"Good! Stop there, if you would rest thoroughly content. The serpent lifts his head in the third. Will you kindly send the valet?"
The girl confided to her fellow-servants in the service-room that the gentleman in Number So-and-so was very nice, but slightly cracked. He seemed to have been upset by a lot of old letters--and it was an odd thing that among all the rich people who lived in the hotel none seemed to be really happy. Now, if she, deponent, only possessed a fraction of their wealth, she would enjoy life to the limit.
Power did not change his attire that evening. He dined quietly in the restaurant, and strolled out into Broadway afterward. The loneliness of a great city, at first so repellent, was grateful to him now. The crowded streets were more democratic than the palatial saloons of the hotel, the air more breathable. But the flood of light in the Great White Way--though blazing then with a subdued magnificence as compared with its bewildering l.u.s.ter nowadays--was garish and harsh, and he turned into the sheltering gloom of a quiet side-street. He was pa.s.sing a row of red-stone houses--bay-windowed, austere abodes, with porches surmounting steep flights of broad steps--when he saw an old, old man seated at the foot of one of these outer stairways. In summer, at that hour, every step would be occupied by people gasping for fresh, cool air; but in the depth of winter it was courting disease and death for anyone, especially the aged, to seek such repose.
The unusual spectacle stirred Power out of his mournful self-communing.
"Are you ill?" he said, halting in front of the patriarch.
"No, sorr," came the cheerful answer, and a worn, deeply lined face was raised to his with a smile that banished the ravages of time as sunlight gilds a ruin. A street-lamp was near, and its rays fell on features which had once been strong and ma.s.sive, but were now mellowed into the rare beauty of hale and kindly age. Silvery hair, still plentiful, and dark, keen eyes from which gleamed the intelligence and sympathy every clean-souled man may hope to gain if his years stretch beyond the span allotted by the prophet, made up a personality which would have appealed to an artist in search of a model.
"But you are taking a great risk by sitting on cold stone," persisted Power.
"Sure, sorr, av it"s the will o" G.o.d that I should die that way, it"s as good as anny other," said the ancient. "All doores ladin" to the next worruld are pretty much the same to me. I don"t care which wan I take so long as it lades me safe into Purgathory."
Never before had Power heard so modest a claim on the benevolence of the Almighty.
"Are you tired of life, then?" he asked.
"Sorra a bit am I! Why should I be? Wouldn"t it be flyin" in the face o"
Providence to say that I was tired of the sivinty-eight grand years I"ve spint in raisonable happiness an" the best o" health."
"I like your philosophy. It has the right ring. But it can hardly be the will of G.o.d that you should shorten the remainder of those years by resting on a doorstep in this weather."
"Young man," said the other suddenly, "how old are ye?"
"Thirty-five."
"Thorty-foive is it? An" ye stand there an" talk as though ye"d just come down like Moses from the top o" Mount Sinai, an" had the worrd o"
the Lord nately written in yer pocketbook. Sure, thim days is past entirely. G.o.d doesn"t talk to His sarvints anny longer in that way."
"Tell me, then, how does He talk?"
"Faix, sorr, I"m on"y a poor ould man, an" it"s not for the likes o" me to insthruct a gintleman like you; but, av I"m not greatly mistaken, you"ve heard His voice more than wance or twice in yer life already, an"
yer own heart"ll tell you betther than I can what it sounds like."
"Friend, your eyes are clearer than mine. Still, it will please me if you get up, and let me walk a little way with you. Or, if you don"t feel able to walk, allow me to take you to your destination in a cab."
His new acquaintance rose, nimbly enough. Then Power saw that he had been using a bundle of newspapers as a cushion.
"A cab, is it?" laughed the other. "My! but money must come aisy your road, a thing it "ud nivver do for me, thry as I might, an" I was a hard worrker in me time. But I"d sooner walk. I"m feelin" a thrifle shtiff, an" I haven"t far to go."
"May I come with you?"
"Ye may, an" welcome. It"s a mighty pleasant thing to have a fri"ndly chat wid a man who has sinse enough to wear fine clo"es an" talk like the aristocracy, an" yet not be ashamed to be seen sp"akin" to wan o" my sort."
"Will you think it rude if I inquire what you mean to do with those newspapers? Surely, at your age, you don"t sell them in the streets."
"Faith, I"ll have to thry my hand at it now, an" no mistake. Me grandson, Jimmy Maguire, was run over this afthernoon by an express van, an" he"s up there at the hospital in West 16th Street. Jimmy is all that is left betune me an" the wall, an" I"m goin" now to give in his returns. Mebbe the newspaper folk will let me hould his stand till the docthors sind him out."
"And if they don"t?"
"Sure, sorr, G.o.d is good to the poor Irish."
"I hope so, most sincerely. Still, a newspaper is a commercial enterprise, and the publisher may think you unequal to the job. What then?"
"Thin? I"d take a reef in me belt for breakfast, an" spind a p"aceful hour in the cathaydral, that dhrame in shtone up there on Fifth Avenue.
Don"t ye remimber that verse in the Psalms, "I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread." Manny"s the toime thim worrds have consoled me whin iverything looked black, an" I was throubled wid quare thoughts, bein" nigh famishin" wid hunger."
"Have you actually wanted food--here, in this great city?"
The old fellow laughed merrily. Evidently, he found the question humorous.
"Sure, I"ve had the misforchunes of Job," he said. "First, I lost me darlin" wife. Thin I lost me job as a buildher"s foreman. I had two sons, and wan was dhrowned at say, an" the other was killed in a mine----"
"In a mine? What sort of mine?"
"A gold mine, at a place called Bison, in Colorado."
"When?"
"Nine years ago last Christmas?"
"Was his name Maguire?"
"No, sorr--Rafferty. A foine, upshtandin" boy he was, too."
Power recalled the incident. Indeed, he had helped to clear the rockfall which crushed the life out of the unfortunate miner. But he gave no sign of his knowledge.
"Why is your grandson named Maguire?" he went on.
"He is my daughther"s son, an" she died in childbirth. More"s the pity, because Maguire was a dacint man; but he took to the dhrink afther she was gone, an" that was the ind of him."
"Yet you are a firm believer in the goodness of Providence, notwithstanding all these cruel blows?"
"Musha, sorr," said Rafferty anxiously, "have ye nivver read the Book o"
Job? Look at the thrials an" crosses put on that poor ould craythur, an"
where would he have been if the thrue faith wasn"t in him?"
"Rafferty, I would give ten years of my life to believe as you believe."
"Indade, sorr, ye needn"t give tin minutes. Go home to yer room, an"
sink down on your marrowbones, an" ax for help an" guidance, an" they"ll be given you as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. Though, moind ye, ye mayn"t know it all at wance, just as it may be rainin" tomorrow, when the sun will be hid; but he"ll be shinin" high up in the sky for all that."
The two crossed Sixth Avenue together, and Rafferty pointed to a big building, a place ablaze with light and quivering with the activities of six-decker printing machines.
"That"s where I"m goin"," he said. "Maybe they"ll detain me some toime."