PAGE 19
Fanny McDermot
by
Fanny looked round upon the “bit place,” and it must be confessed that she sickened at the thought of living in it, even with the sunny kindness of its inmates, or of leaving her little snowdrop of a baby there. The windows were dim with dirt, the floor was unwashen—a heap of kindlings were in one corner, potatoes in another, and coals under a bed, none of the tidiest. Broken victuals on broken earthen plates stood on the table, and all contrasted too strongly with the glossy neatness of her aunt’s apartment. Surely Fanny was not fastidious.
“Oh, no, Mrs. O’Roorke,” she said, “I can never, never leave my baby. I am better; and you are so kind to me, that I’ll wait till to-morrow.” And she did wait another day, but no persuasion of Mrs. O’Roorke could induce her to leave the infant. She insisted that she did not feel its weight,—and that “looking on it was all that gave her courage to go among strangers,”—and “that now she felt easier, and more in heart, knowing she had such a kind friend to come to at night.”
Finding Fanny solved, Mrs. O’Roorke said,—”Now don’t be after telling them your misfortunes; just send them to me for your charackter. It’s ten to one they’ll not take the trouble to come; and if they do, I’ll satisfy them complately.”
“And how?” asked Fanny, with a faint smile.
“Why, won’t I be after telling them just the truth—how the good old lady brought you up like a nun, out of sunshine and harm’s way; how you were always working with your needle, and quiet-like and dove-like—and how the ould lady doted on you, and that you were the best and beautifullest that ever crossed a door-sill.”
“But oh, dear Mrs. O’Roorke, how will you ever come to the dreadful truth?”
“And I’ll not be after just that. If they bother with questions, can’t I answer them civilly, Fanny McDermot? How will it harm a body in all the world just to be tould that ye’s married your man, what died with consumption or the like of that?”
Fanny shook her head.
“Now what’s the use, Fanny McDermot,” continued Mrs. O’Roorke, “of a tongue, if we can’t serve a friend with it? Lave it all to me, darlint. You know I would not tell a lie to wrong one of God’s craters. Would I be after giving you a charackter if you did not desarve it?”
“I know how kind and good you are to me, Mrs. O’Roorke,” said Fanny; “but I pray you say nothing for me but the truth. I have asked God’s forgiveness and blessing on me and my baby, and we must try to earn it. Promise me, will you?”
“Oh, be aisy, darlint, be aisy, and I’ll be after doing what you wish.” She wrapped the baby in its blanket, carried it up the steps, and put it in the mother’s arms.”There, God guide you, Fanny McDermot. The truth!” continued Mrs. O’Roorke, as her streaming eyes followed Fanny; “and what’s truth good for but to serve the like of her that’s been wronged by a false-hearted villain, bad luck to him!”
It would take a very nice casuist to analyze the national moral sense of good Mrs. O’Roorke. The unscrupulous flexibility of the Irish tongue is in curious contrast with the truth of the Irish heart—a heart overflowing with enthusiasm, and generosity, and often instinctively grasping the best truth of life.
“I am thinking,” said the master of the intelligence office, as he was doling out two or three references to Fanny, to families residing in different and distant parts of the city, “I am thinking you don’t know much of the world, young woman?”