A poet—Tennyson, I think—speaks of the words of the comforter as "Vacant chaff, well meant for grain." I felt the truth of this description when I tried to talk to Mrs. Cassidy. She felt the same thing, I suppose, for she cut me short.
"Never a word did we hear of him or from him from that day to this," she said. "I made Norah Kate write a letter to his aunt out in Pittsburgh, to know if she'd seen the lad. It was a good letter and well written, though Norah Kate isn't the equal of Sonny for writing. But what use was it? He hadn't been near his aunt—nor she hadn't heard from him. All she said was that America's a big country and Michael Antony might be somewhere in it without her knowing. It was Michael Antony she said in her letter, not knowing that it was Sonny we always called him, though, of course, Michael Antony was his name."
I plodded home that evening along the muddy road and my heart in me was as sorrowful as the grey clouds which hung low over my head. Mrs. Cassidy's tragedy is the tragedy of Ireland. Their names are many, though we call them all Sonny. They go from us to a land that is very far off and we are left to grow old alone.
It was on Christmas Eve that I saw Mrs. Cassidy again. I did not mean to go to see her; but I was passing along the road and Norah Kate was watching for me at the end of the lane, as her father had watched for me a month before.
"My mother says," she said, "will your reverence step up to the house for a minute the way she'll be able to speak to you? For there's something that she wants to say."
It had rained steadily day and night since the last time I visited the Cassidys' house. The lane that led to it was like a running river. I picked my way from one large stone to another. I crawled along through deep mud beside the wall. Norah Kate, barefooted and therefore indifferent, splashed gaily beside me. Boots and trousers are a curse! If we had any sense we should wear kilts, as our remote ancestors did, and protect the soles of our feet with sandals.
The yard outside the house was incredibly filthy. The manure heap and the pigsty had—if the expression can be used of them—overflowed their banks. The thatch of the house was sodden and stained green in great patches. I expected to see worse desolation inside.
I was mistaken. Mrs. Cassidy met me at the door. She was bright-eyed and alert. She wore a clean apron. A bright turf fire burned on the hearth. There were sprigs of holly on the shelves of the dresser.
"You've had news of Sonny!" I said.
"Well, now, you're a wonderful man, so you are!" said Mrs. Cassidy. "How did you know that, when it's no more than an hour ago that the letter came?"
"It wasn't hard to guess," I said. "A merry Christmas to you, Mrs. Cassidy!"
"I was sitting by the side of the fire," she said, "after himself and the two little girleens had their breakfast ate, the same as I'd sat many's the day—God forgive me! I see now that I oughtn't ever to have given in the way I did. Well, I was sitting by the fire and himself was out about the place, and the two girleens was playing themselves, when all of a sudden Susy ran in on me——"
"It was me and not Susy!" said Norah Kate.
"What matter the which of you it was?" said Mrs. Cassidy. "My own belief is it was the two of ye together—and says she: 'The postman's coming up the lane.' 'He is not!' I said. 'He couldn't be, for the lane leads nowhere but to this house and who'd be writing a letter to one of us?'
"That was what I said; but I knew well that the postman was coming—and I knew that it was a letter from Sonny he had for me. I knew it by the way my heart was beating so as I could hear the noise of it with my ears—till all of a sudden it stopped entirely and I had to take hold of the table with my two hands, so as I wouldn't fall. That's what made me know there was a letter from Sonny; but I wasn't fit to go to the door to get it—not if I'd been given the crown of the Queen of Spain I couldn't have moved. Norah Kate got the letter."
"Me, and Susy along with me," said Norah Kate.
She is a fair-minded child. She objected to being deprived of her glory as the first bearer of the news; but she was jealous for her sister's honour too. Norah Kate and Susy together had taken the letter from the postman.
"I seen by the stamp on it," said Mrs. Cassidy, "that it was an American letter; and as soon as I seen that, the sight of my eyes went from me and I seen no more. It was Norah Kate read the letter."
"I did," said Norah Kate.
"Norah Kate's a good scholar," said Mrs. Cassidy; "and well she may be, for we've kept her regular to school; but sure it's small credit to her to be able to read Sonny's letter, for he's a beautiful writer. Would you like now, your reverence, that she'd read it for you?"
Mrs. Cassidy fumbled in the bosom of her dress and drew out a letter, already crumpled with much handling already, I think, stained with tears of joy. I spared Norah Kate the task of reading it again. Sonny's handwriting is really very legible.
"'Dearest Father and Mother,' he wrote: 'This comes hoping to find you as well as it leaves me presently. Within is an order for twenty dollars. It's what I'd like to have sent before, only I hadn't it till now—nor I wouldn't write so long as I'd nothing to send; but I've fine earning now and I've made good, which is what they say out here. I'd like you to get something for the Christmas, and a cake or the like of that for Norah Kate and Susy. And you needn't be afraid of spending it—for there's plenty more where this comes from.'"
"My father and Susy is gone into the town," said Norah Kate; "and there's a grand doll, with a pink dress on her, in Mary Finnegan's shop, and it's to be got for Susy and me."
"What signifies the doll, or the money either?" said Mrs. Cassidy. "It's the letter I'm thinking of. Go on with it now, your reverence. I'd never be tired listening to it."
"'The place I'm in,' Sonny wrote, 'would strike you as mighty queer, not being like what you're accustomed to at home. How's father? And how's the polly cow? And, hoping that you're keeping your own health,
"'Your loving Sonny.'"
"It was Sonny we called him," said Mrs. Cassidy; "but his name was Michael Antony."
"'P.S.,' I read. 'I didn't go near Aunt Matilda, for fear she might think I was wanting something from her, which is what I wouldn't take if she offered it to me—after the letter she wrote saying it would be better for me not to come out. But I'll take a run down to see her some day when I'm through with the job I'm at. I want nothing from her now—thanks be to God! But it might be some time before I get going, for Pittsburgh's a long way from this—farther than you'd think.'"
"Sonny was always terrible stubborn and independent," said Mrs. Cassidy. "Since ever he was in his cradle he'd do what he thought fit and do it the way he chose himself. He'd not be under a compliment to e'er a one."
I next heard of Michael Antony Cassidy—whom his mother called Sonny—under circumstances that made the rain-swept, desolate Connaught land seem like a half-forgotten dream. I was in the smoking room of one of the great liners, crossing the Atlantic for the first time in my life, and full of curiosity about the land I was to visit. In one corner of the room was a group of men playing some card game I did not understand. At other tables sat more men, talking in a lazy, desultory way. There is no use talking rapidly on shipboard. Why shoot remarks at your neighbour when you have all day long with nothing to do except hand them to him quietly?
All by themselves in the farthest corner of the room sat the only two men who seemed to be in earnest about what they were doing. They were playing chess. Their absorption in the game must have created a kind of atmosphere round them that their fellow voyagers found distasteful. They were isolated and several seats were vacant near them. I sat down beside them, not because I care much for chess—it is a game that bores me—or because I wanted to be earnest; but because I like to have room to stretch my legs and to spread my elbows.
I suppose, however, that their atmosphere influenced me when I breathed it. I watched the game without knowing or caring