“An’ this is Mike’s son?” he muttered.
“Yes, sir.” Larry would have liked to have said “Grandfather,” but somehow it stuck in his throat. He looked upon the old man with awed, wondering eyes; it was the first person he had ever seen upon the threshold of death; and the drawn face, wet with the death damp, sent a chill through him.
“I didn’t do right by yez father, Larry,” said the sick man, “I t’ought a curse lay upon him for marryin’ yez mother!”
Larry stepped back from the bedside, and Mary Carroll’s quiet eyes alone kept back the angry words that leaped to his lips in his mother’s defence. His mother—that oriental-eyed mother—bring a curse upon anyone! The words still sounded in his ears as he looked down at the shrunken form, pity contending with anger in his heart.
His mother had died a Christian; she had deserted, in fear and trembling, the faith of her fathers; she had knelt before the altar raised to the Nazarene Carpenter, and strove with all the power of her tortured soul to believe that He was the same God who had spoken to the Law-Giver of her tribe upon the heights of Sinai. And she had done all this through love for his father, the father whom this hard old man had disowned.
“I wud niver knowed better iv it hadn’t a-been for Mary; she made me see it; it wur her that towld me av the black wrong I done yez, both. I’ll make up for it, Larry, I’ll make it up, never fear!” The old man paused for a moment, his face twitching. “D’ye t’ink it’s too late?” he added eagerly.
“It’s never too late.” And thinking to soothe the fears that gripped at the darkening brain, Larry added. “It wasn’t much, ye know.”
“But it wur, lad, it wur. Ye don’t know the gredge I wanst held in me heart agin yez both. Didn’t I walk the flure, when he lay dead beyant there at O’Connor’s, half mad wid the thinkin’? I t’ought till give him a daysint berryin’ an’ bring yezself home here; but the divil got the better av me, lad, so he did! Yez don’t know the black bitterness I’ve held against yez; yez don’t know!”
The agitation seemed to exhaust him; he sank back, a thin streak of blood showing on his purple lips.
“Don’t excite yourself, Uncle Larry,” said Mary. “That is all past and gone now; Larry has forgiven you, and his father has, too.”