XXII
THE BITTER PAST
All's Well that Ends Well, v. 3.
They found the old woman in bed, attended by a slatternly half-grown girl, who was reading by the dying light a torn and dirty illustrated paper. There was little furniture in the chamber; merely the frowsy bed, a bare table, a single broken chair besides the one in which the girl was sitting. The floor was bare and dirty; one of the window-panes was broken and stuffed with a bundle of paper. There were a rusty stove, a few dishes on the shelf, a kettle and a tin tea-pot. On the window-sill by the bed were a medicine bottle and a cup.
"How do you do, Mrs. Murphy?" Ashe asked. "Are you any better to-day?"
"No better, thank yer riverince. I'll never be better again. My back is broke, and the pain in me is like purgatory already."
The slatternly girl laid her paper on her knees, but she neither rose nor spoke. To Maurice she seemed to have an air of contempt.
"I am sorry to hear it, Mrs. Murphy," said Ashe. "I thought that I would drop in and ask after you."
Maurice involuntarily glanced at him, surprised by the indifference of the tone. Enlightened by the passionate words which had been spoken below, he could see that Philip was preoccupied, and gave to the sick woman no more than the barest semblance of attention. Ashe mechanically inquired about Mrs. Murphy's wants, his thin cheeks glowing and his eyes wandering about the room. He was apparently reacting the scene of the fight, and presently he made a step or two backward, so that he stood near the middle of the chamber. Here he took his stand, and seemed to become lost in reverie.
"Might as well set," remarked the girl, looking toward the unoccupied chair.
Maurice made a slight gesture inviting Philip to the seat; but Philip remained where he was. Wynne realized that his companion must be standing where he had supported Mrs. Fenton in his arms; and so touching was the expression of Ashe's face that he felt his throat contract. He turned away and looked out of the dim window over the chimney-pots and the irregular roofs.
"I'm used to falls," the sick woman said. "I've had plenty of 'em. I left a good home and them as was good to me, to be beat and starved, and murdered in the end. Women are all like that. If a man asks 'em, they're always ready to cut their own throats. Sorry was the day for me I ever left old Miss Hannah."
Maurice turned toward the bed, his attention suddenly arrested. The name was that by which his aunt had usually been called, and he seemed to perceive in the talk of the woman something familiar. The possibility that this battered old creature might be his nurse came to him with a shock, so broken, so altered, so degraded was she; and as he looked at her he rejected the idea as preposterous.
"But your husband will be punished for his brutality," Ashe remarked absently.
He spoke like a man in a dream, as if his whole intent were fixed upon something so widely apart from the present that he hardly knew what was passing about him.
"Who wants him punished?" cried out the sick woman with sudden shrill vehemence. "That's what you rich folks are always after. Who asked the lady to come here with her purse in her hand to tempt him when he wasn't himself to know what he was doing? First you get him into a scrape, and then you punish him for it! What for do I want Tim shut up and me left to starve in me bed? If Tim's a little pleasant when he's had a drop more'n would be handy for a priest, whose business is it but mine? It's little comfort he gets, poor man; and he only takes what he can get to keep up his spirits in these poor times, and me sick and can't do for him."
"That's what I say too, Mrs. Murphy," the slatternly girl aroused herself to interpose. "Them as never had no hard times in their lives is always ready to jump on a poor man when he's down."
Maurice began to feel as if he were entangled in a strange and uncanny dream. Philip seemed more and more to retire within himself, and Wynne felt that he must do something to attract attention from his friend's conduct.
"We haven't anything to do with punishment, Mrs. Murphy," he said soothingly, coming forward as he spoke. "We came only to see if there is anything we can do to make you more comfortable."
The old woman answered nothing, but she stared at him with wild eyes.
"We may be able to make you more easy," he went on cheerfully, "if we can't fix things for you just as they were at Aunt Hannah's."
He used the name half unconsciously as the result of the suggestion of old association and half with an impulse to prove the faint possibility that this might be Norah Dolen. As he spoke Mrs. Murphy raised herself on one elbow, stretching out a lean hand convulsively toward him.
"Master Maurice!" she cried. "Holy Mother of Heaven, is it yourself?"
He went to her quickly, and took the outstretched hand.
"Yes, Norah. It is I."
She gazed at him a moment with haggard eyes, and then a look of deep tenderness came into the worn old face.
"Blessed be the saints!" she murmured. "It's me own boy!"
She drew her hand out of his grasp to stroke his arm and the folds of his cassock. He sat down by her on the bed, and she fell back upon the dingy pillow, breaking into hysterical tears. She caught one of his hands and carried it to her lips, kissing it in a sort of rapture.
"My own baby," she chuckled. "My Master Maurice so big and fine! I always said you'd be taller than Master John."
The allusion to his half-brother, dead nearly a dozen years, seemed to carry him back into a past so remote that he could hardly remember it. He smiled at Norah's enthusiasm, more moved by it than he cared to show.
"I've had time to grow big since you deserted us, Norah."
A look of terror came into her face.
"It wasn't my fault," she gasped, sobbing between her words. "Don't believe it against me, me darling. I never went to hurt old Miss Hannah in me life, and the saints knows how she died."
"I never laid any blame on you," he answered. "I knew you wouldn't hurt a fly."
She broke into painful, hysterical laughter.
"No more I wouldn't. To think it's me own baby boy that I've carried in me arms, and him a priest!"
The attendant, who had been watching in stupid and undisguised curiosity, gave an audible sniff.
"Oh, he ain't a real priest," she interrupted with brutal candor.
"They're just fakes. They ain't even Catholics."
A pang of irritation shot through Maurice at the girl's words, but his sense of humor asserted itself, and helped him to smile at his own weakness.
"But, Norah," he said, ignoring the taunt, "I want to know about yourself. We've often tried to find you," he added, a sudden perception of the possible importance of this recognition coming into his mind. "You know we depended on you to tell us a lot of things at the time of Aunt Hannah's death."
"He told me you'd be after me," Norah exclaimed with rising excitement. "He said you'd be laying it to me; but, Master Maurice, by the Mother of Mercy, I never"—
"I know that," he interrupted, to check her excitement; "but why did you go off in that way?"
"She told me to go. She ordered me out of the house like a dog, just because I wouldn't give up Tim when she'd accidentally seen him when he'd had one drop more than the full of him,—and any poor body might take a wee drop more'n he meant to take beforehand. She was that hot in her way when her temper was up, rest her soul,—and that nobody knows better than yourself,—that the devil himself couldn't hold her with a pair of red-hot tongs,—saving the presence of your riverinces for mentioning the Old Gentleman."
Her momentary discomposure at having mentioned the arch fiend in the presence of those who were his professional enemies gave Wynne a chance to interpolate a question. He could easily understand that the violent excitement of a quarrel with her old servant might account for the sudden death of his aunt. He perceived in a flash how Norah, terrified by the newspaper reports which had openly accused her of making way with her mistress, would without difficulty be induced by her husband to conceal herself. The matter to him most important, however, had not yet been touched upon.
"But what became of her will?" he asked. "You told me she made a new one."
"She did that, Master Maurice. Wasn't I night and day telling her she'd treated you scandalous, and upside down of all reason; and didn't she send for old Burnham, with the squinchy eyes and the wife that had a wart on her nose, and have it all writ over."
"So he said. But what became of it?"
"Ain't you ever had it?"
"No; we could never find it."
"Why didn't you look under the bottom of her little desk?" Mrs. Murphy demanded in much excitement.
"Under the bottom of her desk?" he repeated.
"The double bottom. The little traveling-desk with the little pictures on the corners. She was that contrary that she wasn't willing you should find it all fair and open. She wanted to tease you a while before you found out she'd changed her mind and give in."
"Maurice," Ashe broke in, "we have overstayed our time."
Wynne rose at once, the habit of obedience being strong. Mrs. Murphy clung to his hand, mumbling over it with tears of delight, and could hardly be persuaded to let them go. It was only when he had promised to return on the next day, and the slatternly girl had peremptorily ordered her patient to lie down and stop acting like a buzz-headed fool, that he escaped. He hurried down the dark stairway and out of the house with a step to which excitement lent speed, while Philip followed in silence.
As they were leaving the court they encountered a middle-aged priest, evidently an Irishman, with a kindly face and a bright eye.
"Can you tell me," he asked in a rich brogue, greeting them in friendly fashion, "where Mrs. Tim Murphy lives?"
"In the house we came out of," Maurice answered. "She's on the fifth floor, at the front."
The priest regarded him with some surprise in his look, and something, too, of uncertainty.
"You haven't been there, have you?" he asked.
"Yes; we've just come from her place."
"Then perhaps she won't want me," the priest remarked. "It'll save me a good bit of a climb."
"But we went only as friends," Maurice explained. "She might wish the consolations of religion."
"Then you did not"—
"We are not of your church," Maurice interrupted, flushing.
The priest looked at them with a puzzled air.
"But surely," he said, "you are Catholic. Haven't you been to me at the confession?"
Maurice had not at first recognized the priest to whom he had been in the habit of confessing at St. Eulalia, but he had known him before this announcement made Philip stare at him with a face of astonishment.
"Yes," he responded steadily. "I have confessed to you at St. Eulalia, but I am not of your communion."
He turned, and walked away quickly, not looking at Phil. He resolved not to bother his head about this unchancy encounter. It was awkward, and the fact that he had never confided in Ashe seemed to give to these visits to St. Eulalia an air almost of under-handedness; but there was nothing wrong, he told himself, and he would not be vexed at this moment when he was full of delight at the probability of discovering the missing will. He was certainly in no danger of becoming a Catholic. He smiled to think how little likely he was to exchange the too strict rule of the Clergy House for one which might be more rigid still. The keen thought now was the remembrance of the wealth which he hoped soon to possess.
"Phil, old man," he said joyously, "I believe I shall get Aunt Hannah's money after all. I always felt that it belonged to me."
"Yes," Ashe replied, so dully that Maurice turned to him quickly.
"Come, Phil, don't answer me like that. What are you moping about?"
There was no answer for a moment. Maurice, full of a fresh vigor born of the discovery of the afternoon, was yet rebuked by the silence of his friend.
"Of course, Phil," he went on, "you know I don't mean anything unkind. I am no end obliged to you for taking me there this afternoon. When we go tomorrow"—
"I shall never go there again," Ashe interrupted.
"Nonsense! Why not?"
"I went to-day to say good-by to my sinful folly. I shall not go again."
A prickling irritation began to make itself felt in the mind of Maurice. Even so slight a contact with the material realities of life as this interest in the will had put him completely out of tune with the monkish mood.
"Oh, stuff, Phil!" he exclaimed. "For heaven's sake don't be so morbid.
You talk like a mediæval anchorite."
Ashe regarded him with a look of pain.
"It doesn't seem possible that this is you, Maurice."
"It is I," was the sturdy answer; "and it is I in a sane frame of mind, old fellow. Come, it's no sin to be human; and as far as I can see that's the only fault you've committed."
"Maurice," Ashe retorted in a voice of intense feeling, "have you thrown away everything that we believe? Aren't you with us any more?"
The pronoun which seemed to separate him from the company to which his friend belonged struck harshly on Maurice's ear. He felt himself being forced to define for Philip thoughts which he had thus far declined to define for himself.
"Phil," he said determinedly, "I insist that your way of looking at this whole matter is morbid; and I won't get into a discussion with you. I'm in too good spirits to let you upset them. To think I shall get my property after all."
"But our lives are devoted to poverty."
Maurice turned upon his friend, more exasperated than he had ever been with him before in the whole course of their lives.
"Look here, Phil," he declared, "if you want to be as mopish as a mildewed owl yourself, that is no reason why you should try to make me so too."
There was no response to this, and in silence they went toward the Clergy House. Just as they reached the door, Maurice turned quickly and held out his hand to his friend. Ashe grasped it so hard that it ached; and Maurice went to his room with a sigh on his lips, while in his heart he said to himself, "Poor Philip!"
Maurice went next day to see Mrs. Murphy, and for a number of days thereafter. Norah was sinking, and clung to him with pathetic tenderness. He learned not much more about the will. She was sure that it had been concealed under the false bottom of a little traveling-desk which he remembered, but beyond that she knew nothing. Maurice wrote to Mr. Burnham, the family lawyer, and the question now was, what had become of the desk? The effects of the testator had been sold at auction, but as they had been largely bought by relatives, Maurice believed that it would not be difficult to trace the missing document.
The interest and excitement of this new business so occupied the thoughts of Maurice that he almost ceased to think of religious matters. Perhaps there was more danger to his monastic profession in this indifference than in the most poignant doubt. He went through his duties at the Clergy House cheerfully because he thought little about them. They were part of the routine of life, and when the hour for recreation came he laid all that aside. He even on one occasion wrote a hurried note to Mr. Burnham in the hour for meditation, and it amazed him when he thought of it that his conscience did not protest. He reflected with a certain naive pleasure that it was possible after all to modify the strict rules of the house without suffering undue contrition afterward. The discovery might have seemed to Father Frontford a dangerous one.