THE IRISH KING

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 13, 29 September 1909, Page 48

THE IRISH KING

By

Lindsay Denison.

Illustrations by

Horace Taylor

The grey side-whiskered perI I son who had been leaning back, / with his eyes half shut, in a corner of the smoking compartment, sat up with a start. The summons was repeated just outside the swaying curtain. “Henry!” “Yes, dear.” He took a regretful look lit his cigar, and cast it under the washbasins. Before he reached the door, though, he was called again. "He-en—ry,” she said —and her voice was increasingly acid- —“you have been In there indulging your selfishness long enough! I want you to come out and sit with me—for a while, anyway.” The curtain flapped, and Henry was gone. But we did not look at each other right away. When I raised my eyes, the other man was grinning broadly. He shook his head. “Poor Henry!” he chuckled. “Poor Henry!” His voice was rich with Irish cadence. “It’s one of the saddest sights in a long life of experience in all manner of countries and among all sorts of trtrange peoples, this that we’ve just seen. If I weren’t laughing, I’d be crying. Oh dear, oh dear! Poor Henry!” He moved over to the seat beside me •nd settled back into comfort. “It all comes,” he continued, “of bringing them up the wrong way. As for me, not to be after boasting it, I have no such trouble with women at all, nt all. Whenever the affairs of life bring it about that it becomes me pleasure and me duty to have business or sentimental dealings with the weaker sex, there’s the utmost harmony prevailing. Clarence Riley puts the motion to the meeting; the lady seconds it. Clarence Riley counts the vote; the lady verifies the count. Clarence Riley declares it passed; •nd the lady extends thanks for being •flowed to come in. No debates, no argu-

ment, except for a few explanatory or oratorical remarks by Mr. Riley. You get the idea. Authority, Never let them lose sight of it. Keep it ever before them. If they have an idea, let them find out what you think of it before they mention it. “’Tis the same way with animals and the other alien races. 'How is it that a mere mite of a man like meself can walk Up to an elephant as big as this Pullman and handle him like 1 was a four-year-old and he was a St. Bernard dog? Authority! Never let him find out his own strength. Never let him find out his own mind. Keep him bluffed. That’a the idea. Make him do what you want •*im to do before he’s waked up to any

idea that he wants to be doing something on his own account. “’Tis the place of woman in the world, after me own way of thinking, to make man comfortable; she’s got no business to be knowing that there is such a thing as being comfortable herself. Now, what would I have been after doing if I was Henry and that was me wife? Just this. Before the first half of me name was off her lips, I’d ’a’ been out there in the aisle of the car with her neck ten-

derly but firmly in the grasp of me left hand, and with me Tight forefinger rigidly though gently planted between her shoulder blades. And when I got her to the section, she would be set down (not too hard). “ ‘My dear,’ I’d say to her, ‘you must be nervous. You forgot yourself. Be calm,’ I’d say to her, ‘be calm, and remember that when your presence is required outside the smokingroom door I’ll send the nayger porter for you.’—That’s the way to handle them.” “Are you a married man?” I asked. He seemed embarrassed. I explained that I didn’t mean to be personal, but that really he had piqued my curiosity. “Oh, it’s not that at all,” he protested. “It’s only that I don’t altogether know Jiow to answer the question, not knowing your religious, social, and anthropological beliefs, if you will allow me to use the word. Am I married? According to me own feelings and finer senses, yes, I am. You see, it’s like this: the lady is a Filipino, and I bought her from her mother for 50 pesos. She is no ordinary Filipino person, understand. She was the daughter of a Spanish general, and her mother come of one of the finest of

the native aristocracy—l’m thinking her brother was once comandante at Cavite. The widow had gone broke since Dewey’s doings, and she needed the money. Tall for a Filipino, my lady is, and slim and most distinguished in her behaviour. And her devotion and love for me is so pathetic I hate to speak of it. She’s a good girl, too. I was offered a hundred pesos for her when I left the islands—• you see, I had taught her to bake American bread, and enhanced her commercial value by that much. But I didn’t sell. I took her back to her mother to keep until I go out again, as I will be after doing right away. For she’s a good girl, and all the wife I ever want. There’s no ‘Henry’ business about Bridget. Sure, that’s her name. I named her that to make the house more homelike. She’d jump out of the window before she’d be coming down here barking like a terrier at the smoking-room door. No nonsense at all, and never was. Never knew how to start being nonsensical, and so didn’t have to be cured. “And as I was saying, it’s the same way with the other alien races. Perhaps you know me name by me business? No? ’Tig no matter—’tis well known in the show business. I’m commonly known as Captain Riley, and I make me living bringing wild and barbarous savages from their poor but honest homes into the land of the free and the brave. ’Tis educating to the intelligent American masses, but it is demoralising to the savages. You mind the Java Village at Buffalo? And the African Kraal at Chicago? And the Filipino village at St. Louis? Mine, all of ’em. Were you in St. Louis when Miguel went huromuntado—that is to say, what you would call musth in an elephant or running amuck in a Malay? No? Well, he did. He went huromuntado good and plenty. They had him locked up in a room and they sent for me. There was all kinds of advice to me about not going in there. He was the cook, and he had a knife as long as me arm. They were for shooting him through the door. I would have none of it. He was the only real good cook I had. I just took a piece of a soap box and went in and argued with him, with a few side remarks, on the wickedness of letting the sun go down on his wrath. And before the board was split, he was down with his head on me shoes promising to be good, and confessing that I was the only real benevolent philanthropist he ever met. “’Tis always that way. I could tell you a thousand cases. Only I’m glad to be getting home that I ean’t think of anything excepting me poor old mother who sent for me. Me mother is the grandest which ever was. I tell you what I think of her. I’m here on this train to-day because I get a cable from her saving—but you can read it for yourself.” He drew out a worn wallet, and from it extracted a cable form on which was written in the world-wide looped script of the telegraph receiver: — “Riley, “Oriente, Manila, —> “Come home quick or as soon as can or sooner. “Mrs N. Riley.” “You see,” he explained, “the old lady

is the best that ever was, but it ain’t ■ telegram if it ain’t got ten words. Otherwise she’s cheated. And it’s more than your life is worth, nor any man’s, to try, to explain that she’s paying so much for

every word of a cable, including the address and signature, and that ten words has nothing to do with it. “That’s all I know about why I ami here. The mother, she says, “Come on home,’ and I come. That’s all, for Riley, The first time I went out to heathen parts I went looking for me fortune. I didn’t know what me fortune was to be. But' I’d heard that there was gold in South Africa—and Clarence Riley for the gold!] And I no more than gets to Delagoa Bay on the road to Johannesburg, but I gets one of these messages from the mother. ‘Come back at once,’ it was. And worried for fear she was dead or something, back I come on the same boat. For I had plenty of transportation money. Why x man, man, me father was on the News York po-lice; he had the Elizabeth-streefi station for ten years running, before Reform set in. I come home from Delagoa Bay. And my poor old mother she tells me that she heard of a man down id Coney Island who said there was forty thousand dollars in it if only he knew! somebody who had the nerve to go out td South Africa and bring a Dahomey village to the Chicago Midway. I goes back and gets the Dahomeys, and I anakeS forty-one thousand two hundred and ten dollars and fifteen cents net! From that time on, Clarence takes mother’s advice. You get that? “So this time, once more, me poor old mother she tells me to come home, and 1 come back. What are you after laughing at? Inconsistency? And what’s that? With me theories as to the subjugation of woman? Oh, I’m getting your meaning. Well, in the first place, she’s my parent; and parents, being necessarily born before yourself, is entitled to a few delusions and prejudices. And besides, a man’s got a right to agree with his mother if he can’t agree with no ona else. “Speaking of alien races, was I telling you of the trip we made in the Shawmut, coming over the time before last? Not ’Twas the time I was bringing th# Filipinos to St. Louis. .-

•There wee me fifty-six Filipinos. There was Doo Hunt and his forty Igorrotta headed for Fred Thompson and Luna Park. There was two hundred Chinks trying to get away from home. There was a hundred and three Japanese looking for what looked good to them.

There was forty returning missionaries. So Hunt, McAllister, and myself was the only white men on the ship outside of the officers and crew. McAllister was me partner. “There was a number of most agreeable white women, outside of the missionary people. Then it came on to be St. Patrick’s Day. Whether you’ve noticed it or not, I don’t know,; but I’m free to confess—l’m Irish. And by what you might call a coincidence some of the most important events of me life have happened on St. Patrick’s Day, or more or less subsequent thereto. “Now, bear in mind, I’ve never had kindly feelings toward the Japanese, anyhow. Not since I was coming off from Yokohama me first trip out and, because the friend that was with me had some difference with a ’rickshaw man about a matter of three cents, and because I attempted to fix matters, and because a Japanese po-lieeman butted in and put his hands on me, and because I resented this insolent action and threw him into the harbour—because of such trifling little things as that, they wouldn’t let the ship sail until they’d gone all over it looking for me and my friend. They didn’t find us. But I’ve thought but little of them from that day to this. “And this trip I’m telling you of, it was worse. For I had me 56 Filipinos on me hands, an-i 18 of them women. And they are better looking than the Japanese women and pleasanter spoken. And from the day the first Japanese man come aboard I was busier than the principal of a young ladies’ boarding school. Couldn’t I see the whole eighteen of them Filipino women deserting me in Seattle and marrying Japanese ? So long as we were in Japanese waters I had to give meself sueh small satisfaction as would come from pulling the Japs about the deck by the scruff of their yellow necks. For to hit one of them was a gaol offence. But every time I didn’t hit them I’d say to meself: ‘Never mind, there’s a good day coming!’ “There was. It was St. Patrick’s Day. St. Patrick’s Day in the evening. There had been some little joking an the ship about me pride in being Irish. And I had announced that all that wanted wine with their dinner on St. Patrick’s Day should have it as evidence of Captain Riley’s Irish patriotism. And we did. And the ladies, they took a bit of green mosquito netting and some pasteboard, and made the loveliest green crown you eyer did see. And Doc Hunt, he had one of them green silk padded kimonos made hke a bed quilt. And they rigged up a broomstick with an artichoke on the end, and that was me royal sceptre. And they crowned me the Irish King, and they invested me in me royal robes, and the pianola played ‘The Wearing of the Green’ when I entered and took me seat—the captain giving up the head of the table to me for the night. It come along to be half-past 3 o’clock ie next morning. There was four 2 . J lB left! There was me, the •I'j Kl, ’ g ’ and Mac, and the purser, •nd • young man that I had thought

all the way over was one of the missionaries, only he turned out to be a Standard Oil agent. So great was me joy over the discovery of this one thorn among the roses that I was for transferring me crown and sceptre and robes to him. But he wouldn’t have it.

“Then somebody (how I don’t know, I don’t know) happened to mention the inperial Japanese nation. And it flashed over me that there was one hundred and three of the divvies living in the ’midships hold, which had been fitted up special for them with tiers of bunks five high. Up rose the Irish King in royal state and declared war against Japan. The purser, he said that it wouldn’t do for an officer of the ship to mix in this and he faded away. The Standard Oil man he was willing, but cautious, as was but natural from his training. “We made a most strategic approach to the hatch of the Japanese hold. But strategy was not needful. We might just as well have gone with a full brass band. For fifteen of the immoral Asiatic reprobates was sitting up playing some sinful gambling game. At that hour of the morning, too! “I went down the ladder and Mac followed. Standard Oil, he stands up above and guards the hatch. I took a chair to pieces and gave one of the legs to Mae and told him to see to it that no reinforcements came out of the bunks. Then I delivered a brief address giving my views of the past, present and future of the Japanese race. Meantime they were making shift to go on with their gambling and to make a noise like unconcerned persons. “I fell upon them. I kicked the table over. I threw them all and severally on what was left of the table. Every time one of their ugly mugs emerged from the horrid struggling mass, I took a crack at it with me fist. Me royal robes got somewhat worse for wear, and the green crown spread and came down over me ears. But Ireland did its duty. And all the time Mac was dancing around the hold begging and beseeching some of them to come down and give him a

chance. It’s wonderful how sound the little yellow man can sleep when somebody is out after him with the leg of a good stout chair. They were meek as so many sheep. Give me the two platoons from the old Elizabeth-street station as me father used to lead them

down Fifth Avenue the day of the police parade—an’ I’d guarantee to lick the whole Japanese nation. G’wan! There’s nothing into it! “But I was telling you. I stopped for breath, and the gamblers untangled themselves and took it on the run, each one for his own bunk, like a lot of cockroaches when you turn on the light sudden in the kitehen.

“’And is that all?’ says Mac, kind of sad like. ‘Don’t I get any of this?’ “I settled me royal robes and readjusted the crown and wiped the sweat from me royal brow and I thought. And a truly regal inspiration come to me. “ ‘No, Mae,’ says I, ‘ tis not all. For there is a hundred and three of them in

here and only a pitiful minority have been educated up to a sense of their inferiority. So I tell you,’ 1 says, ‘what to do. We will divide the hold in half and you go to the right and I’ll go to the left and we’ll take them out of their bunks and give them a bit of individual instruction. And when we meet we can shake hands, knowing that our duty has been honestly done.’ “And we did. Mac takes the right and I takes the left. One by one we takes them out of their bunks, mops ’em around a little on the floor, gives tliem a eouple of wallops over the jaw, and puts ’em back where they belongs. Of course there was a few that had been in the gambling gang which had got their already. But we didn’t discriminate against ’em on that account.

“And when Mac and me, meeting on the other side, shook hands, his face was as happy as a child’s at the circus. “ ‘Oh, Clarence,’ he says, through his smiles, ‘wasn’t it lovely!’ He gets thoughtful, then, and says: ‘Don’t you think we ought to do something for these fellows?’ he says.

"I didn't rightly get his meaning and I thought Sis conscience was troubling him because he hadn't done his whole duty by his side of the hold. I lost me temper at that and started right in and did that side over again, but giving them only one wallop apiece. For I was tired. I wasn’t noticing the while that Mac had gone out.

“When I was through with this return visit, I looked around and found I was alone except for a few faces of the crew and coal-passers peering over the edges of the hatch and murmuring encouragement in large, coarse tones. Standard Oil was restraining of their desires but not of their joy. I starts up the ladder looking for Mac, fearing he might have got on deck and got himself into mischief, and I bumps into a steward coming down with a ease of beer, twenty-four bottles, whieh Mac had gone and ordered for the vanquished. I went down. The steward went down. The twenty-four bottles went down amongst us and every last one of them broke. So I went up on deck and sent down another ease: and Mae, not knowing I was doing this, lie sent down another case—and Standard Oil he—oh, well, between the three of us we bought a good many and the party lasted until ten o’clock the next morning, when the Captain sent word down to stop, inasmuch as the missionaries were making serious complaint that the continuous shouts of ‘Banzai, Saint Patrick!’ was getting on their nerves. “Resentful? Not at all. They was pleasant as pleasant eould be, smiling all directions at once—excepting also the direction of me Filipino ladies. Why, one of the girls had a keepsake one of the Japs had given her and I sent her to give it back to him; she had to ehase him all over the deck and finally, when she cornered him, he had to be held to keep him from jumping overboard. “Once more, I’m telling you, Tis the only way to deal with women and the alien races. Convince them of your authority and never let them take the lead in anything and tolerate no independence from them. ’Tis the only way.” The train had plunged into the New York tunnel, and we went back to get our traps together. As we parted he said:

“I’m expecting me poor old mother to meet me when we get in. Keep sight of me when we land, and take a look at

the old lady. Of course she’s only * woman, and has all the weaknesses of the tribe. But she’s the best of them Hl.” As we alighted, the side-whiskered Henry person was just ahead of us, convoyed by a large, robust woman, with a hat almost as tall as it was broad. “Man, man!” said the Irish King. “’Tis pitiful!” The wonderful plaintive note of the Celtic wanderer, everywhere in the world, crept into his voice. 1 knew his heart was full of the dear old lady who was waiting for him- “ JL’va Strayed far, and into strange places, me friend. I’ve known ’em all, known ’em all. But it’s taught me one thing: the test of a man- And that is his mastery of a woman and the other alien races. Look at Henry and his wife. His mere existence is a confession of weakness. If a man can’t control animals, he’s to be pitied but not despised. If he cannot boss the brown and the b'ack and the yellow man when he meets them, ’tis a disgrace- But the man who will take orders and insults from a Woman —he is beneath contempt. *So much me travels have taught me.” His face flushed with joy, and he left me, running towards the station gateway. “Ay, ay, there she is!” he cried. ' In the cleared space, between the rows of waiting men and women, she stood, squarely in the middle. She was a bit of a woman, with sharp features like the old wi'tch pictures and an eye flashing yellow fire. She wore a tiny black bonnet and a shawl, and in her hand was a bunchy green umbrella. So much I had time to see before he reached her. He slid his bags away from him along the concrete floor and opened his arms. She threw out her hand, palm outward, to .warn him off. “ Why, mother,” he gasped, “ what’s Wrong with you?” . • ; The bunchy green umbrella swung in a mighty arc. It landed squarely on his ear with a crack that made everybody on the big concourse turn and look. And again.

“ You dir-r-rty boy,” she shrilled, “dir-r-rty boy. Marrying a nayger woman! [(Whack! Bang!) A nayger woman!” He turned as though to flee, but she caught his arm. “ No,” she cried, “ you will not run. You will listen while I tell ye me mind. Never mind the people! Never mind them! I am talking to you as is a mother’s right. (Bang! Whack!) Now isn’t it the truth? Have ye married a naygur woman or have ye not? (Whack!) Don’t lie to me, for Susie McAllister she •showed me the letter her brother wrote her, telling all the whole thing! (Whack! (Whack! Bang!) I ’most died of shame.” She pushed his arm away and made for the gate. “ Where is the hussy?” she asked “Let tne see this woman that thinks she’s good enough to be Norah Riley’s daughter! Where is she?” The old lady turned back to the dishevelled and crestfallen Irish King. “Where is she? Hiding back there on the train, afraid to face me? You left her in the Islands?” The umbrella swung until it made a green halo about his head and shoulders. “ Shame on you! And more shame! Leaving your wife in a heathen country! Deserting her like a brute! And now the Neighbours will be saying you were ashamed to bring her home!” He spoke to her rapidly, beseechingly, * ?‘No, I will not be quiet!” she screamed. “No, I will not go home! Yes, I will, too! I will pack up and we will take the next train back to them heathen islands where that poor' trusting woman is waitng for ye. Hav e they priests out there? White ones? They have, eh? I’ve heard of these heathen jump-over-a--6 tick weddings. They’ve never had one in the Riley family, hear me? I’ll be seeing a priest, and if her lines ain’t good and regular out there or here or anywhere else, they’ll be made so. And when you’ve finished your business, we’ll bring her home, and if the neighbours don’t treat her like the foreign princess that she is, it will be Norah Riley that will be after knowing why.” Her voice broke and softened. , “ Ah, Clarence boy,” she sobbed, “Clarence boy, I fear you’ve been too far and too long away from the old mother that loves ye.” (went away.