Song of Erin

by BJ Hoff

  A thought struck David. “You don’t mean Mrs. Samantha Harte, by any chance, do you?”

  “That’s her. Do you know Mrs. Harte, then, Doc? Isn’t she a fine lady?”

  David gave a distracted nod. He had met Samantha Harte several times, actually, most often in response to a summons for medical attention for one of the immigrant families in the area. She had also visited the mission with some of the other members of Immigrant Aid. He had found the young widow to be a gracious, compassionate woman whose efforts on behalf of New York’s immigrants were seemingly tireless.

  From what he knew of her, he needn’t hesitate to enlist her help, whether Jack Kane was involved or not.

  “Madog, do you by any chance know how I can reach Mrs. Harte?”

  “I don’t, Doc.” The big man seemed to consider the question for another moment, then brightened. “I know. We can ask Tommy Ryder. He delivers copy to Mrs. Harte most every day for her work. Tommy will know just where to find her.” Wall stopped, darting a glance away from David. “Are you goin’ to let Mr. Kane know what I done, Doc? Not tellin’ him about those two girls, I mean?”

  David studied the big Irishman. He sensed it wasn’t so much fear he was seeing behind Madog’s anxiety as a reluctance to disappoint the man he apparently truckled to. Obviously, Madog Wall coveted his employer’s trust and good opinion.

  “Wouldn’t you rather explain things yourself?” David asked kindly. “I’m sure Mr. Kane would understand.”

  Wall passed a hand over the top of his head. “To tell you the truth, Doc, I was hopin’ that maybe you’d ask Mrs. Harte to explain for me. Seems as though the boss takes things better from her. She has a way about her, she does. Do you think you could ask her for me?”

  David smiled and nodded. “I’ll be glad to speak to Mrs. Harte for you, Madog.”

  A fleeting image of Samantha Harte went across his mind, and he found it interesting to think that such a small, reserved woman might have tamed the great Black Bear, as Kane was sometimes called.

  “Ah—Madog? About Tommy Ryder?” he prompted, now exceedingly eager to get on with his search.

  22

  CHILDREN OF LONELINESS

  Where does the search for love begin and the soul’s long road of loneliness end?

  CAVAN SHERIDAN, FROM WAYSIDE NOTES

  Samantha was so surprised to find David Leslie at her front door that for a moment she could do nothing but stand and stare at him. She scarcely knew the man, having met him but a few times and then for only brief intervals.

  Vaguely it registered that he felt the awkwardness of the situation, too. “Mrs. Harte? Do you by chance remember me? David Leslie?”

  His smile was apologetic and perhaps somewhat strained. “I’m awfully sorry for intruding like this. I know it’s rude, but it’s rather important that I speak with you. Could you spare me a moment?”

  At a loss, Samantha very nearly forgot her manners. When she finally thought to invite him in, he declined her offer of tea, instead stood just inside the door, glancing around. “I know this is an imposition, but I’ve reason to think you might be able to help me with information about one of my patients at Grace Mission.”

  Puzzled, Samantha indicated that he should take a chair, but he gave a quick smile and shook his head. “I don’t want to take much of your time. It’s kind of you to see me at all.”

  He paused, removed his gloves, and began tapping them against the palm of one hand. “I have a seriously ill patient, you see—pneumonia—a young Irish woman, who was brought to the mission several days ago, along with a little girl. Both immigrants. The older of the two is in a bad way, I’m afraid.”

  Still wondering why he had come to her, Samantha said, “Have you contacted Immigrant Aid, Doctor? I don’t usually assist with the mission residents. I’m a teacher, primarily.”

  “Yes, I understand that. But this is an unusual case. Madog Wall brought this young woman and the child to the mission after the woman collapsed in front of the Vanguard building. Before that, she apparently made some reference to Mr. Kane, to the effect that he should be notified of their arrival in New York, that he was in fact expecting her and the little girl.”

  Samantha frowned, unable to grasp what he was getting at. “Mr. Kane? What does he have to do with this?”

  “I’m sorry—I suppose I’m not making this very clear, am I? It seems that Mr. Kane is out of town—”

  Samantha nodded, and he went on. “Well, Madog—Mr. Wall—indicated that in his absence you might be able to help, that you might know something about the matter.”

  Samantha’s confusion deepened. “I really don’t see how—”

  She stopped, bewilderment suddenly giving way to a flare of excitement. “This young woman—you said there was a little girl with her?”

  He nodded.

  “What about a boy? Was there also a little boy? He’d be the child’s brother.”

  The doctor frowned and shook his head. “No, just the two, the little girl and the young woman who’s so seriously ill. In truth, she’s little more than a girl herself.” He paused. “Although she’s expecting a child.”

  Samantha’s heart slammed against her rib cage. It couldn’t possibly be coincidence! “What’s her name?” she asked, holding her breath. “The young woman?”

  “Terese,” said the doctor. “I’m afraid I don’t know her last name. The child calls herself Shona. Shona Madden.”

  The blood rushed to Samantha’s head. “And they’re at the mission? Grace Mission?”

  Again he nodded.

  “I wonder—would you take me to them?”

  David Leslie had obviously not been expecting this. “Why…yes. Yes, of course. But—now?”

  Samantha had already started for the closet to get her coat. “Yes, please, if you would. I’ll explain on the way.”

  Although David Leslie had tried to prepare her, Samantha was still shocked by Terese Sheridan’s condition. The girl was quite literally wasted, her features gaunt, her skin dry and flaming with fever. In spite of her swollen pregnancy, there didn’t look to be an extra ounce of flesh on her.

  She was obviously delirious, moaning unintelligibly and thrashing about on the bed as David Leslie tried to soothe her. Samantha could see what the doctor had meant when he’d described her as “seriously ill.”

  She saw something else as well. Watching David Leslie, there was little doubt that he had formed an emotional attachment to his patient. He couldn’t seem to drag his eyes away from the stricken young woman, even as he replied to Samantha’s questions.

  The girl was lovely. Despite her grave condition, there was no mistaking her comeliness. Her strong, arresting features had been ravaged by disease and, probably, the extreme privation so common to the Irish immigrants. But in a better time she must have been positively striking.

  Samantha was almost relieved that Cavan wasn’t here to see his sister’s condition. She could just imagine what it would do to him to see her in such a state.

  After another moment, she turned her attention to the child who sat on the other side of Terese Sheridan’s bed. She’d been aware of that bright, intense gaze ever since her arrival at the mission and several times had ventured a smile of reassurance. Invariably, however, she received only a solemn, blue-eyed gaze that seemed to hold an entire lifetime of sorrow.

  Samantha sensed that this child had had no reason to smile for a very long time, if ever. The thought brought her an immeasurable sadness.

  She went around the bed to the little girl, who watched her with the guarded stare of a stray kitten. “You must be Shona,” she said gently, waiting for some acknowledgment from the child.

  When none came, she tried again. “I’m Samantha, Shona. I want you to know how sorry I am that no one was at the harbor to meet you. There was some confusion, and we didn’t know you’d arrived. We should have been there.” She paused. “Your brother, Shona? Didn’t he come with you?”

  The little girl�
��s lip trembled. “He died. Tully died at the hospital.” The look of bewilderment and pain in the child’s eyes cut through Samantha like a scream of grief.

  David Leslie had been watching them. “What hospital is that, Shona?” he asked gently.

  The girl hesitated, her gaze going to Terese. “She said it was called ‘Tompkinsville.’”

  Samantha sucked in a quick breath. So they had been caught up in that terrible place after all! “Oh, Shona, I’m so sorry! I know all this has been awful for you. But we’re going to help you now, I promise.”

  The girl turned slowly back to face Samantha, and that small, thin face with the haunted eyes again tore at her heart. This child, who could not be more than nine or ten years old, surely, wore a look of wretchedness and defeat that made Samantha want to gather her into her arms and comfort her. Yet she sensed the gesture would be rebuffed. This was a child who almost certainly would not dare to trust such a show of emotion.

  So she simply stood there, hurting for Shona Madden and Terese Sheridan, at the same time painfully aware of her own helplessness and inadequacy. After another moment, she shrugged out of her coat and turned to David Leslie. “What can I do to help?”

  He looked at her with something akin to relief. “Would you mind staying for a while? I need to tend to some of the other patients.”

  Samantha loosened the cuffs of her shirtwaist and briskly rolled up her sleeves. “Of course, I’ll stay. But I’d like to get a message to Mr. Kane as soon as possible.” She nodded to Terese Sheridan. “He and her brother are in Albany.”

  David Leslie looked at her. “So she does have family here! I was hoping there would be someone.”

  Samantha dipped a cloth in the basin by the bed. “Not only does she have her brother, who’s going to be absolutely thrilled to find her, but she’s also under the sponsorship of the Vanguard. That’s where I come in.” She glanced at the little girl who seemed to be watching her every move. “And she has her friend, Shona, of course. I know how much that must mean to her.”

  David Leslie gave a wan smile, and Samantha noticed again how tired he looked. It was obvious that Terese Sheridan had a highly dedicated doctor looking after her. That, along with the love and concern of her brother, and the resources of Jack’s newspaper as well, would make it seem that she had a great deal in her favor.

  But as she turned back to the suffering girl on the bed, she wondered if anything would really make a difference.

  Samantha was aware of Shona’s close scrutiny throughout the evening as she tended to Terese Sheridan. The child scarcely moved, except once to go downstairs to eat, and even then one of the women volunteers had to coax her.

  She returned in scarcely no time, sitting down on the same bedside chair to resume her vigil. Other than shifting her gaze from Terese to Samantha periodically, she remained quiet and unmoving. If Samantha attempted to draw her into a conversation, she would make an almost inaudible reply, then again fall silent.

  Samantha ached for the child’s misery. With her entire family lost to her, she was apparently all alone except for Terese Sheridan. She seemed such a forlorn little thing, with those sorrowful eyes and solemn demeanor. Samantha wished she could think of something to brighten those pinched features, but she felt at a loss to manage more than a consoling smile every now and then. This was a very sad little girl, badly in need of affection and attention. But the only person left to whom she was likely to turn now lay hovering between life and death, according to David Leslie.

  Samantha felt Shona watching her. For a moment their eyes met, and she realized that in addition to the sadness brimming in the child’s gaze, there was also a sharp glint of fear lurking there.

  She knew a moment of dismay and even anger, that any child should have to feel so abandoned and so utterly alone. Without warning, her thoughts went to Jack. From what she knew, he couldn’t have been all that much older than Shona Madden when he arrived in New York, still a boy, with the sole responsibility of a younger sister and a baby brother.

  As hard as it was to picture Jack ever being frightened of anything, it occurred to her now that he must have been terrified. Cast onto the shores of a foreign country, in a strange city, with no one to meet him, no one to turn to for help—how could he not have been frightened?

  Her heart softened even more toward him as she tried to picture that unyielding chin and hard-set mouth, the restless dark eyes and strong, always busy hands on the person of a bewildered fourteen-year-old boy. A boy with no parents, no home, no friends or family waiting for him—only a sprawling, noisy city teeming with hidden dangers and unknown terrors.

  She wondered how much of that boy still lingered in the man—a man who could go cold and stonyhearted in an instant, whose rage unleashed was the stuff of outrageous gossip and whose very name had become synonymous with power and notoriety.

  How much of what Jack had become had begun with that frightened, lonely boy who had entered the city with nothing but the clothes on his back and the will of a titan?

  She could have wept for them both, for the little girl sitting across from her and for the man she sometimes thought she really didn’t know at all. Who could say which of the two had actually suffered most?

  She looked back at Shona Madden, who had taken Terese’s hand between both her own and was rubbing it gently, over and over again in a kind of insistent rhythm, as if to will her return to consciousness.

  Again Samantha knew a fierce urge to reassure the girl, to tell her she was no longer alone and that everything was going to be all right very soon now.

  To her sorrow, she didn’t think the girl would believe it. In truth, she wasn’t sure she believed it herself. And so she kept silent as she went on trying to cool the raging fever of the girl who lay delirious, seemingly losing the battle for her life, while the child with the pain-filled eyes willed her to survive.

  23

  LONG NIGHT’S VIGIL

  Have mercy, Heaven, on feeble clay—

  Hear Thy stricken people pray.

  RICHARD D’ALTON WILLIAMS

  It was after nine o’clock the next night before Jack and Cavan arrived at Grace Mission. Samantha was still there. She hadn’t left Terese Sheridan’s bedside except to eat in the mission kitchen and take a brief rest the night before. The child, Shona, had slept only sporadically; for the most part she, too, remained seated by the bed, watching over the older girl with a steady, solemn intensity.

  Samantha knew she must appear altogether disheveled by now, but for once she didn’t care how she might look to Jack. Her only thought was one of overwhelming relief when he and Cavan Sheridan walked in.

  Nor did it occur to her to be in the least surprised that Jack would accompany his young reporter on so personal a quest. She never questioned but what he would come, once word of Terese Sheridan’s condition reached him. Not only did he hold Cavan in high regard, but Samantha suspected that he had also developed a kind of protective, big-brotherly affection for him. At times she wondered if Cavan Sheridan hadn’t in some way helped to ease the absence of Jack’s younger brother, Brady.

  She rose at the sight of them, catching her breath at the anguished expression on Cavan’s face the moment he saw his sister. Jack must have noticed, too, for he grasped the boy’s shoulder as they approached the bed.

  Samantha couldn’t begin to imagine what must be going through Cavan’s mind as he gazed down on his sister—his only surviving family member—for the first time in years. Like Jack, he had left Ireland years ago, when he was still a boy, so Terese would have been only a child at the time. Indeed, she was scarcely more than a child now, despite the fact that she was carrying a baby of her own.

  Jack gave her a long look, releasing Cavan’s shoulder as they came to stand on the other side of the bed from Samantha and Shona. “How is she?” Jack asked, his expression skeptical after another glance at Terese.

  Trying not to alarm Cavan, Samantha chose her words carefully. “There’s been…no
change as yet. She’s still very ill.”

  Jack searched her gaze for a moment, then stood watching as Cavan dropped to his knees beside the bed.

  Samantha could have wept for the stricken look on his face as he knelt there, staring at his sister, who lay as still as death itself, except for her harsh, labored breathing.

  Cavan’s eyes held utter torment as he covered his sister’s hand with both of his. His gaze traveled the length of her form, lingering only a second or two on the swollen mound of her abdomen beneath the bed linens. Samantha saw him shudder, then bring Terese’s hand to his lips.

  His voice sounded hoarse and strangled as he murmured to her. “Oh, alannah, alannah, I should never have left you behind. What have I done to you?”

  Again Jack reached to grasp his shoulder. Samantha was surprised at the strained expression that settled over him all of a sudden. He had the look of a man who had suffered a great blow. His usually dusky complexion was strangely pale, and as he stood gazing down on Terese Sheridan, he was perspiring as though the room weren’t almost uncomfortably chill. As she watched, his gaze swept the dormitory room like that of a man seeking escape. Yet he remained with Cavan, one large hand gripping the other’s shoulder.

  As for Cavan, he seemed unaware of anyone else in the room as he bent even closer to his sister, tears streaming down his cheeks. He went on crooning to her, now in the strange tongue Samantha had come to recognize as Gaelic. Across the bed her eyes met Jack’s, and he gave a small nod of his head to indicate they should leave the two alone.

  The corridor outside the room was dimly lit, the building hushed with the stillness of night except for an occasional outcry from one of the women in the dormitory.

  For a moment Jack stood staring back into the room, and Samantha thought he seemed vastly relieved to have left it. Finally, he turned to her. “You said David Leslie is taking care of the girl?”