“Friend, your eyes are clearer than mine. Still, it will please me if you get up, and let me walk a little way with you. Or, if you don’t feel able to walk, allow me to take you to your destination in a cab.”
His new acquaintance rose, nimbly enough. Then Power saw that he had been using a bundle of newspapers as a cushion.
“A cab, is it?” laughed the other. “My! but money must come aisy your road, a thing it ’ud nivver do for me, thry as I might, an’ I was a hard worrker in me time. But I’d sooner walk. I’m feelin’ a thrifle shtiff, an’ I haven’t far to go.”
“May I come with you?”
“Ye may, an’ welcome. It’s a mighty pleasant thing to have a fri’ndly chat wid a man who has sinse enough to wear fine clo’es an’ talk like the aristocracy, an’ yet not be ashamed to be seen sp’akin’ to wan o’ my sort.”
“Will you think it rude if I inquire what you mean to do with those newspapers? Surely, at your age, you don’t sell them in the streets.”
“Faith, I’ll have to thry my hand at it now, an’ no mistake. Me grandson, Jimmy Maguire, was run over this afthernoon by an express van, an’ he’s up there at the hospital in West 16th Street. Jimmy is all that is left betune me an’ the wall, an’ I’m goin’ now to give in his returns. Mebbe the newspaper folk will let me hould his stand till the docthors sind him out.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Sure, sorr, God is good to the poor Irish.”
“I hope so, most sincerely. Still, a newspaper is a commercial enterprise, and the publisher may think you unequal to the job. What then?”
“Thin? I’d take a reef in me belt for breakfast, an’ spind a p’aceful hour in the cathaydral, that dhrame in shtone up there on Fifth Avenue. Don’t ye remimber that verse in the Psalms, ‘I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread.’ Manny’s the toime thim worrds have consoled me whin iverything looked black, an’ I was throubled wid quare thoughts, bein’ nigh famishin’ wid hunger.”
“Have you actually wanted food – here, in this great city?”
The old fellow laughed merrily. Evidently, he found the question humorous.
“Sure, I’ve had the misforchunes of Job,” he said. “First, I lost me darlin’ wife. Thin I lost me job as a buildher’s foreman. I had two sons, and wan was dhrowned at say, an’ the other was killed in a mine – ”
“In a mine? What sort of mine?”
“A gold mine, at a place called Bison, in Colorado.”
“When?”
“Nine years ago last Christmas?”
“Was his name Maguire?”
“No, sorr – Rafferty. A foine, upshtandin’ boy he was, too.”
Power recalled the incident. Indeed, he had helped to clear the rockfall which crushed the life out of the unfortunate miner. But he gave no sign of his knowledge.
“Why is your grandson named Maguire?” he went on.
“He is my daughther’s son, an’ she died in childbirth. More’s the pity, because Maguire was a dacint man; but he took to the dhrink afther she was gone, an’ that was the ind of him.”
“Yet you are a firm believer in the goodness of Providence, notwithstanding all these cruel blows?”
“Musha, sorr,” said Rafferty anxiously, “have ye nivver read the Book o’ Job? Look at the thrials an’ crosses put on that poor ould craythur, an’ where would he have been if the thrue faith wasn’t in him?”
“Rafferty, I would give ten years of my life to believe as you believe.”
“Indade, sorr, ye needn’t give tin minutes. Go home to yer room, an’ sink down on your marrowbones, an’ ax for help an’ guidance, an’ they’ll be given you as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. Though, moind ye, ye mayn’t know it all at wance, just as it may be rainin’ tomorrow, when the sun will be hid; but he’ll be shinin’ high up in the sky for all that.”
The two crossed Sixth Avenue together, and Rafferty pointed to a big building, a place ablaze with light and quivering with the activities of six-decker printing machines.
“That’s where I’m goin’,” he said. “Maybe they’ll detain me some toime.”
“Before we part, my friend, tell me where you live.”
“Away over in the poorest part o’ Twinty-sivinth Street, sorr.”
“And how old is your grandson?”
“He’ll be eleven next birthday.”
“Is he seriously injured?”
Then tears came into the old man’s eyes. For once his splendid courage wavered.
“They wouldn’t tell me at the hospital, an’ that’s the truth, sorr; but a polisman who helped to pull him from undher the wagon said he thought he had escaped the worrst.”
“Are you and Jimmy known to any of the priests at the cathedral?”
“Sure, sorr, don’t they all know us? I remimber Canon M’Evoy comin’ there twinty-foive years ago.”
“And now, Rafferty, as one friend to another, will you let me help you?”
“Musha, an’ is it beggin’ you think I am?” and a gleam of Celtic fire shone through the mist of anguish.
“No. But you have given me good counsel tonight, and I am minded to pay for it.”
“Faith, I haven’t said a worrd that isn’t plain for all min, an’ women, too, to read, if they have a moind to look for it in the right place.”
“Sometimes one needs reminding of that, and you have done it. Come, now. Let me finance you with a few dollars, just to carry you along till Jimmy is around again.”
Rafferty drew a knotted hand across his eyes, and then peered keenly into Power’s face. What he saw there seemed to reassure him.
“Well, an’ it’s me that’s the lucky man, an’ no mistake!” he cried, while whole-hearted joy seemed to make him young again. “I’ll take your help in the spirit it’s offered in, sorr. If the situation was revarsed, I’d do what I could for you, because you have the look av a man who’d do unto others that which he wants others to do unto him. An’, by that same token, I’ve as much chance av gettin’ Jimmy’s stand wid the papers as I have av bein’ run for Prisident av the United States next fall.”
Power took a folded note from his pocketbook.
“Put that where the cat can’t get it,” he said. “And now goodby, and thank you.”
But something unusual in the aspect of the note caused Rafferty to open it.
“Sure, an’ you were nearly committin’ a terrible blundher!” he cried excitedly. “This is a hundred dollars, sorr, an’ you’d be m’anin’, mebbe, to give me a foive.”
“No. Don’t be vexed with me, but that amount of money will make things easy during the next month or so.”
“The next month! Glory be to God, I can live like a prince for three months, on a hundred dollars!”
“I firmly believe that you will live better than most princes… That’s right. Stow it away carefully, and don’t forget that I am still your debtor.”
“Why, sorr, I can nivver repay you as long as I live.”
“Oh, yes, you can. Remember me when you go to the cathedral tomorrow.”
“Sorr, may I ax yer name?”
“Power – John Darien Power.”
“Arrah, an’ are ye Irish?”
“No.”
“’Tis an Irish name, annyhow. But it matthers little what nation ye belong to. You’re a rale Christian, an’ ’tis writ in your face.”
“There have been times when I would have doubted that; but the spirit of God has been abroad in New York tonight, and, perhaps, it has descended on me. Once more, goodby! I needn’t wish you content, because you cinched that long ago.”
“Ah, sorr, may Hivin bless ye! Manny’s the heart you’ll make light in this vale av tears, or I’m no judge av a man.”
It seemed to Power’s overwrought imagination as though Rafferty had suddenly assumed the guise and bearing of a supernatural being. Those concluding words rang in his ears as he hurried away. They had the sound of a message, an exhortation. The iron walls which appeared to encircle him had been cast down. His feet were set on an open road, fair and inviting, and he cared not whither it led so long as he escaped from the prison in which his soul might have been pent eternally.
Diving through a press of traffic, he reached the opposite side of a small square. A congestion of street-cars and other vehicles cleared during a brief interval, and, looking back, he saw the old man standing motionless, gazing up at the sky. At that instant a ragged urchin, carrying a bundle of papers, seemed to recognize Rafferty, and spoke to him.
The Irishman, called back to earth, bent over the youth, and, evidently obeying a generous impulse, added his own store of “returns” to those of the boy, patted him on the head, and pointed to a doorway.
Power could have repeated with tolerable accuracy every word that passed, though the notable din of New York was quadrupled in that particular locality:
“Say, how’s Jimmy, Mr. Rafferty?”
“Eh? Faix, he’s mighty bad, but God is good, and mebbe he’ll recover. Is it takin’ in yer returns ye are? Well, now, here’s some I don’t want; so just add thim to yer own shtock, an’ mind ye’ll be afther takin’ the money to yer mother. She needs it more’n I do, the poor sowl.”
Then the man of faith recrossed Sixth Avenue, and was lost to sight.
In his room that night Power wrote to Marguerite:
“My dear Meg. – This is my first and last letter to you; so I pray you read it with sympathy. Today I bought a ring at a jeweler’s intending it to be a token of our promised marriage. I am sending the ring, and I ask you to wear it in remembrance of one who must remain forever dead to you. The life of happiness we planned has turned to Dead Sea fruit; for I have been struck by a bolt from Heaven, and marriage becomes an impossibility. I would explain myself more clearly if explanation were not an insult. But I must say this – no man could have foreseen the calamity which has befallen me, which has laid in wait throughout the long years to overwhelm me at last. That is all I dare tell you. Forgive me, dear one. I would not willingly cause you a pang; but Fate is stronger than I, and I am vanquished. Do you know me well enough to accept this statement in its crude truth? It cannot be gainsaid, it cannot be altered, time itself cannot assuage its rigors. Do not write to me. I have no fear of reproach, which would never come from your dear lips, but your strong, brave words would wring my very heartstrings. And yet, I love you, and will grieve till the end that you should have been reft from me. Farewell, then, my dear one.
Next morning he paid a visit to the clergy-house connected with the cathedral on Fifth Avenue. He asked a priest who received him if anything was known of an old man named Rafferty, who lived on West 27th Street, and had a grandson named Maguire.
“Yes,” said the ecclesiastic. “I know Rafferty well, and esteem him most highly. In all New York there is no more God-fearing man.”
Power smiled. “Fearing?” he questioned.
“Well, I accept the correction. ‘Serving,’ I should have said.”
“And he really exists?”
“Undoubtedly. Why do you ask?”
“I fancied that, perhaps, the age of miracles had not passed.”
“Who says it has?”
“Not I. But I come here for a specific purpose. I mean to provide Rafferty with the sum of fifteen dollars weekly while he lives, and, if his grandson recovers from an accident he sustained yesterday, a further sum sufficient to maintain, clothe, and educate the boy until he is taught a trade. My banker will co-operate in a trust for this purpose. Will you, or one of your brotherhood, act with him?”
Thus it came to pass that Rafferty, like Job, was more prosperous in the end than in the beginning, and died when he was “old and full of days”; but he had lived five long years to bless the name of his benefactor.
That evening Power took train to the West. He prepared MacGonigal for his coming by a telegram, never thinking that an event which lay in the category of common things for him meant something akin to an earthquake at Bison. He was enlightened when a brass band, “headed by the mayor and a deputation of influential citizens” (see Rocky Mountain News of current date) met him at Bison station, where an address of welcome was read, the while MacGonigal and Jake beamed on a cheering multitude. At first Power was astonished and secretly annoyed; then he could not help but yield to the genuine heartiness of this civic welcome, which contrasted so markedly with his last dismal home-coming. He made a modest speech, expressing his real surprise at the community’s progress, and promising not to absent himself again for so long a period.
Then he was escorted in a triumphal procession to the ranch. It was the organizers’ intent that he should sit in an open carriage in solitary state, in order that thousands of people who had never seen him should feast their eyes on “the man who made Bison,” while it was felt that, if he were not distracted by conversation, he would give more heed to local marvels in the shape of trolley-cars, a town hall, a public library, a “Mary Power” institute, and a whole township of new avenues and streets.
But he declined emphatically to fall in with this arrangement, and, if his subconscious mind were not dwelling on less transient matters, might have been much amused by noting how MacGonigal, Jake, and the mayor (a man previously unknown to him) shared the honors of the hour. Nothing could have proved more distasteful personally than this joyous home-coming; yet he went through the ordeal with a quiet dignity that added to his popularity. For, singularly enough, he had not been forgotten or ignored in Bison. MacGonigal, the leader of every phase of local activity, never spoke in public that he did not refer to “our chief citizen, John Darien Power,” and his name and personality figured in all matters effecting the town’s rapid development.
He was deeply touched when he found the ranch exactly as he had left it. He imagined that Jake and his family were living there; but the overseer had built himself a fine house close at hand, and the Dolores homestead was altered in no respect, save that it seemed to have shrunk somewhat, owing to the growth of the surrounding trees and shrubberies.
When, at last, he and MacGonigal were left together in the room which was so intimately associated with vital happenings in his career, his stout partner brought off a remark which the ordered ceremony of the railroad depot had not permitted.
“Wall, ef I ain’t dog-goned glad ter see ye ag’in, Derry!” he said, holding forth a fat fist for another handshake. “But whar on airth did ye bury yerself? Between yer friend Mr. Dacre an’ meself, the hull blame world was s’arched fer news of you; but you couldn’t hev vanished more completely ef Jonah’s whale had swallered you, or you’d been carried up to Heaven in a fiery chariot like Elijah.”
“Hello, Mac!” cried Power, eying his elderly companion with renewed interest. “Whence this Biblical flavor in your speech? Have you taken a much-needed religious turn?”
“It’s fer example, an’ that’s a fac’, Derry. Sence you boosted me inter bein’ a notorious char-ac-ter, I’ve kind o’ lived up ter specification. Thar’s no gettin’ away from it. Ye can’t deal out prizes to a row o’ shiny-faced kids in a Sunday-school without larnin’ some of the stock lingo, an’ bits of it stick. But don’t let’s talk about me. I want ter hear about you. Whar hev you been?”
“It’s a long story, Mac, and will take some telling. Just now, looking around at this room and its familiar objects, my mind goes back through the years. What did you say to Nancy when she wrote and asked what had become of me?”
MacGonigal, who had made quite a speech at the reception, and had been unusually long-winded during the drive, reverted suddenly to earlier habit.
“Who’s been openin’ old sores?” he inquired.
“No one. Nancy wrote to me before she died. That is all.”
“Look-a here, Derry, why not leave it at that?”
“Unhappily, I cannot do otherwise. But I have a right to know exactly what happened.”
“It wasn’t such a heap. She cabled an’ wrote, an’ I had to tell her you was plumb crazy about – about yer mother’s death. That was the on’y reason I could hand out fer your disappearin’ act. Pore thing! Soon after she got my letter she gev in her own checks.”
“Have you met Marten recently?”
“He was in Denver last fall.”
“And the child – the little girl – did you see her?”
“Yep. Gosh, Derry, she’s as like her mother as two peas in a pod.”
“Is Marten fond of her?”
“Derry, that kid kin twist him round her little finger; but he’s a hard man ter move any other way.”
“Where does he live?”
“In Europe, fer the most part. He’s out of mines an’ rails – in the West, anyhow. Last I heerd, he was puttin’ through a state loan fer the I-talians.”
“Quite an international financier, eh?”
“That’s what the papers call him. Guess it’s Shakespeare’s English fer a dog-goned shark.”
“You know Willard is dead?”
“Know! Didn’t I celebrate with a school-treat fer two thousand kids?”
“Mac! Haven’t they taught you better than that at your Sunday-schools?”
“Thar’s a proverb about skinnin’ a Rooshan an’ findin’ a Tartar. That’s me, all the time, when any of that bunch shows up on the screen. What d’ye think Marten kem to Denver for?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“He wanted ter buy the ranch. No, not the mine,” for MacGonigal misread the amazement in Power’s face, “just the ranch. Said he was anxious for little Nancy to own the property whar her mother lived as a gal.”
“And what did you say – or do?”
“Handed him a joint straight outer the refrigerator, all fixed with mustard. ‘Marten,’ says I, just like that, ‘Marten, ef you want yer little gal ter grow up good an’ happy, don’t let her suspicion thar’s such a place as Dolores on the map.’ ‘Why?’ says he, lookin’ black as thunder. ‘Because,’ says I, ‘it’s well named when thar’s one of the Willard family on the location. Ef any children kin play around here an’ be happy, they’ll be Derry Power’s, not yours.’ Sorry, Derry, ef ye didn’t wish me ter rile him; but, till you was given up fer good, the one spot in Colorado his money couldn’t buy was this yer house an’ land.”
And again did MacGonigal fail to interpret his hearer’s expression, nor did he ever understand the tragic import of his words. The story of Nancy’s transgression was buried with her, and the grave seldom gives up its secrets. Moreover, was she not nearly seven years dead? And seven years of death count in the scale of forgetfulness as against seventy and seven of life.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE SECOND GENERATION
Marguerite Sinclair did not write. Perhaps, tucked away in a corner of Power’s heart, a tender little shoot of hope that she might be moved to disobedience and revolt blossomed for awhile. But it soon withered. She did not break the silence he had imposed on her. The quiet weeks passed. The vessel in which the girl and her father had traveled to London had already returned to South America; but never a word came from Marguerite. So far as externals went, Power seemed to have settled down again to the life of the student and the recluse from which he had been so rudely withdrawn. Beyond a rearrangement with Jake, whereby that pillar of the community was given the stock-raising business, while Power retained only the ranch, together with the paddocks and orchards in its immediate vicinity, there was no change in affairs at Bison. MacGonigal was offered a controlling interest in the mine; but he scoffed at the proposal. The proceeds of his third share would amount to nearly quarter of a million dollars for the current year, and his personal expenditure did not exceed a fifth of that sum.
“It’s the Scot blood in me,” he explained, when people rallied him as to his saving habits. “My great-grandfather lost a sixpence one day in Belfast, an’ the family has been makin’ good ever sence. Thar ain’t no sixpences here; so I run a dime bank. Another thing,” and his bulging eyes challenged dispute, “it’s a bully fine notion ter let well enough alone. This yer proposition is goin’ along O. K. Let her rip!”
Power, of course, was accumulating wealth with every turn of the rolls in the reduction mills. The name of the mine became a standing joke in Colorado. “What price the El Preço outfit?” men would say, and spoke with bated breath of the millions it would bring in the open market. Not only were there almost unlimited supplies of rich ore in sight, but the very granite containing the main vein itself yielded handsomely under low-grade treatment. It seemed impossible that the undertaking should go wrong at any stage. If water was tapped, it went to irrigate new lands which MacGonigal had added to the ranch. If a new shaft was sunk, sufficient pay-ore was taken out of the excavation to meet the cost; whereas, in ninety-nine mines among a hundred, the charge would have fallen on capital.
For three months Power lay fallow at Dolores. His bodily vigor was unimpaired; but his mind demanded the restorative tonic of peace. A Chicago bookstore sent him the hundred most important books which had been published during his absence from civilization, and, with their aid, he supplemented Marguerite’s lessons, and soon brought himself abreast of contemporary thought. Beyond establishing a maternity hospital in Bison, and renewing the grant to Dr. Stearn’s poor, he did not embark in philanthropic schemes to any great extent. Still, he found pressing need of a secretary, and secured an excellent assistant in a Harvard undergraduate, a young man whose brilliant career in the university was brought to a dramatic close by an automobile accident which crippled him for life. He was one of the first victims of the new force. Power had never seen a motor-car until he reached New York. The industry had sprung into being when he was immured in the Andes. Even yet it was in the experimental stage, and his secretary, Wilmot Richard Howard, was testing an improved steering-gear when he was smashed up by a hostile lumber wagon.
The post Power offered him was a veritable godsend, and he, in his way, became infinitely useful to his employer. A curious sympathy soon existed between them. The limitations of Howard’s maimed body caused him to understand something of the cramped outlook before Power’s maimed soul. Moreover, within a month, his wide reading and thorough acquaintance with the world’s current topics filled gaps in Power’s knowledge which books alone could not repair. When Power quitted Bison in the spring of the year none who did not know his history would ever have suspected that he had dwelt so long apart from his fellow-men.
The two traveled together. Halting in New York for a few hours only, they crossed the Atlantic in the Lucania. They remained in London a week, living in one of those small and most exclusive West End hotels whose patrons come and go without the blare of trumpets in the press which is the penalty, or reward, of residence in the more noteworthy caravansaries. London, it is true, is the one city in the world where a millionaire can mingle unnoticed with the crowd; but Power took no risk of undue publicity. Once, in later years, a newspaper discovered him, and blazoned forth to all and sundry the status he occupied in Colorado; thenceforth, Howard arranged matters in his own name, and hotel managers and hall-porters bowed to him as the holder of the purse.
From London, reinforced by a first-rate valet, the pair went to Devon. There, in a wooded comb looking out over the Atlantic, they found Dacre, the one man living in whose ears Power could to some extent unburden his heart. From him were forthcoming certain details as to Nancy’s end; for he had happened to dine one evening with the physician who attended her constantly after her arrival in England, and the doctor, little guessing how well informed his neighbor was as to Mrs. Marten’s antecedents, had entered into particulars of what he described as “a case that presented unusual and baffling features.”
“From what he told me, I gathered that she must have pined away from the moment she left you in the Adirondacks,” said Dacre. “I realize now that she not only fretted herself into a low state of health, but practically gave her life to her child. No wonder the doctor was puzzled! He could not diagnose her ailment; for who would have suspected that a young, beautiful, and rich woman was resolved to die? Now, knowing what we do know, we can see that it was better so. She would never again have lived with Marten as his wife, and there was bound to be trouble sooner or later. Dear lady! I have often thought of her, and of you. Sometimes, when that most misleading faculty called common sense urged that you, too, must be dead, I have pictured your meeting in the great beyond. Indeed, it is the hope of such reunions that accounts for mortal belief in immortality. Remember, I also have paced the Via Dolorosa, and I prize those hours, above all others, in which I dream of a kingdom where wrongs are adjusted by an all-wise Intelligence, and the wretched failures of earthly life are dislodged from memory by some divine anodyne.”
