Changeling, and Other Stories
came to think of it in that way, too, as one thinks of a poor but
worthy relative.
"There 's no doubt to it," he would say to himself; "a man doesn't get
a chance there. He has to come over here." And he would look about
his store with proud satisfaction.
He began to think even of his own home as a place that the poisonous
finger of poverty had touched; and for a year now, and more, he had
thought of returning to see it. Maybe he could do something for the
people at home. A few pounds would come in useful. And, apart from
that, he could tell them some things that would help them along. He
would make them "get a move on," as the New York phrase went. Perhaps
he would take Joe, his brother, out and give him a chance to show what
he had in him. Perhaps they might all come out with him--the father
and mother too.
"Ay! Why not!" he would argue. "Why shouldn't they? What's there for
them in Ireland?"
He ruminated over the idea every day as he came from work to the brown
stone boarding-house where he lived, in Schermerhorn Street, a dingy,
unpalatable sort of place that had become a home to him. There were
employees of department-stores there; and an occasional theatrical
couple stayed a week in it, a week electric with criticism. In the
summer evenings the boarders sat on the stoop, and in the winter they
congregated inside to be played to in insufficient light on a tinkling
piano. For Grant the place had a metropolitan quality that others
sought in the great hotels.
And, with the same care he had used in mapping out his business career,
he watched for somebody to marry.
He found her in the boarding-house--a trim and rather pale girl, who
acted as though she were twenty and looked twenty-eight, but whom the
Vital Statistics Bureau had registered as having been born thirty years
before. Her hair was black and glossy, and her eyes were big and black
and lustrous; her face, outside those features, was the face of a
hundred others. But what captivated Grant about her was her chicness,
her quality of being up-to-the-minute in dress and deed and word.
Grant liked the flare of her wide skirts and the gray suede shoes
lacing up the sides. He liked the faint powder on her face, and her
carefully cultured eyebrows. He liked her talk of skating and of the
new theatrical pieces, and her ability to do the latest twirls in the
one-step. Her name was Miss Levine--Ada Levine.
"It's not every man could have a wife like that!" he told himself; and
he thought of the awe in which his people in Ireland would behold her.
She talked to him interestedly of his prospects and the trend of
business in his direction; and that pleased him, for, what with that
interest and with the training she received in the department-store
where she worked, she would be exactly what he needed to get on in the
world. He told her of his intention of going back home for a month, of
putting the store in the care of a friend of his from the old business
where he had worked.
"And when I come back," he said, "I 'd like to say something to you."
She sat on the steps quietly and lowered her eyes demurely. "That is,"
he continued, "if nobody gets there before me."
She looked up at him and smiled.
"That's a date," she agreed.
His heart expanded blithely. Everything was settled now. Life showed
in front of him like a straight line. A wife like that! And his
thriving business! Now he would go back to Ireland and show them
something!
III
He had been home for a month and he had made no move toward
returning--not that it was ever out of his mind for an instant, but it
pleased him to stay there and savor the ripe mellow ness of everything
as he might savor a fruit. Summer was fairly in and the yellow
blossoms had fallen from the gorse, but roses were blooming in every
garden, great creamy ones and others with the vivid red of an autumn
sunset.
The horse-chestnuts were heavy with balloons of white flowers, and
every evening the bees returned drowsy from the heather of the purple
mountains. There was something in it all that he had missed for years
and that he was greedy for.
At first he had gone about, a splendid figure, in the clothes he had
brought with him from America: suits of fine broadcloth, and buttoned
shoes, and a watch that was held in place by a fob. But nobody seemed
impressed by this splendor and a few were covertly amused; and suddenly
he had discarded it in a sort of shame, returning to the rich tweeds of
his own people. He had helped a little about the farm, finding again a
lost aptitude in milking a cow and in handling a horse in a dog-cart.
He had gone to the fairs and put in a shrewd word here and there on the
price of a colt. He had gaped in wonder at the antics of the
Punch-and-Judy show and had listened to the croon of the ballad-singer.
He lost sixpences with the trick-of-the-loop man and with the artist of
the three cards. All through it he tried to keep in his mind and on
his face the attitude of a grown-up who is playing a child's game, a
patronizing superiority.
"If they could only see this at Coney Island," he thought, "they would
laugh their heads off."
And he tried to remember as enjoyable the days he had spent there in
search of amusement, returning in the evening a battered and limp and
irritated rag.
It was the evening of the Newry Fair when he began to think seriously
of returning. They were all sitting in the great stone-flagged kitchen
of the farm-house. From the long deal table in the middle of the room
a huge lamp filled the space with creamy light, and in the lighted
fireplace a kettle purred, hanging from its crane. The kitchen rafters
were black and amber from the smoke of four generations, and below them
hung at intervals long flitches of bacon. Over the mantel were the
guns he remembered from his boyhood--his father's double-barreled
fowling-piece with the long, true barrels; his grandfather's old
musket; and the flintlock his great-grandfather had borne when he went
out with Lord Edward in '98.
His father sat by the table, reading a paper diligently, and he was
surprised to see how hale the old man looked; he was sixty now and
looked fifteen years younger. His mother fussed about with a pannikin
of milk, followed by three mewing kittens, while in a corner of the
room Joe was binding whipcord about the handle of a fishing-rod,
occasionally making it swish through the air with a keen sibilant sound
like the hiss of a snake.
"I think I 'll be going back soon," Grant said suddenly. "I think I 'd
better be getting along."
His mother looked at him sharply, but said nothing. Joe lowered his
rod. His father raised his eyes from his paper.
"And what would you be doing that for?" he asked slowly. "Sure, I
thought you were going to stay with us."
"I can't be doing that," Grant answered easily. "I 've got my business
over there. And I 've got to be making my way in the world."
"And why can't you stay and do it here?" the old man went on.
"Ah, sure, what would I be doing here?" Grant began impatiently.
"There 's nothing for a man here. On the other side I 've got a place
of my own, made by my own hands in twelve years. That's something, is
n't it?"
"There 's no use talking to you," his father said resignedly. "If you
must go, you must go. But if you were wise, Willie John, you would
take whatever money you 've made in America and buy that place of Peter
McKenna's down the road. You 'd get it cheap now. And after I 'm gone
the farm goes to you and Joe. If you have n't got enough money I 'll
lend it to you."
"No, thank you," Grant replied a little surlily. "I 'll get back to my
own place."
"Ah, well--" his father turned back to his paper--"have it your own
way."
Joe sent the rod swishing through the air a couple of times. He turned
to Grant with a quick smile.
"It's not back to your business you want to be getting, Willie John,"
he laughed. "You want to be getting back to where the good times are.
In a week or two you 'll be walking up Broadway, looking at the big
buildings you do be telling about. Or going down Fifth Avenue, maybe,
riding in a motor-car. Or hanging round all day drinking highballs
with the millionaires. That's what you will be after. Business!"
Grant turned on him with a sudden gust of anger.
"I want to tell you something, Joe," he whipped back: "I'm up in the
morning at half-past six. I 've got the place open by eight. It's
seldom I 'm through before ten at night--and twelve of a Saturday
night. Do you know, this is the first holiday I 've had for twelve
years, barring Sundays and bank holidays! And on them I 'm too tired
to do anything. I 'm as hard worked as you are."
"I 'm afraid you 're worse," the brother replied. He looked keenly at
the hitch of the whipcord to the haft of the rod. "It's seldom we
can't get a day off when there 's a fair on, or a good horse-race, or a
coursing-match. What would life be if we couldn't?" He swished the
rod through the air again. "And as for your father--" he took a
sidelong smiling look at the old man--"he 's hardly ever at home now
since they elected him to the County Council."
"To get on in the world," Grant said sententiously, "you 've got to
work night, noon, and morning. There's no time for flying round to
places of amusement, and chucking away hard-earned money. That's
what's wrong with all this country."
Joe looked up at the rafters heavy with flitches of bacon; at the
kettle purring on its crane. He glanced through the window to where
the full haggard lay. His ever-ready smile crept about his eyes.
"Oh, I hardly think we 'll starve for a while," he laughed. "Will we,
mother?"
The little old lady with the kittens smiled and shook her head.
"I 'm not saying anything," she said.
There was the sound of a gate clanging and the chime of voices. A dog
growled and then broke into a bark of welcome. The voices came nearer
to the door. Joe rose to open it. The mother put her head on one side
to listen.
"Do you know who that is, Willie John?" she asked.
"No," Grant answered, "I do not."
"It 's Eunice Doran," she said. She waited an instant. A smile crept
over her face. "Larry Doran's daughter, from beyond the hill."
"Oh, to be sure; I remember her," Grant smiled back.
Of course he did--a lank, gray-eyed girl, with a habit of staring you
out of countenance. The last time he had seen her she was fifteen,
with long arms and legs that seemed eternally in the way; and he
recalled, with a smile, how in those days he had been a little in love
with her, and they had passed many queer, awkward moments together.
A funny, pathetic thing! And as he thought of it a shutter in his mind
opened and he saw again the girl he had left on the stoop in
Schermerhorn Street, with her chic way and flashing eyes.
He wondered what she would think if she knew he had once had a boyish
affair with this simple thing from his own townland; and he blushed in
imagining her teasing laughter.
He warmed with a glow of pride as he thought of her,--of Miss Levine,
as he somehow always called her to himself,--of her marvelous clothes,
of her manicured hands and wonderful eyebrows, of her appreciation of
the latest effort of a cinematograph comedian, and her up-to-dateness
with the last flivver joke. He smiled, too, as he thought of the
wonder with which this poor country girl would regard the metropolitan
divinity.
She came into the room slowly; and, though he could distinguish little
of her features or form, he felt a sense of shock, for somehow he had
expected a lanky, overgrown girl with arms and hands like the awkward
legs of a foal--and what he saw was a tall woman, as tall as he, who