From the Bottom Up Part 16

The bath-house bill pa.s.sed the Aldermanic and Councilmanic chambers, was signed by the mayor and the matter of building put into the hands of the Board of Health. The Board forgot all about it and some time later the agitation began again and persisted until another city government and another mayor had made a second law and carried it into effect.

There was no ecclesiastical objection to my partic.i.p.ation in this movement. It was a small thing and cost little.

CHAPTER XV

A VISIT HOME

My Father had been begging me for years to come home and say good-bye to him; so, in 1901, I made the journey.

I hadn't been in the old home long before the alley was filled with neighbours, curious to have a look at "ould Jamie's son who was a clargymaan." I went to the door and shook hands with everybody in the hope that after a while they would go away and leave me with my own.

But n.o.body moved. They stood and stared for several hours. "'Deed I mind ye fine when ye weren't th' height av a creepie!" said one woman, who was astounded that I couldn't call her by name.

"Aye," said another, "'deed ye were i' fond o' th' Bible, an' no wundther yer a clargymaan!"

A dozen old women "minded" as many different things of my childhood. I finally dismissed them with this phrase, as I dropped easily enough into the vernacular, "Shure, we'd invite ye all t' tay but there's only three cups in the house!"

My sister Mary and her four children lived with my father. We shut _and barred_ the door when the neighbours left and sat down to "tay,"

which consisted of potatoes and b.u.t.termilk. Mary had been trying to improve on the old days but I interposed, and together, we went through the old regime. Father took the pot of potatoes to the old tub in which he used to steep the leather. There he drained them--then put them on the fire for a minute to allow the steam to escape.

"I'm going to 'kep' them," I said, and they both laughed.

"Oh, heavens, don't," he said; "shure they don't 'kep' pirtas in America!"

"I'm not in America now," I answered, as I circled as much of the little bare table as I could with my arms to keep the potatoes from rolling off. He dumped them in a heap in the centre; they rolled up against my arms and breast and I pushed them back. Mary cleared a s.p.a.ce for a small pile of salt and the b.u.t.termilk bowls.

"We'll haave a blessin' by a rale ministher th' night," Mary said.

"Oh, yis, that's thrue enough," my father said, "but Alec minds th'

time whin it was blessin' enough to hev th' murphies--don't ye, boy?"

After "tay" I tacked a newspaper over the lower part of the window--my father lit the candle and Mary put a few turfs on the fire and we sat as we used to sit so many years ago. My father was so deaf that I had to shout to make him hear and nearly everything I said could be heard by the neighbours in the alley, many of whom sat around the door to hear whatever they could of the story they supposed I would tell of the magic land beyond the sea.

I unbarred the door in answer to a loud knock; it was a most polite note from a Roman Catholic schoolmaster inviting me to occupy a spare room in his house. Half an hour later we were again interrupted by another visitor, an old friend who also invited me to occupy his spare bed. It was evidently disturbing the town to know where I was to sleep. I politely refused all invitations. Each invitation was explained to my father.

"Shure that's what's cracking m' own skull," he said; "where th' divil will ye sleep, anyway, at all, at all?"

Then they listened and I talked--talked of what the years had meant to me.

The old man sighed often and occasionally there were tears in Mary's eyes; and there were times when the past surged through my mind with such vividness that I could only look vacantly into the white flame of the peat fire. Once after a long silence my father spoke--his voice trembled, "Oh," he said, "if she cud just have weathered through till this day!"

"Aye," Mary said, "but how do ye know she isn't jist around here somewhere, anyway?"

"Aye," the old man said as he nodded his head, "deed that's thrue for you, Mary, she may!" He took his black cutty pipe out of his mouth and gazed at me for a moment.

"What d'ye mind best about her?"

"I mind a saying she had that has gone through life with me."

"'Ivery day makes its own throuble?'"

"No, not that; something better. She used to say so often, 'It's nice to be nice.'"

"Aye, I mind that," he said.

"Then," I continued, "on Sundays when she was dressed and her nice tallied cap on her head, I thought she was the purtiest woman I ever saw!"

"'Deed, maan, she was that!"

When bed time came I took a small lap-robe from my suit case, spread it on the hard mud floor, rolled some other clothes as a pillow and lay down to rest. Sleep came slowly but as I lay I was not alone, for around me were the forms and faces of other days.

Next day I visited the scene of my boyhood's vision--I went through the woods where I had my first full meal. I visited the old church; but the good Rector was gathered to his fathers. It was all a day-dream; it was like going back to a former incarnation. Along the road on my way home I discovered the most intimate friend of my boyhood--the boy with whom I had gathered f.a.ggots, played "shinney"

and gone bird-nesting. He was "nappin'" stones. He did not recognize my voice but his curiosity was large enough to make him throw down his hammer, take off the gla.s.ses that protected his eyes and stare at me.

"Maan, yer changed," he said, "aren't you?"

"And you?"

"Och, shure, I'm th' same ould sixpence!"

"Except that you're older!" There was a look of disappointment on his face.

"Maan," he said, "ye talk like quality--d'ye live among thim?"

I explained something of my changed life; I told of my work and what I had tried to do and I closed with an account of the vision in the fields not far from where we sat.

"Aye," he would say occasionally, "aye, 'deed it's quare how things turn out."

When I ended the story of the vision he said: "Ye haaven't forgot how t' tell a feery story--ye wor i' good at that!"

"Bob" hadn't read a book, or a newspaper in all those years. He got his news from the men who stopped at his stone pile to light their pipes--what he didn't get there he got at the cobbler's while his brogues were being patched or at the barber's when he went for his weekly shave. We talked each other out in half an hour. A wide gulf was between us: it was a gulf in the realm of mind.

As I moved away toward the town, I wondered why I was not breaking stones on the roadside, and I muttered Bob's well-worn phrase: "How quare!"

It became so difficult to talk to my father without gathering a crowd at the door that I shortened my stay and took him to Belfast where we could spend a few days together and alone. We had our meals at first in a quiet little restaurant on a side street. He had never been in a restaurant. As the waiter went around the table, the old man watched him with curious eyes. I have explained that my father never swore. He was mightily unfortunate in his selection of phrases and when irritated by the attention of the waiter to the point of explosion he said, in what he supposed was a whisper: "What th' h.e.l.l is he dancin'

around us like an Indian fur?" I explained. Everybody in the place heard the explanation; they also heard his reply: "Send him t'

blazes--he takes m' appet.i.te away!"

We moved into the house of a friend after that.

One afternoon I took him for a walk in the suburbs of the city.

He rested on a rustic bench on the lawn of a beautiful villa while I made a call.

"Twenty-five years ago," I said to the gentleman of the house, "I had a great inspiration from the life of a young lady who lived in this house, and I just called to say 'thank you.'"