“I did. And ye can let your friends hear too.”
I read it aloud, wondering as I read. If pen and ink spoke the truth, Biddy’s own Micky’s heart was broke entirely with the parting from his mother. Sorra a bit of taste had there been in his food, or a drop of natural rest had he enjoyed for the last fifteen years. “Five thousand four hundred and seventy-five days—no less.” (When I reached this skilful adoption of my calculations, I involuntarily looked up. There sat Mr. Macartney in his rocking-chair. He was just lighting a short pipe, but he paused in the operation to acknowledge what he evidently believed to be my look of admiration with a nod and a wink.
I read on.) Times were cruel bad out there for a poor boy that lived by his industry, but thank God he’d been spared the worst pangs of starvation (I glanced round the pop-shop, but, as Micky himself would have said, No matther!); and didn’t it lighten his heart to hear of his dear mother sitting content and comfortable at her own coffee-stall. It was murderously hot in these parts, and New York—bad luck to it—was a mighty different place from the dear old Ballywhack where he was born. Would they ever see old Ireland again? (Here a big blot betrayed how much Mr. Macartney had been moved by his own eloquence.) The rest of the letter was rich with phrases both of piety and affection. How much of the whole composition was conscious humbug, and whether any of it was genuine feeling, I have as little idea now as I had then. The shallows of the human heart are at least as difficult to sound as its depths, and Micky Macartney’s was quite beyond me. One thing about the letter was true enough. As he said, it would “plaze the ould craythur intirely.”
By the time I had addressed it, “Mrs. Biddy Macartney, coffee-seller,” to the care of, the Dockgate-keeper, we had not much spare time left in which to stamp and post it, so we took leave of the owner of the pop-shop. He was now very unwilling to let us go. He did not ask another question about his
mother, but he was consumed with trivial curiosity about us. Once again he alluded to Biddy. We were standing outside, and his eye fell upon the row of shining pop-taps—
“Wouldn’t she be the proud woman now, av she could see me!” he cried.
“Why don’t you get her out to live with you?” I asked.
He shook his head, “I’m a married man, Mr. —— bad luck to me, I’ve forgotten your name now!”
“I didn’t trouble you with it. Well, I hope you’ll go and see her before she dies.”
But when I came to think of it, I did not feel sure if that was what I wished. Not being a woman, how could I balance the choice of pain? How could I tell if it were better for her to be disappointed with every ship and every tide, still having faith in her own Micky, and hope of his coming, or for the tide and the ship to bring him with all his meanness upon the head she loved, a huge disappointment, once for all!