Bold Sons of Erin

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  If only men and women were clear as numbers.

  With the light already beginning to flee, I turned about and made my way back to Pottsville, passing through the miasma of foundries and iron works, with their spilling fires and turbans of smoke and railcars shunting and clanging. Our age is harsh, with the quality of metal, and I wonder if there will be beauty left for our children.

  As I followed the long thread of Centre Street again, with the lighting of the lamps in all the front windows, a sadness filled me, a grief beyond all reason. I had the sense that, even had I been able to run, as in the days when my leg was unimpaired, time would always outpace me. Twas as if the drapes were always drawn shut in the moment before I could see some truth inside, as if life refused to let me have a good look at it. My quarrel with my wife come to seem a petty thing, fruitless and ill judged. What did it matter what the great world thought of us, if we were happy together, with our son and the little one to come? With Fanny, young and beaming in the lamplight.

  All at once, I wanted to rush home, and the few blocks remaining seemed a boundless desert. Darkness fell, and carts and carriages slowed, while men and women buttoned their coats higher, chastened by the cold end of October.

  I turned up Norwegian Street and nearly collided with a Presbyterian, a Mr. Murdoch renowned for inventive parsimony. The Presbyterians have a hard creed, for they believe the world is made up in advance, as if God had lost interest and moved on. As if our paths are set and we are powerless to alter them. I could not bear to think our choices useless, or to think that some are damned, no matter their striving. What if my Mary and I were born to be sent apart upon the Day of Judgement? How could I bear to lose her for eternity?

  Now, our house is not grand. And it is rented, for I had put our savings into railway shares and did not wish to buy property until I might do so confidently. Yet, it seemed to me, that autumn night, to be the finest haven in the world.

  I had not even set my hand to the latch, before the door pulled open. Twas Fanny, who had been watching. John, though nearly two, was on her hip. Crying, as if in fear of all the world, which is unlike him.

  A bit of a glow lit Fanny’s cheeks and the color did not come from the lamp alone. The corners of her lips rose. But her smile lasted barely an instant.

  “Oh, Major Jones!” she greeted me, for my wife insisted upon a certain formality between us, “a wicked, bad thing hae cam o’er us. Hoosh, na, Johnnie, there’a a braw laddie.” She turned her great, warm eyes to me again. “The Missus is gone for to see him up the hoose, and weepin’ her eyes out.”

  “What is it, Fan? What is it, girl?”

  “Her uncle, your Mr. Evans, sir. The lass run doon to say he’s collapsed and he’s dyin’.”

  NINE

  “HE WON’T LAST THE NIGHT,” DR. CARR TOLD ME. “Perhaps not the next hour.” He shook his head, as medical fellows do when they are confounded. “It must have felt like an explosion in his chest. He’s only drawing breath by willing it.”

  We stood in the receiving parlor of Mr. Evans’s manse. A fine house it was, though not so grand as many that would come later to our town. Of three solid stories, plus the servants’ attic and kitchen cellar, it was faced with brown stone in the midst of a prosperous row on Mahantango Street, where the quality live. And yet, twas the queerest thing. For all the respectability of the furnishings, there always seemed a sparseness about the place, as if each room wanted another bit to be properly finished. Twas a cold house, even when the hearth and all the stoves were going. Perhaps it suited Mr. Evans well that way, for there was a sparseness about him, too, and he did not let emotion disturb his purposes. He avoided false enthusiasms, went quietly to his church, and led a life that merited emulation.

  Mr. Evans had never married, although he seemed fond of the company of children. My Mary had ever been his favorite, I knew that from my own boyhood, for I had been kept apart during his visits, allowing him to enjoy her unmolested. And when our John was born, Mr. Evans come as near to jubilation as ever I have seen him. Our presence was expected at Sunday dinner, which was served early, and then we would sit for hours as he coddled the child. After the war called me away, my wife and son still went up the hill each Sunday, and Thursday nights were added to their visits. Mr. Evans never failed to exclaim over John’s robust health and vigor, and he praised the boy’s intelligence until even a father wearied of the repetition. Our John is a splendid child, but I did not wish to see him grow spoiled or haughty.

  I know Mr. Evans was a respected man, but am not certain he was fondly liked. For he was a careful, private fellow, and Pottsville expected largesse among the wealthy. Our high society wished to be treated and petted, and the poorer sorts desired their allotted joys of gossip, complaint and envy. He kept himself so much apart that he even declined to become an elder of his church, when the honor was offered, as it is to all the fellows who grow rich.

  Fortunate in the matters of this earth, an unaccounted sadness walked beside him. Except when he was fussing over our John, his smiles were as fragile as his tastes were frugal. He did not touch a drop of alcohol and watered down his summer lemonade. Yet, any guests who found themselves invited to his house—much to their surprise, if not bewilderment—were treated generously. His table was simple, but never pinched or mean. He handled his miners and laborers well, accepting their respect, but fleeing their gratitude. Nor would he hear my own thanks when he helped us to America, gave me work and set us up in Pottsville during our struggles. He made do with old suits, as long as they might be brushed into a decency, and even new clothing seemed worn upon his shoulders. Lean he was, in all regards, and tighter with words than a Welshman is apt to be.

  Now, he was dying. With a suddenness evocative of battle. I thought, again, of all those Sunday dinners, with roast beef on the platter in its blood. I remembered his Christian calm when I showed him how his former keeper of accounts had cheated him, although he helped the fellow to jail thereafter. He was a fair man, in an age that could not lay claim to that virtue. Mr. Evan Ezekial Evans had led a worthy life and would die unblemished. That is something, in these days of scandal.

  “No hope, then?” I asked Dr. Carr, who had grown gray in watching others die.

  “He’s already more of a ghost than he is a man. And in great pain, Major Jones. Yet, he refused my offer of morphia. He insisted, with all his strength, that he must remain awake, until he had spoken to Mrs. Jones and to you . . .” The doctor frowned, testing words inside his mouth before speaking them. “And . . . there is someone else, I’m afraid. You must expect another visitor this evening.” He drew his watch from his waistcoat. “I hope the gravity of the situation is clear to her.”

  I thought I heard a hint of disapproval in his voice, which is unlike a doctor. For they know secrets that are best kept hid, and they learn early that they must not judge. I wondered who on earth the fellow might mean by this female visitor? The truth is Mr. Evans had no friends.

  Twas then I heard my Mary’s footsteps, clipping down the stairs in a terrible hurry. A moment later, she looked into the parlor. Locks of hair had strayed from the bun at the back of her head, and she wore that pallid look the dying impose on the living.

  “I heard the door,” she told us, then bore down on me. “Abel, I so hoped it was you. He’s so anxious to speak with you. I do not think I have ever seen him so determined about a thing. You must come up.”

  My darling held out her hand to me, and I took it. How trivial the afternoon’s fuss had come to seem by evening.

  We two went up the staircase, hand in hand, with my darling ever half a step ahead. My leg makes for a slight delay, but I think I would have walked those stairs without complaint had they led all the way to the moon, just to have the holding of her hand the while.

  I did not know what Mr. Evans might want of me, except to have my promise I would look after his niece, who was his last remaining relative, but for our John. And that promise he should have, though there wa
s no need to ask it. Otherwise, I could not think of a thing that mattered, for the truth is that all he had done for me had been done for my wife’s benefit. He treated me well, but I do not think he warmed to me. Strict though he was, I believe he found me self-righteous, though that is a nonsense. He was reconciled to our marriage and cherished its fruits, but I fear he would have liked a grander husband for Mary. He always looked at me a bit askance, although he valued my work and paid me fairly.

  Perhaps he wished me to look after his colliery, until it could be sold. His mining operation seemed as close to a child as anything he possessed, and he had taken great pride in building it up while other men went bankrupt right and left.

  Well, we would see. I resolved as a matter of course to comfort the old fellow, and to promise all that I might fairly do. Of course, I had my duties as a soldier, and such must take precedent.

  I never had been in Mr. Evans’s private rooms. I never had been above the main floor of the house, where the dining room and parlor were my boundaries. Upstairs, the hallway light was but a flicker. The walls were bare of pictures and the carpet runner looked older than the ages. Things smelled of mildew not quite scrubbed away.

  His bedroom was all shadows, with only a silk-draped lamp on the bedside table. Small he looked in his vastness of sheets, much smaller than ever I thought him. His arm sought to point me out as I walked in, but lacked the strength to lift itself more than an inch or two. His face was gray as paraffin and one eye had shut tightly, already free of this world’s deceitful light. Ever a fastidious man, he was reduced to an embarrassment now. His mouth hung open and he drooled on the pillow. But the one eye that had not quit him blazed at the world.

  He tried, again, to raise his forearm, but could not.

  “Uncle,” my wife said, “I have brought you Abel, as you asked. See? Here he is, Uncle Evan.”

  The faintest nod answered her. But when Mr. Evans spoke, his voice surprised me with its brusqueness and clarity.

  “Leave us, Mary. Leave us now. Your husband will call for you, if you are needed.”

  At that, his arm come up a bit higher and a finger pointed back toward the door. That had been it, see. He had not been pointing at me in welcome, but telling my Mary to go, that we must be left alone.

  I did not understand what he might want. In his dying hours, if not moments. What need for privacy now? Why seek an intimacy with me on his way to God?

  As my darling made to leave, he called after her, voice still bell-clear. “Don’t let her come up . . . until Abel and I have finished. I will send him down to you.”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  When the door shut behind her, he told me, “Sit down. There.”

  I took the chair pressed up against the bed.

  He grasped my wrist. Quick as a cobra strikes. And he held me fast with the strength of a strapping young miner. I saw him wince at the pain of his doings and wondered at the effort it must cost him, but he would not let me go. As if he feared I might run from the room.

  “How are you feeling, Mr. Evans?” I asked him. Twas a foolish question, I know. But our words do not come near the grandeur of death.

  “Listen to me,” he insisted.

  I leaned closer. I could smell death already upon him. His whiskers lay flaccid and his flesh had lost all suppleness. Yet, his grip was almost monstrous in its power.

  “Listen to me,” he repeated. “To my confession. I must confess. To you.”

  “Now, now, surely you have nothing—”

  “Quiet, you,” he snapped. Imperiously. As if death itself were speaking, all dark majesty. “Listen. I must tell you . . . I must tell . . .”

  His good eye closed and I thought he might be leaving us. But his grip did not slacken and his breath wheezed on.

  The eye popped open again and sought mine own.

  “Your wife . . . Mary . . . our Mary . . . is no niece to me . . .”

  “But—”

  “She is my daughter.”

  As soon as he forced out the words, the poor fellow sighed. His grasp of my arm relaxed, though not by much. He still wished me his prisoner. As if to take me with him on his journey. Or perhaps to hold himself yet among the living.

  How much seemed clear to me then! Although he had been a loving father to Mary, I always judged the Reverend Mr. Griffiths harshly. For he had not been loving to me. Now I saw the goodness of the man, and of his wife, taking in the child of the wife’s wastrel brother and saving the little girl from the shame of bastardy. Loving my Mary as their own, as good Christians.

  “Good it was, then, of your sister and her husband to take the child in. You may be grateful that—”

  Something in the terrible look of him stopped me. He turned his head from side to side on the pillow, with liquid escaping the corners of his mouth. Twas a grim denial.

  “She was my sister’s daughter.”

  I did not see at first what the old man meant.

  “She is my daughter. My daughter with my sister.” He began to growl like an animal in torment. Weeping as if the Day of Judgement were upon us. And perhaps it was. “God forgive me, I have sinned a terrible sin. The judgement was set upon the child, in all God’s cruelty. The crooked back, the pain sent to the girl . . .”

  Her back is not crooked. That is a lie. There is only the faintest of curves to my darling’s spine, a nothing. No one notices. I swear to Heaven and earth that she is beautiful.

  “God forgive me,” Mr. Evans said. “God will never forgive me.”

  I said nothing. For I could not know God’s mind.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, slackening his grip. “I’m so sorry.”

  Still weeping he was, but I wished to take my fists to him. To pound him until he was dead, then to beat him more. Not because of the great sin he had committed. But because he had told me of it.

  “It’s a blessing,” he said. “A blessing that your son was born without her deformities. The boy’s healthy. Strong. My grandson . . .”

  I sat there raging. It took all of my power not to bellow at him, not to scream out the rage that had blown up in me. I wished to shut his mouth, no matter what deed the shutting would require.

  He did not need to share his secret with anyone. And not with me. Oh, not with me. For the love of Jesus Christ. He should have taken his evil to the grave.

  And yet, dear God, had he not done what he did . . . my Mary Myfanwy might not have graced this world. I saw that, too.

  My heart was swollen, vivid with crimson hatred. And I wanted to weep like a child handled unjustly.

  Right he was to hold my wrist. For I wanted to run from him. And from myself.

  “You couldn’t understand,” he said, as if reading my thoughts. “No one could understand. No one but me . . . and her. My sister understood . . . my darling . . . she was so lovely, so lovely . . .”

  He gasped for air, for life, as he remembered. Digging his fingernails into my flesh. Like the fangs of five cruel vipers.

  I would not flinch. I would not be the weaker of us.

  He turned his head away from me, away from the lamp, peering idly into the room’s dark corners. He released my forearm, as absently as a child turning from a toy.

  “She must never know,” he told me. “But you must care for her.”

  There was no tone of command left in his voice. Only a plaint. I felt the strength drain out of him, the life going.

  “She will not know,” I told him. “She will never know.” My voice must have sounded as wintry as all the snows. For the anger was all inside me and would not come out.

  He nodded. Perhaps to me, perhaps to a ghost just glimpsed and newly welcome.

  “Go now,” he said. “Tell Mary not to come to me again. I could not bear it. Tell her I’m in too much pain.” He groaned, but not to convince me. Twas a lesser misery, dying. The agony of his life must have been boundless.

  “Yes,” I said

  “Send Dolly up,” he begged, a different soul now. “I
want to see her last.”

  YES. THAT IS WHO the devil wished to see before death took him. Mrs. Walker, the keeper of a whorehouse.

  Forgive me. But I had come up short of charity and forbearance. And yet, my rage deserted me before I reached the bottom of the staircase. I saw my Mary standing there, face desolate. I almost wept at the sight of her.

  I took my darling in my arms and held her so tightly I fear I caused her pain. She misunderstand the violence of my emotion and asked, “Is he gone?”

  “No, dearest,” I spoke into her hair, into the wondrous, familiar scent of her. “Still with us he is.”

  “Does he want me to go up to him?”

  “No, my darling. Not now.” I did not want to release her. Yet, I softened my embrace a degree, for I did not wish to do my love an injury. Or to harm the child taking form within her.

  Would that child, too, be healthy? And of sound mind? Like John? And as for John, were there weaknesses yet hidden in the boy, the fruit of elder seed too closely mingled? A thousand fears pierced me. Had Mr. Evans hated me, he could have done me no worse a turn than making that confession.

  Might it all be untrue? Could his confession have been no more than the madness of a mind in terror of death? Had his body’s distress confused his thoughts to a horror?

  I longed to think it so.

  I saw that other woman then, past the sheen of my beloved’s hair. Standing in the archway to the parlor, veiled in black, she told her expectations by her posture.

  “Mrs. Walker,” I spoke across the hall, “he wishes you to go up to him.”

  Let him die with a whore beside him, I said to myself. Yet, that savagery passed in an instant, as soon as I saw her running toward the stairs. There was a truth about her grief that would not be denied. Not even by me.

  Perhaps she even loved the wicked man. For love is a land without maps, akin to death.

  I saw the doctor, too, back in the parlor, with a question unspoken, waiting on his lips. Perhaps he was impatient with Mr. Evans and wished to be home at his dinner. We none of us can know another’s heart. And perhaps it is good so.