A Test of Truth.
From “Irish Neighbours.”
By Jane Barlow.
Jim Hanlon, the cobbler, was said by his neighbours to have had his own share of trouble, and they often added, “And himself a very dacint man, goodness may pity him!” His misfortunes began when poor Mary Anne, his wife, died, leaving him forlorn with one rather sickly little girl, and they seemed to culminate when one frosty morning a few years later he broke his leg with a fall on his way to visit Minnie in hospital. The neighbours, who were so much impressed by her father’s good qualities and bad luck, did not hold an equally favourable opinion about this Minnie, inclining to consider her a “cross-tempered, spoilt little shrimp of a thing.” But Jim himself thought that the width of the world contained nothing like her, which was more or less true. So when she fell ill of a low fever, and the doctor said that the skilled nursing in a Dublin hospital would be by far her best chance, it was only after a sore struggle that Jim could make up his mind to let her go. And then his visit to her at the first moment possible had brought about the unwary walking and slip on a slide, which resulted so disastrously.
It was indeed a most deplorable accident. If it had happened somewhere near Minnie’s hospital, he said to himself, it might have been less unlucky, but, alas, the whole city spread between them and the institution whither he was brought. The sense of his helplessness almost drove him frantic, as he lay in the long ward fretting over the thought that he was tied by the leg, unable to come next or nigh her, whatever might befall, or even to get a word of news about her. But on this latter point his forebodings were not fulfilled, his neighbours proved themselves to be friends in need. At the tidings of his mishap they made their way in to see him from unhandy little Ballyhoy, undeterred by what was often to them no very trivial expense and inconvenience. Nor were they slow to discover that they could do him no greater service than find out for him “what way herself was at all over at the other place.” Everybody helped him readily in this matter, more especially three or four good-natured Ballyhoy matrons. On days when they came into town to do their bits of marketing they would augment their toils by long trudges on foot, or costly drives on tramcars, that they might convey to Jim Hanlon the report for which he pined. They considered neither their heavy baskets, nor the circumstance that they were folk to whom time was time, and a penny a penny indeed.
Yet, sad to say, great as was Jim’s relief and his gratitude, their very zeal did in some degree diminish the value of their kindness. For their evident desire to please and pacify him awakened in his mind doubts about the means which they might adopt; and it must be admitted that his mistrust was not altogether ungrounded. The tales which they carried to him from “the other place” were not seldom intrinsically improbable, and sounded all the more so to him because of his intimate acquaintance with their subject. When Mrs. Jack Doyle averred that Minnie was devouring all before her, and that the nurse said a strong man would scarce eat as much as she did, Jim remembered Minnie’s tomtit-like meals at home, and found the statement hard to accept. It was still worse when they gave him effusively affectionate messages, purporting to come from Minnie, who had always been anything in the world but demonstrative and sentimental. His heart sank as Mrs. Doran assured him that Minnie had sent her love to her own darling treasure of a precious old daddy, for he knew full well that no such greeting had ever emanated from Minnie, and how could he tell, Jim reflected, but that they might be as apt to deceive him about one thing as another? Perhaps there was little or no truth in what they told him about the child being so much better, and able to sit up, and so forth. Like enough one couldn’t believe a word they said. On this terribly baffling question he pondered continually with a troubled mind.
Saturday mornings were always the most likely to bring him visitors, and on a certain Saturday he rejoiced to hear that somebody was asking for him. He was all the more pleased because the lateness of the hour had made him despair of seeing any friends, and because this portly, good-humoured Mrs. Connolly was just the person he had been wishing to come. She explained that she would have paid him a visit sooner, had not all her children been laid up with colds, and then, as he had hoped, she went on to say that she was going over to see after little Minnie. “And the Sister here’s promised me,” said Mrs. Connolly, “she’ll let me in to bring you word on me way back, even if I’m a trifle beyond the right visitin’ time itself.”
Thereupon Jim produced a sixpence from under his pillow, where he had kept it ready all the long morning. “If it wouldn’t be throublin’ you too much, ma’am,” he said, “I was wonderin’ is there e’er a place you would be passin’ by where you could get some sort of a little doll wid this for Minnie.”
“Is it a doll?” said Mrs. Connolly. “Why to be sure I will, and welcome. I know a shop in O’Connell Street where they’ve grand sixpenny dolls, dressed real delightful. I’ll get her a one of them as aisy as anythin’.” Mrs. Connolly knew that the price of the dolls she had in her eye was actually sixpence-halfpenny, but she at once resolved to pay the halfpenny herself and not let on.