The Puritans Part 38

"Master Maurice!" she cried. "Holy Mother of Heaven, is it yourself?"

He went to her quickly, and took the outstretched hand.

"Yes, Norah. It is I."

She gazed at him a moment with haggard eyes, and then a look of deep tenderness came into the worn old face.

"Blessed be the saints!" she murmured. "It's me own boy!"

She drew her hand out of his grasp to stroke his arm and the folds of his ca.s.sock. He sat down by her on the bed, and she fell back upon the dingy pillow, breaking into hysterical tears. She caught one of his hands and carried it to her lips, kissing it in a sort of rapture.

"My own baby," she chuckled. "My Master Maurice so big and fine! I always said you'd be taller than Master John."

The allusion to his half-brother, dead nearly a dozen years, seemed to carry him back into a past so remote that he could hardly remember it.

He smiled at Norah's enthusiasm, more moved by it than he cared to show.

"I've had time to grow big since you deserted us, Norah."

A look of terror came into her face.

"It wasn't my fault," she gasped, sobbing between her words. "Don't believe it against me, me darling. I never went to hurt old Miss Hannah in me life, and the saints knows how she died."

"I never laid any blame on you," he answered. "I knew you wouldn't hurt a fly."

She broke into painful, hysterical laughter.

"No more I wouldn't. To think it's me own baby boy that I've carried in me arms, and him a priest!"

The attendant, who had been watching in stupid and undisguised curiosity, gave an audible sniff.

"Oh, he ain't a real priest," she interrupted with brutal candor.

"They're just fakes. They ain't even Catholics."

A pang of irritation shot through Maurice at the girl's words, but his sense of humor a.s.serted itself, and helped him to smile at his own weakness.

"But, Norah," he said, ignoring the taunt, "I want to know about yourself. We've often tried to find you," he added, a sudden perception of the possible importance of this recognition coming into his mind.

"You know we depended on you to tell us a lot of things at the time of Aunt Hannah's death."

"He told me you'd be after me," Norah exclaimed with rising excitement.

"He said you'd be laying it to me; but, Master Maurice, by the Mother of Mercy, I never"--

"I know that," he interrupted, to check her excitement; "but why did you go off in that way?"

"She told me to go. She ordered me out of the house like a dog, just because I wouldn't give up Tim when she'd accidentally seen him when he'd had one drop more than the full of him,--and any poor body might take a wee drop more'n he meant to take beforehand. She was that hot in her way when her temper was up, rest her soul,--and that n.o.body knows better than yourself,--that the devil himself couldn't hold her with a pair of red-hot tongs,--saving the presence of your riverinces for mentioning the Old Gentleman."

Her momentary discomposure at having mentioned the arch fiend in the presence of those who were his professional enemies gave Wynne a chance to interpolate a question. He could easily understand that the violent excitement of a quarrel with her old servant might account for the sudden death of his aunt. He perceived in a flash how Norah, terrified by the newspaper reports which had openly accused her of making way with her mistress, would without difficulty be induced by her husband to conceal herself. The matter to him most important, however, had not yet been touched upon.

"But what became of her will?" he asked. "You told me she made a new one."

"She did that, Master Maurice. Wasn't I night and day telling her she'd treated you scandalous, and upside down of all reason; and didn't she send for old Burnham, with the squinchy eyes and the wife that had a wart on her nose, and have it all writ over."

"So he said. But what became of it?"

"Ain't you ever had it?"

"No; we could never find it."

"Why didn't you look under the bottom of her little desk?" Mrs. Murphy demanded in much excitement.

"Under the bottom of her desk?" he repeated.

"The double bottom. The little traveling-desk with the little pictures on the corners. She was that contrary that she wasn't willing you should find it all fair and open. She wanted to tease you a while before you found out she'd changed her mind and give in."

"Maurice," Ashe broke in, "we have overstayed our time."

Wynne rose at once, the habit of obedience being strong. Mrs. Murphy clung to his hand, mumbling over it with tears of delight, and could hardly be persuaded to let them go. It was only when he had promised to return on the next day, and the slatternly girl had peremptorily ordered her patient to lie down and stop acting like a buzz-headed fool, that he escaped. He hurried down the dark stairway and out of the house with a step to which excitement lent speed, while Philip followed in silence.

As they were leaving the court they encountered a middle-aged priest, evidently an Irishman, with a kindly face and a bright eye.

"Can you tell me," he asked in a rich brogue, greeting them in friendly fashion, "where Mrs. Tim Murphy lives?"

"In the house we came out of," Maurice answered. "She's on the fifth floor, at the front."

The priest regarded him with some surprise in his look, and something, too, of uncertainty.

"You haven't been there, have you?" he asked.

"Yes; we've just come from her place."

"Then perhaps she won't want me," the priest remarked. "It'll save me a good bit of a climb."

"But we went only as friends," Maurice explained. "She might wish the consolations of religion."

"Then you did not"--

"We are not of your church," Maurice interrupted, flushing.

The priest looked at them with a puzzled air.

"But surely," he said, "you are Catholic. Haven't you been to me at the confession?"

Maurice had not at first recognized the priest to whom he had been in the habit of confessing at St. Eulalia, but he had known him before this announcement made Philip stare at him with a face of astonishment.

"Yes," he responded steadily. "I have confessed to you at St. Eulalia, but I am not of your communion."

He turned, and walked away quickly, not looking at Phil. He resolved not to bother his head about this unchancy encounter. It was awkward, and the fact that he had never confided in Ashe seemed to give to these visits to St. Eulalia an air almost of under-handedness; but there was nothing wrong, he told himself, and he would not be vexed at this moment when he was full of delight at the probability of discovering the missing will. He was certainly in no danger of becoming a Catholic.

He smiled to think how little likely he was to exchange the too strict rule of the Clergy House for one which might be more rigid still. The keen thought now was the remembrance of the wealth which he hoped soon to possess.