The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 16 October 1913, Page 5

The Storyteller

THE LAST OF TEN Michael O’Halloran, from Ottawa, left the liner at Queenstown and had his portmanteau put on a car to take him up into the country whither he would go. Not. much of a portmanteau had been needed for his belongings when he had left the Irish port twenty years before as a restless youth bound to seek his fortune in an alien country. As the fast trotting horse carried him along the green roads, with their hills and hollows, 'their overarching trees, and background of grey and purple mountains, he was thinking that the old country was not a bit changed, and that he was going to give all the people at home a great and, he hoped, a happy surprise by unexpectedly appearing amongst them. Of course they wouldn’t know him, and no doubt he would find a change in everybody, for twenty years

do not pass over anyone’s head without leaving their marks. The mother would show it the most • and n — —w- . . «*<-», WiiW »V JL UAIW IiiVUU UUU CV lump got into his throat as he thought of how much she would have to forgive him for his failure in the matter of letter-writing these many years back. Well, he had been remiss, and he would own to it, but all’s well that ends well, and he had brought plenty of money back with him to make amends, and to give her many an extra comfort in her old age, such as perhaps she had never dreamed of. ‘ This is Kilshirkin now, sir,’ > said the driver as they reached the top of a long sloping hill, and saw a wide plain of pasture and bog land, studded here and there with white walls, extending before them, even over the hills of ethereal blue 'that basked in the noonday sunlight. Michael stood up on the car and gazed eagerly, with all his heart in his eyes, over the well-remembered landscape. ‘I see !’ he said. ‘ That’s Dempsey’s house with the trees behind it to the left, and yonder’s Rorke’s with the hay stacks, and there’s Connolly’s in the middle of the green hedgesand that would be O’Halloran’s, wouldn’t it, with the elder trees in a bunch at the gable V < O’Halloran’s, sir?’ said the driver. ‘I don’t know thim people at all. Not in this neighborhood.’ ‘ You must be a stranger,’ said Michael. ‘ No, sir, I’m not a stranger, but I’m young. And now I do remember that when I was a boy there was O’Hallorans about. ' But they’re gone, sir, out of it, bag and baggage, long ago. I’m sorry, sir, if they were friends of yours.’ ‘ They were friends of mine,’ said Michael. His face had turned pale under its weather tan. ‘ But I hope you are mistaken. Drive me on to that house with the -elder trees. They have just the same white flowers on them that they used to have. And there’s smoke from the chimney. It can’t be that the people themselves are gone.’ They drove on to the place. Michael left the car at the head of the well-remembered boreen, and walked up to it, and stood before the house door. A woman, with a baby in her arms, met him there— mother nor sister of his, as he saw at a glance, even allowing for changes of time and the deceitful tricks of memory. The O’Hallorans’ !’ said the woman. ‘Oh, dear, sir, that’s an old story. Sure all of them" went- to America, one after another, and the old woman herself’s gone out of it years ago. She wasn’t able to keep the place together and it failed on her. Daughters and sons either forgot her, or else they all died out yonder on her.’ ' . . : •

'Where is she now?' asked Michael, after a short struggle with the sorrow that rushed on his heart. Well, I don't rightly know,' said the" woman, eyeing him narrowly; 'but,' she added, lowering her voice, 'I have heard that she went down and down by degrees, sir, and that she ended in the poorhouse, God help her!' ~, ' .' r \_-v ; "V '■'....-''.-. -J; : Michael stared, at the woman, and the spasm that crossed his face made her pity him-. . 'Will you walk in and rest?' she said. 'Maybe you knew them in times,gone by; and indeed they were decent people, sir.' v , . "... / ' No, thank you,' said Michael, 'my car is waiting for me,' and he went back down the boreen, with a grief lying like a lump of lead on his heart, and mounted his car again. ,'.'.': ' You were right,' he said; ' the people are gone. Will you tell me where the poorhouse is, in this neighborhood?' .:."-.--- r :> ; .-x^:r>:

'I will, sir,' said the driver;:; 'but sure, what would the like of you be doin' in the poorhouse?' Michael, 'and I want to see for myself what the inside of it is like. I' might find ;'a;> few friends in it after twenty years that I've been out of Ireland. i, {': '.-';' Twenty years!' said the driver, with a laugh. ' That's as long as myself has lived entirely, barrin' a few odd years at the back-of it, to begin with.' ■.....■ ~

' What's a lifetime to you was like a day's work

to me,’ said Michael. ‘ I was too busy making money to feel the years running over me.’. ‘An’ y’ mad© the money?’ said the driver admir- < o 1 ~ i > AiXgXJ . UUtCVU JLLU W i : ‘I made it too dear,’ said Michael, ‘too hard, if I find any of my friends in the poorhouse. And dearer still if none of them are living to meet me even there.’ ‘ Hearten up, sir !’ said the driver. ‘ There’s always friends for them that has the money ! ’ ‘ My curse on it for money,’ said Michael bitterly. ‘ You’re a young man, my boy, and don’t put your heart in it, however hard you may have to earn it!’ He gave the man a handsome fare when parting with him at the door of a hotel in Queenstown, and the next day he set out alone on foot in the direction of the poorhouse indicated by the people of the hotel, who thought it a queer place for a gentleman to be off to the first thing after coming off an American steamship. But he had kept his own counsel, and asked no more questions about the O’Hallorans. Michael stood in awe before the iron gates of the cold refuge for the aged and miserable in a country which ought to give generous food and shelter in honorable independence to the children of her love. Oh, the iron bars and the grey stone walls, so high and bare to the imagination that was filled with a picture of green-hung gables, and low chimneys, and a mellow thatch ! Oh, the clanking gates and doors, and the steep stone stairs, instead of the open doorway with the hens pecking round it, and the dog sunning himself on the threshold as guardian and member of the family. What a dreary prison to those who have known the sweetness and comfort of never so humble a little homestead ! Yet it was through his own selfish neglect that his mother had sought a harbor here, through his easy belief that she was cared for in the old home by the brothers and sisters he had left behind him there. Was he to find her here in her sorrow and desolation; or was she dead? When he entered a number of old women were sitting on a bench in the poorhouse yard, a square flanked by high grey walls from which the rows of windows of the pauper wards looked down, and threw their cold shadow in turns on the stone pavement of the enclosure as the sun moved across it. As the sun travelled the pauper women moved with it, leaving the bench that had got under the shadow for the bench on the opposite side on which the light and warmth were now falling. About a dozen aged women were there, some of them trying to keep themselves awake with snuff, a treasure occasionally bestowed on them by visitors. Some gabbled and chattered together; others were silent and looked only half alive. One sat aloof from all the rest, younger than most of the band, with a grave, patient face, and a look of strong intelligence on the brows under the whitening hair and pauper cap. ‘That,’ said the official, pointing her out to the visitor, ‘is Mrs. Mary O’Halloran, the woman you are looking, for.’ ‘ Thank you,’ said Michael, * I will trouble you no further. lam going to speak to her.’ He walked across the yard, with feet as if weighted with lead. Was that his. mother? He saw her in memory, buxom and handsome, a genial smile on her face and a look of general well-being all over her, as she stood in the doorway of the old home, calling the children in to dinner. White and bent, now, her face furrowed with sorrow, alone and deserted by those children, holding herself aloof in her tragedy even from •her fellows in misfortune, as she sat a little apart from them on the end of the bench.

As Michael walked slowly up to the row of pauper women all held out their hands to him for snuff, or anything else that the visitor might chance to have brought but that one who kept her head turned away as if ashamed of the importunity of the others. Michael had brought no snuff, but he had coppers that would buy it; and having moved up the row, satisfying all demands, he came to the last figure on the bench and stood before her.

'I think you are Mary? O'Halloran, ma'am,' ho said, trying to speak steadily. ' v ;V ." c ";;■ That is my name. I thought every one in the "world had forgotten it.' ' ~~~" '. ; 'No, then,' said Michael. ' You had children that went to America, and myself is come from it. I met some one that used to know your family, and I thought I would come here to see how you are, ma'am.' 'Children that went to America? i Aye, had I. Ten children I reared about my knees. One went from me and another went from me. The ship took them all and left me as I am.' - /':• ' ■ ;

‘ What became of them, ma’am? Will you let me sit down beside you for a little talk, for* I’m tired with walking.’ ‘ I’m proud of your kindness, sir,’ she said, moving a little to leave him plenty of room on the bench. There was a time when I would have given you a comfortable seat in my own chimney-corner. But that time’s past and gone. And you’re welcome cornin’ out of America, for it’s the big. cruel mouth that swallowed up all my children; not a one left to hold out the hand of stren’th to me and say, “I’ve come back to you, mother!’’’ ‘How did it happen that they all went from you and died ‘Well, it did. ' Pat was killed on a railway in Australia, and Jem got a fever in Africa. John was blowed up in a mine in New Zealand. Peter died in South America of the yellow fever. Norah got a bad husband in New York and broke her heart. Kate was killed in a factory in Chicago, and Mary died in a hospital in California. Nan caught the small-pox from her and followed her. And I buried a litle one att home myselfthat’s the only one lyin’ with my dear good man in Kilshirkin graveyard.’ ‘You’ve counted up nine,’ said the stranger. ‘Wasn’t there another on©?’ ‘Oh, an’ there was. Sure, Michael went away from me the first, an’ no call at all, only he was fond of rovin’ the world. He was the soft, fair boy, with the laughy ways; an’ “let me go off with myself, mother,” he says, “an’ some day I’ll come back an' make a queen of you.” But he forgot me. He wrote a couple of times the first few years, and then no more about him.’ ‘ But you. don’t know he’s dead,’ said Michael. ‘ Sure, maybe he’s the friend of mine I told you about.’ The old woman started and looked up keenly. ‘ There couldn’t be a maybe in it,’ she said. ‘lf Michael sent you to me he’d say it was to his mother you were going.’ # 7S : Do you think you would know him if you were to see him?’

'ls it know him ? My soft, fair boy of sixteen with the twinkle of fun in the blue of his eyes always But I'll never see him in this world again. Died, he did, in some hole or corner out foreign, an' me not with him to say "Michael, avilish, may God receive you merciful!" My little Michael, for he was young. My big Michael, for he was tall, though he hadn't got to be a man yet. My son Michael, the light of heaven to you! You never would ha' forgot your mother if you had been over ground!' 'He didn't. He hasn't forgot you. Mother! Look up at me and see if you know Michael.' She cried out and raised her eyes,' and fixed them with a dazed look on the face of the man beside her.

' Oh, why would y' make a fool of me?' she wailed. 'I never did y' harm, for a stranger to come mockin' me !' .... > : .»x^

'Look at me again, mother.' She stared, fascinated, but incredulous.

A fair, soft boy,' she muttered, ' an' no more than sixteen years. An', a settled, strong man with a dark face to be comin' to me callin' himself Michael.'

' Mother,' said Michael, ' you're making me cry, as if it was a baby had come back to you. Do you forget the years that turn a boy's fair hair dark, and knit him up into a man of strength? It's bad and wrong I was to be so long without writing to you, but the heart-hunger took me at the last, and I'm here how,"

the only one left of the ten you nursed, and I've got money to make you happy and comfortable. Come out of this with me quick, for no matter what color I am, or what size I am, it's Michael and no man else that is talking to you.' At last she believed and understood and wept for joy. And when his face was all smiles to see her so happy, then she cried out that she knew her boy of sixteen in the smile of the man of thirty-six. 'And it would do your heart, good,' said a friend, to see the home he has given her. A lovely cottage with a garden, and . a servant to wait on her, and all on his own farm, where he is living • now with the young wife he married a year ago.'