Part 6

"Ah, there's nothing for a man here," he answered disgustedly. "It's on the other side a man gets his chance--ay, and a woman, too, for that matter."

"Is that so?" Eunice uttered; and she caught him with her serious gray eyes.

"There was Joe Carragher's daughter, from Balleek," he instanced; "you knew her well. She went over six years ago and now she 's a lady's maid in one of the big houses on Fifth Avenue. A grand position!"

"Is that so?" she repeated; her eyes had narrowed a little and she was studying him intently.

"Then there was Patrick Hagan, the brother of the captain in the Dublin Fusiliers. He 's got a saloon on Third Avenue and does a grand business."

"That's the devil's business, Willie John," his mother said quietly.

It was the first time since he came back that he had seen her without a smile on her lips.

"It's different on the other side, I tell you," Grant commented with asperity. "And there's Barney Doyle, that went over before me; he 's head waiter in one of the big places on Broadway. Do you know that fellow makes as much as seventy dollars a week in tips? Seventy dollars! Fourteen pounds!"

"His father was a great lawyer." Old Grant shook his head. "God be good to him! They called him the Star of the North."

"Fourteen pounds a week--in tips!"

Grant thought he could detect a chill, contemptuous tone in the Doran girl's voice; but he put the thought out of his head, for why should she be contemptuous? She drew her blue cloak about her.

"I think I 'll be going," she said.

"I 'll leave you a bit of the road," Grant offered.

They went out and down the loaning. Overhead a great white moon showed, a great silver plate of a thing whose beams scintillated in minute gossamer threads. Before them the road ran, as white as the moon, and everything showed in a faint purple--trees, fields, the singing river on the left of them, and the hill that rose between them and the sea. A little breeze was stirring and they could hear a soft soughing from the trees and a murmur from the beach. Somewhere behind them, on the Yellow Road probably, a corn-crake was venting its harmoniously raucous cry.

They stopped and looked about them. Beneath them the great plain of Louth lay, which Maeve of Connaught had once raided at the head of a hundred thousand men. And as Grant looked at it in the subtle moonlight the memory of forgotten legends came to him in vague uncoördinated fragments. There was Slieve Gullion behind him, where Cuala, the great artificer, hammered on his magic anvil night and day, and up whose slopes Finn MacCool had pursued the white deer without horns.

And in front of him was the sea, where for thrice three hundred years the Children of Lir had mourned in the guise of white swans. And on the hill beside him was the fortress of Bricriu of the poisoned tongue, whose satires killed men and withered the leaves on the green trees. Suddenly he heard Eunice's voice addressing him.

"I suppose you 've done well for yourself, Willie John?" she asked.

"Ay; I 've done well," he told her. "I 've got a business over there worth ten thousand dollars. And I 've built it up in twelve years."

"Ten thousand dollars!" she mused. "Two thousand pounds; that's a good deal. That's half as much as your brother Joe made, and it's a great deal more than I have myself."

"Brother Joe made!" he muttered in a tone of amazement.

"Yes--your brother Joe made," she answered naïvely. "He 's made as much as four thousand pounds trading in cattle between here and England, and buying horses for the Italian Government."

"Twenty thousand dollars!" Grant said, dumb-founded. "Brother Joe!"

"And you 've more than I have," she continued mercilessly. "The Cliff Farm is worth only eighteen hundred pounds. That's only nine thousand of your dollars."

He answered nothing, for a quick sense of shame suddenly suffused him when he remembered how much he had talked, and the others keeping so dumb. Something began tumbling very fast about him. They went up the hill and suddenly the sea stretched before them, sheer through to England, a vast surface of shimmering ripples, where the moon touched, and here and there white curling waves. And beneath them it murmured on the beach in a steady crooning. The breeze blew landward and pressed about them firmly in a cool, even motion. To the right the Cliff Farm lay, softly white, and a faint scent came down from its orchard. The servant-girl passed through the gate and up toward the house.

"America 's a great country!" Grant said aloud.

He did not know why he said it. Perhaps it was because he could find nothing else to say, and perhaps it was a sort of incantation, conjuring away the doubts that were rising in his mind.

Eunice made no answer. And as he looked at her, standing there in the moonlight and the breeze, the old affection he had for her a dozen years ago rose within him, and he wondered whether he should n't put his arm about her and kiss her for old times' sake. But the idea left him as soon as it came, for the thought of trifling with her seemed a desecration.

"It's a great place!" he said again lamely.

She swung around upon him suddenly, savagely, her head tilted, her eyes flashing. The cloak behind her stood backward with the breeze; and as he watched her, amazed, petrified almost, the thought of dead ancient Irish women flashed through his brain--Maeve, the fighting queen of Connaught; and Deirdre, who dashed herself dead against a rock; and Grainne, the king's daughter, who fled to follow Diarmuid of the Spears.

"Then why don't you stay there?" she uttered passionately.

"Why don't I stay there?" he repeated blankly.

"Why don't you stay there?" she said again. "You come back here--you and your like--with a smile on your mouth and a sneer in your eye. You come back here in your fine clothes, that you 've sweated day and night for, and taken charity to get--ay, charity! What's tips but charity?--And you lord it round for a while and tell us what fools we are--and patronize us. Patronize us!"

She swung round and fronted the low-lying land with the faint blue heat haze of summer over it, touched into silver in the June moon. The muscles of her throat were throbbing. She was poised on her feet like a bird ready for flight.

"Look down there at your father's farm," she told him. Her hand stretched toward it and her gray eyes blazed in his face. "Look at it well! Look at the corn that's green, and the rye ripening, and the stacked haggard. Look at the trees in the orchard and the fruit hanging from them, and the river alive with trout, and the mountain with its grouse and hares. And then go back to your grand business and fumble the halfpence in your greasy till!"

He said nothing. Mechanically his eyes followed her hand where it pointed, and every word ate its meaning into his brain as if etched by strong acid.

"Ay!" he said dully.

"Have you eyes to see, man?" She bent toward him with her hands outstretched and her face aflame with anger. "Or have you ears to hear? Or has groping for coppers made you blind like a mole? Or the tinkle of tuppences deafened you the like of a bat?"

"I 've got eyes," he answered sullenly.

"Use them, then!" she snapped. "And when you go back to your grand business, stop making a poor mouth about Ireland. Don't whine the like of a beggar in the street. Stop your talk about poverty-stricken Ireland, and oppressed Ireland and lazy Ireland. We 've got money here as well as you, for all your grand business; and we've got pride; and we 've got strength. And we don't want anybody talking about our sorrows, and the nations pitying us in the four corners of the earth."

He said nothing, but his face had gone white; and every now and then he winced, as though he had been caught by a whip. He wished to Heaven she would stop; and still, back in him, something had awakened that yearned to be lashed into life.

"I heard you wanted your father and mother to go back to America with you and partake of the grand business. Look at that farm-house again. Your grandfather built that with granite hewn from his own quarry. And you want them to leave that and to go off with you and grub in a huckster's booth! God's glory and the blue sky over us!"

There was the rapid flapping of wings and they saw a wedge of birds in the moonlight. Suddenly they caught the shrill clamor of the barnacle goose.

"Even the birds," she uttered with scorn, "even the birds have sense. They 're happy when they get back from roving. Not like you and your like, Willie John. If you want to go, go! And God go with you! If you want to stay, stay--and you're welcome. But don't come back for a while, croaking like a magpie chattering over a ruined hearth."

She turned to him, and the agitation and passion seemed to leave her by a great effort of will. Her hands unclenched and her voice grew calm, with even a queer crooning melody in it; but her bosom heaved tumultuously.

"I liked you once, Willie John," she said. "I thought there was the makings of a big man in you. I mind the time at the football, and you running down the field like a hare, and no one to catch or trip you. And at the fairs I mind you putting the horses through their paces like a jockey born. And at throwing the weight there was no one of your size or years that could best you. Ay! I mind you, and your dogs following you, and your head high up in the air. I thought well of you that time, Willie John. I thought there was no one like you." She raised herself to her full height and looked at him squarely. "But now," she said, "I 'd rather have a stray tinker that does be traveling the roads."

And scornfully she left him.

IV

He came into the kitchen, two evenings later, from the parlor. His father sat by the table, reading his paper. His mother pottered about the turf fire, teasing it into flame. In a corner Joe sat, polishing the barrel of a breech-loading fowling-piece with an old rag. His father caught the glimpse of paper in his hand.

"Were you writing, Willie John?"

"Ay," Grant answered; "I was writing a letter to America."

He moved toward the fireplace and turned slowly about again to his father.

"You were saying," he asked, "that that place of McKenna's was for sale. I wonder how much he 'd want for it."

"He 'd take four thousand pounds," his father answered. "Maybe less."

"I 'm afraid I have n't got that much." Grant shook his head. "I 've only two thousand."

"We can lend you the difference, Willie John," Joe broke in. He squinted down the barrel of the rifle. "Can't we, Dad?"

"Ay sure!" his father answered.

"I 'm much obliged to both of you," Grant said.

He reached for his hat.

"Are you going out, Willie John?" his mother asked.

"I thought I 'd go up and call on Eunice Doran," Grant answered her. "I might as well be neighborly."

He went out, and there was silence in the kitchen for a few minutes. Joe clicked the lock of the gun.

"Do you mind that wild gander I put a ring on three years ago?" he asked his father. "It's back again. I saw it over the marshes to-day."

"It 'll take a mate and settle down in the marsh now." His father nodded. "It took it three years to find out that home is a good place. It's a queer, silly bird--the barnacle goose."

A little ripple of laughter came from the mother's lips as she stood over and poked the turf. The elder Grant looked up, astonished.

"What are you laughing at, Sarah Ann?" he inquired.

"I was thinking," she answered.

"What was it you were thinking about?" he pursued.

"Oh nothing!" she parried. "I was just thinking."

And she went on teasing the fire, while a subtle, affectionate smile played about the corners of her eyes.

BELFASTERS

"Oh, I'll go down unto Belfast to see that seaport gay."--A COUNTRY POET.

To him the whole conversation, the whole setting, the whole event, was unreal as ghosts are unreal, or objects on a foggy night. Here was this woman, who had been so nigh to him, and to whom he had been so much, talking of leaving him, in as matter-of-fact a manner as though she were speaking of taking a street-car. Here was the murk of a February evening in Belfast, the minute rain yellowing the street-lamps; the cable-cars rushing by brusquely and short-temperedly, a "get out of the way and be damned to you!" in their crashing, abrupt passage. She was thinking of leaving him, she was thinking of leaving him for good, all because of a strike, mind you! just for nothing more than a strike!

"Well, I 'd best be going," she said.

"Well--" He shifted from one foot to the other. "I think it's very foolish of you," he said.

She smiled, as he looked at her, that strange secret smile of hers that meant she had drawn into herself. He knew every expression on her face--for a year now.

"What is it you want me to do?" he asked for the fourth time.

"Give the workers in the mill what they want. They ask only bare justice. A couple o' shillings a week! What is it to you?"

"I will not." He shook his head. His great red beard shook too.

"You 're a hard man, Aleck," she said softly. "You 're no' exactly human. And you 're getting on, Aleck. You 're no' young any more. Be a wee bit soft, man. It's no shame."

"I will not."

"Ah, well!" She stepped toward the curb, ready to signal a car. He followed her with his look. Of all the women in his life she had been most to him:--she, just a working-girl! He was fond of her. He was more than in love with her. His feeling towards her was no phenomenon but an accepted fact. He admired her, too, which was more than he did any woman, though she had been more to him than any but a wife should be. He admired her for that too--she had gone into the relation so calmly, so open-mindedly, so fearlessly. He admired her; in her was no slight, common blood.

"But, Jennie, I can't leave you like that."

She turned to face him. He was abashed by her steadfast brown eyes.

"Why for no'?" she asked. "Aleck, I 'm no lassie that's been fooled. What is between us, Aleck, is because I liked you and I knew you liked me. Don't let that bother your head. I 've done you no hurt, Aleck, nor you me. That's our own affair."

"But why break like this? What for?"

"For this, Aleck. You 're the owner and the master. I 'm a worker. I 've always been a worker. You mind I 've never taken a thing from you, Aleck. I 'm one of the people you 're fighting, Aleck, and I stick by my folks. While this fight's on, Aleck, you and I are finished. That's the way I feel, Aleck. I can't change it."

"You're foolish!"

"I don't think I am." This time she signaled the car. It stopped with its ill-tempered, hurried air.

"When'll I see you again?"

"When you do what my folks ask in justice, Aleck, and not before." And she was gone.

He stood for a few minutes in the rain. A touch of panic seized him. For a year he had not been so lonely. He felt he was on the verge of doing a foolish thing.

"I will not!" he said doggedly.

He turned down the road sullenly. A great desire was on him to catch the next car and intercept her at a changing-station.

"Stop making a fool o' yourself," he said to himself. "You 'll do no such thing."

He plugged on steadily, unmindful of where he was going. He was aboil with perturbation.

"I ha'e gi'en them a couple o' raises this year a'ready!"

He was blind to everything but the action of the workers of his mill, of his father's mill, of his grandfather's mill, defying him openly and stubbornly. And now they had to take Jeanie Lindsay from him, the only woman he had liked wholly in all his days.

"To hell with them!" he said savagely. His red beard bristled.

He stopped suddenly. He shook his fist at an arc-lamp.

"I 'll close the mill," he muttered aloud. "I 'll close down. I will so. I 've just had enough o' it. They ha'e no softie in Aleck Robe'son. I 'll close it. Be damned but I will! I will! I will so!"

From Aleck Robertson's earliest infancy he had been bred to the mill, as his father had been by his father before him. It is a small, compact building, off the Falls Road, the Robertson mill is, harboring not more than four hundred employees. But their fame is not in Belfast alone. Many the royal house in Europe before the war had its bride's linen from the Robertson factory. It is a small mill, as it should be, with a small door, and on a by-street is the lintel with the name "Robert Robertson & His Son, Founded 1803."

A queer family, these Robertsons of Belfast, very solid, very stubborn. In five generations there has been but one son to the family, and no daughters. "The Scottish weaver-bird, laying but one egg," some dry doctor dubbed them. So they be. They are a tall, solid dynasty, marrying toward middle age a bride solid as themselves. Young Aleck, red-bearded and rangy, could remember his father, as tall and rangy as he, and bearded, too, as his grandfather was, both silent, speculative men, students of the Shorter Catechism, and shrewd observers of life, possessors of the trust of glossy linen. They had their duties: to mind their own business; to take care of the mill, and to make fine cloth.

"They can see the linen in the flax, they Robertsons!" a workman of theirs once boasted, and it was true.

At Portrush golf-club you may hear about him. "The championship of Ireland," they tell me, "Captain Macneill got it then and he held it for three years and then your Uncle Simon for a year, and then Mr. Campbell o' Kilkee, and then--who was it, then?--the linen man of Belfast--what the deuce is his name? Robson? Robinson? Robertson, that's it! You'd hardly remember him; he was not a showy player, not an affable man, but sound! Ah, damned sound!"

At his school they have difficulty in recalling him. The president remembers him vaguely as a solemn youth with freckles and gigantic hands.

They seem to have gone through life, he and his mill, with one object in the world--to produce linen that is the pride of Ulster. They have each their worthy, definite place in the world. On him there rests the mill, a legacy as important and dynastic in its way as one of the former German principalities. He toured Ireland studying flax. He saw it raise its bluish green stems in spring, soft as down. He saw it rise and the wind ruffle and bend it, like still water. He saw the strange blue flower break out on it, as blue as a near star. It was plucked from the ground in summer time, acres and acres of it plucked carefully by a numerous population, and stacked like corn. And the nights after the flax-pulling there would be great joy-making in the villages, dancing and singing and drinking and love-making under the inscrutable Irish stars. It was taken then to the dikes and left rotting in the water, while mephitic gases rolled over the country-side. It was then scutched in the scutch-mills, where wheels run by water, by men with querulous dispositions and hacking consumptive coughs. To him and his like it came then, in soft, glossy, whitish strands, like the hair of Scandinavian women. He turned it over to his operatives, weavers and throwsters and pickers, men hunchbacked from bending over their looms, and women very free in their ways and not often pretty. Now it covered the stubborn hills of Ulster and soon it covered the groaning tables of kings.

"It's an unco thing, the flax!" his Scots-Irish workmen used to say. Aleck Robertson had the same thought, when he considered, though he never phrased it, that the prosperity and good fame and management of his linen-mill was his religion.

Life for him flowed by in a groove as regular and as well fitting as one of the bands on his own looms. Since his father died, ten years ago, he had been following the same routine, getting up in the morning, in the club where he stayed, and going to work, taking a street-car--though the Robertson firm was famous, it was not rich--attending to the work, and coming back in the evenings to spend the time with a few friends over a tumbler of Scotch.

"Why for do you no' take a wife and settle down, Aleck?" an occasional friend asked him.

"Och, I 'm all right as I am," he would answer.

Life at thirty-eight had become for Aleck Robertson a succession of minor hedonisms. He liked the sting of the shower-bath in the morning, the goodly taste of breakfast. He liked to hear the bustle and rumble of the works as he entered. He liked his lunch. He enjoyed his game of golf, and his occasional holidays in Scotland, or France, where he patronized the bathing-beaches, and played for small stakes at _petits chevaux_. Every week he attended a music-hall, and occasionally he was seen as escort to a minor actress.

"Aleck!" some of his cronies said. "He's a card!"

He had, for such girls as were not frightened by his beard and his position, a queer, provocative glint in his eye, which they would savor and giggle at.

"He 's a pleasant fellow, Mr. Robertson," they agreed. "He could be fine and pleasant to a girl he liked, I 'll warrant you! They do say--" and here some immaterial scandal was told.

It was strange how he ran across Jean Lindsay, for he made it a rule to have nothing to do socially--if one could call it socially--with the girls in the mill. He had noticed her a few times about the place--a stately sort of girl with calm brow and eyes. He admired the fine figure she had--the shapely arms and rich bosom. A woman, that! None of your fragile dolls! And twice he had seen her leave the works at quitting time, a figure in a Paisley shawl and skirt and blouse, none of the cheap finery of the mill worker.

"Yon 's a fine girl!" he thought, and forgot her.