FullReads

III.

Winter had fairly set in, but the snow had not come, and the street was bleak and cold. The wind was stinging men’s faces and piercing the wooden houses. A hard night for sailors coming on the coast–a bitter night for poor people everywhere.

From one house and another the lights went out in the street where the Bogans lived; at last there was no other lamp than theirs, in a window that lighted the outer stairs. Sometimes a woman’s shadow passed across the curtain and waited there, drawing it away from the panes a moment as if to listen the better for a footstep that did not come. Poor Biddy had waited many a night before this. Her husband was far from well, the doctor said that his heart was not working right, and that he must be very careful, but the truth was that Mike’s heart was almost broken by grief. Dan was going the downhill road, he had been drinking harder and harder, and spending a great deal of money. He had smashed more than one carriage and lamed more than one horse from the livery stables, and he had kept the lowest company in vilest dens. Now he threatened to go to New York, and it had come at last to being the only possible joy that he should come home at any time of night rather than disappear no one knew where. He had laughed in Father Miles’s face when the good old man, after pleading with him, had tried to threaten him.

Biddy was in an agony of suspense as the night wore on. She dozed a little only to wake with a start, and listen for some welcome sound out in the cold night. Was her boy freezing to death somewhere? Other mothers only scolded if their sons were wild, but this was killing her and Mike, they had set their hopes so high. Mike was groaning dreadfully in his sleep to-night–the fire was burning low, and she did not dare to stir it. She took her worn rosary again and tried to tell its beads. “Mother of Pity, pray for us!” she said, wearily dropping the beads in her lap.

There was a sound in the street at last, but it was not of one man’s stumbling feet, but of many. She was stiff with cold, she had slept long, and it was almost day. She rushed with strange apprehension to the doorway and stood with the flaring lamp in her hand at the top of the stairs. The voices were suddenly hushed. “Go for Father Miles!” said somebody in a hoarse voice, and she heard the words. They were carrying a burden, they brought it tip to the mother who waited. In their arms lay her son stone dead; he had been stabbed in a fight, he had struck a man down who had sprung back at him like a tiger. Dan, little Dan, was dead, the luck of the Bogans, the end was here, and a wail that pierced the night, and chilled the hearts that heard it, was the first message of sorrow to the poor father in his uneasy sleep.

The group of men stood by–some of them had been drinking, but they were all awed and shocked. You would have believed every one of them to be on the side of law and order. Mike Bogan knew that the worst had happened. Biddy had rushed to him and fallen across the bed; for one minute her aggravating shrieks had stopped; he began to dress himself, but he was shaking too much; he stepped out to the kitchen and faced the frightened crowd.

“Is my son dead, then?” asked Mike Bogan of Bantry, with a piteous quiver of the lip, and nobody spoke. There was something glistening and awful about his pleasant Irish face. He tottered where he stood, he caught at a chair to steady himself. “The luck o’ the Bogans is it?” and he smiled strangely, then a fierce hardness came across his face and changed it utterly. “Come down, come down!” he shouted, and snatching the key of the shop went down the stairs himself with great sure-footed leaps. What was in Mike? was he crazy with grief? They stood out of his way and saw him fling out bottle after bottle and shatter them against the wall. They saw him roll one cask after another to the doorway, and out into the street in the gray light of morning, and break through the staves with a heavy axe. Nobody dared to restrain his fury–there was a devil in him, they were afraid of the man in his blinded rage The odor of whiskey and gin filled the cold air–some of them would have stolen the wasted liquor if they could, but no man there dared to move or speak, and it was not until the tall figure of Father Miles came along the street, and the patient eyes that seemed always to keep vigil, and the calm voice with its flavor of Bantry brogue, came to Mike Bogan’s help, that he let himself be taken out of the wrecked shop and away from the spilt liquors to the shelter of his home.

A week later he was only a shadow of his sturdy self, he was lying on his bed dreaming of Bantry Bay and the road to Glengariff–the hedge roses were in bloom, and he was trudging along the road to see Biddy. He was working on the old farm at home and could not put the seed potatoes in their trench, for little Dan kept falling in and getting in his way. “Dan’s not going to be plagued with the bad craps,” he muttered to Father Miles who sat beside the bed. “Dan will be a fine squire in Ameriky,” but the priest only stroked his hand as it twitched and lifted on the coverlet. What was Biddy doing, crying and putting the candles about him? Then Mike’s poor brain grew steady.

“Oh, my God, if we were back in Bantry! I saw the gorse bloomin’ in the t’atch d’ ye know. Oh wisha wisha the poor ould home an’ the green praties that day we come from it–with our luck smilin’ us in the face.”

“Whist darlin’: kape aisy darlin’!” mourned Biddy, with a great sob. Father Miles sat straight and stem in his chair by the pillow–he had said the prayers for the dying, and the holy oil was already shining on Mike Bogan’s forehead. The keeners were swaying themselves to and fro, there where they waited in the next room.