II
Out of the blue
We were not permanently abandoned, however. Bella and Gibbs, our literary forces, were presently replaced by Lena and William. Lena and William were not literary. William was just plain Tipperary, and Lena was a Finn. I extracted Lena one day from a "Norsk Employment Agency," selecting her chiefly for her full-moon smile and her inability to speak any English word. The smile had a permanent look, and I reasoned that an inability to speak English would be a bar to her getting away. We should not mind it much ourselves. Having had everything from a Pole to a Patagonian, we were experts on sign language, and rather favored it after the flow of English we had just survived. I personally conducted Lena to the train and landed her safely at Brook Ridge.
William came to us out of the blue. One morning I drew a tin pail of water, bright and splashing from the well, and turned to pour a little of it into the birds drinking-trough, a stone hollowed out at the top. I did not do so, however, for a good reason—a man was sitting on the stone. He had not been there a moment before, and I had heard no sound. He was gaunt, pale, and dilapidated, and looked as if he had been in a sort of general dog fight. He had a wild cast in his eyes and was in no way prepossessing. His appearance suggested a burglar on sick-leave.
I confess I was startled by this apparition. I set down the pail rather weakly.
"Why, good morning!" I said.
He replied in a high-keyed Irish intonation, at the moment rather feeble in volume.
"C'u'd ye give a man a bite to eat fer some worrk, now?" he asked.
I was relieved. If he had demanded my purse I should not have been surprised. I nodded eagerly.
"Yes, indeed. We need some wood. If you'll cut a little, I'll see that you have some breakfast. You'll find the wood-pile and the ax down there by the barn."
He rose by a sort of slow unfolding process, and I was impressed by his height. I gave him some specifications as to the wood needed, and he was presently swinging the ax, though without force. He lacked "pep," I could see that, and as soon as the food was ready I called him. He ate little, but he emptied the pot of hot coffee in record time. Then he came down to where I was trimming some rose-bushes.
"W'u'd ye let me lie a bit on the hay?" he said. "Thin I'll do some more of the little shtove-shticks fer yeh. I'm feelin' none too brisk this mornin'."
"Been sick?" I asked.
"Naw, just a trrifle weery with trav'lin' an' losin' of sleep."
Inside I hesitated. It was probably overtime at housebreaking that had told on him. I pointed at the barn, however.
"All right," I said, "take a nap—only, don t smoke in there."
He vanished, and some three hours later when I had forgotten him I suddenly heard a sound of great chopping. Our guest had reappeared at the wood-pile, transformed. He was no longer pale and listless. His face was ruddy—in fact, tanned. The cast in his eye had taken on fire. Every movement was of amazing vigor and direction. The wood-pile was disappearing and the little heap of "stove-sticks" growing in a most astonishing way. I called Elizabeth out to see.
"If coffee and a nap will make him do that." I said, "we'd better give him dinner and get enough wood to last all summer." I went down there. "What is your name?" I asked.
"William—William Deegan."
"Well, William, you seem to understand work. Come up to dinner presently, and if you want to go on cutting this afternoon I'll pay you for it."
He came, and there was nothing the matter with his appetite this time. Ham and eggs, potatoes, beans, corn-bread, pie—whatever came went. William was the apostle of the clean plate. Reflecting somewhat on the matter, I reached the conclusion (and it was justified by later events) that William had perhaps been entertaining himself with friends the night before—during several nights before, I judge—and was suffering from temporary reaction when he had appeared on our horizon. Coffee and a nap had restored him. He was quick on recovery, I will say that.
You never saw such a hole in a wood-pile as he made that afternoon. When I went down to settle with him and announce supper he was still in full swing, apparently intending to go on all night.
"William," I said, "you're a boss hand with an ax."
"Well, sur," said William, his Celtic timbre pitched to the sky, "if I could be shtayin' a day or two longer I'd finish the job fer ye."
Was this a proposition to rob the house and murder us in our beds? I looked at the wood-pile and at William. There was something about their intimate relations that had an honest look. I remembered the extensive garden that would have to be hoed in July.
"Where would you go from here?" I said.
"I don't know, sur. I'll be lookin' fer a job."
"Do you understand gardening and taking care of a horse and cow?"
"Yes, sur, I do that."
I had an impulse to ask him about his last job, but I checked it. It was a question that could lead to embarrassment. I would accept him on his demonstration, or not at all.
"So you want a summer job, at general farm-work?"
"Yes, sur, I do."
"Well, William, you've found one, right here."
Even after the lapse of a dozen years I cannot write of William without a tugging at the heart. We never knew his antecedents—never knew where behind the sky-line he had been concealed all those years before that morning when he appeared, pale and unannounced, at the well. We got the impression, as time passed, that he had once been married and that he had at some time been somewhere on a peach-farm. With the exception of certain brief intervals—of which I may speak later—he remained with us three years, and that was as much as we ever knew, for he talked little, and not at all of the past. His face value was certainly not much, and some of his habits could have been improved, but a more faithful and honest soul than William Deegan never lived.