coffin t' bury 'er in!"
"If I had died at the same time," I said, "they would have had to do the
same for me!"
"How quare!" he said.
I persuaded him to accompany me to one of the largest churches in
Belfast. I was to preach there. That was more than he expected and the
joy of it was overpowering.
I do not remember the text, nor could I give at this distance of time an
outline of the discourse: it was one of those occasions when a man
stands on the borderland of another world. I felt distinctly the
spiritual guidance of an unseen hand. I took her theme and spoke more
for her approval than for the approval of the crowd.
He could not hear, but he listened with his eyes. On the street, after
the service, he became oblivious of time and place and people. He threw
his long lean arms around my neck and kissed me before a crowd. He hoped
Anna was around listening. I told him she was and he said he would like
to be "happed up" beside her, as he had nothing further to hope for in
life.
In fear and trembling he crossed the Channel with me. In fear lest he
should die in Scotland and they would not bury him in Antrim churchyard
beside Anna. We visited my brothers and sisters for several days. Every
day we took long walks along the country roads. These walks were full of
questionings. Big vital questions of life and death and immorality.
They were quaintly put:
"There's a lot of balderdash about another world, bhoy. On yer oath now,
d'ye think there is wan?"
"I do."
"If there is wud He keep me frum Anna jist because I've been kinda
rough?"
"I am sure He wouldn't!"
"He wudn't be s' d--d niggardly, wud He?"
"Never! God is love and love doesn't work that way!"
At the railway station he was still pouring in his questions.
"D'ye believe in prayer?"
"Aye."
"Well, jist ax sometimes that Anna an' me be together, will ye?"
"Aye."
A little group of curious bystanders stood on the platform watching the
little trembling old man clinging to me as the tendril of a vine clings
to the trunk of a tree.
"We have just one minute, Father!"
"Aye, aye, wan minute--my God, why cudn't ye stay?"
"There are so many voices calling me over the sea."
"Aye, that's thrue."
He saw them watching him and he feebly dragged me away from the crowd.
He kissed me passionately, again and again, on the lips. The whistle
blew.
"All aboard!" the guard shouted. He clutched me tightly and clung to me
with the clutch of a drowning man. I had to extricate myself and spring
on board. I caught a glimpse of him as the train moved out; despair and
a picture of death was on his face. His lips were trembling and his eyes
were full of tears.
* * * * *
A few months later they lowered him to rest beside my mother. I want to
go back some day and cover them with a slab of marble, on which their
names will be cut, and these words:
"Love is Enough."
THE END
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|Transcriber's Note: |
|Inconsistent hyphenization retained|
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End of Project Gutenberg's My Lady of the Chimney Corner, by Alexander Irvine