CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013231208 THE GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE APPLE OF EDEN \_Sixth Edition TRAFFIC [Second Edition THE REALIST [Third Edition THE EVOLUTION OF KATHERINE [Second Edition MIRAGE [Fourth Edition SALLY BISHOP [Eighth Edition THE .CITY OF BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE [Nineteenth Edition The Greatest Wish in the World BY E. TEMPLE THURSTON H AUTHOR OF "tHT city or BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE " NINTH EDITION m LONDON CHAPMAN AND HALL, Ltd. 1910 3Li Richard Clay & Sons, Limited bread street hill, e.o., and bungay, suffolk. TO DOROTHY ALLHUSEN My deab Mrs. Allevsen, / nave often tried in the letter of politeness to thank you for all your Mndness to me, but the signal failure of each effort has been so apparent, especially to myself, that I am here endeavouring to make my gratitude seem truly tangible by asking you to accept the dedication of this book. If, in it, you find any of the joy or any of the laughter rvhich, like good friendship, can conjure the best out of the best oj all possible worlds,! shall then feel my gratitude to be in some sense a proven thing. Yours always sincerely, E. Temple Tbubston. Eversley, 1910. CONTENTS BOOK I CHAP. PAGE I THE WEEPING WOMAN 3 II THE HEART IN MRS. PARPITT .... 9 III THE MAGIC THIRD 16 IV BEING WHAT YOU MIGHT EXPECT ... 24 V THE IMPORTANCE OF ASKING FOR WHAT YOU WANT 27 VI MRS. GOOSBBERRY 35 VII AS MUCH AS THERE IS IN A NAME ... 45 BOOK II I THE REGISTRY OPPIOB FOR PARENTS II AT THE FOOT OP THE HILL OP DREAMS III THE EXERCISE OP DIPLOMACY . IV WHERE EVEN DIPLOMACY FAILS V THE CONPITBOR .... BOOK III 55 62 73 86 94 I THE HOUSE OPPOSITE 99 II HOW BABIES ARE BORN 105 III INKY 118 IV IN WHICH HISTORY SETS OUT TO REPEAT ITSELF 129 V THE HERO FOR ROMANCE . . . .134 VI AN ACQUAINTANCE . , .- . .141 VII PINCHERS 148 VIII THE FULL OF THE BLUB MOON . . . 160 vii viii CONTENTS CHAP. IX CHARING CROSS GARDENS X THE VIRTUE OP CURIOSITY XI THE IMPROVED SIGNAL HALYARD XII WHAT IS MEANT BY ABSOLUTION XIII A TRUE AND FAITHFUL DEFINITION BARGAIN XIV THE DUST-BIN — MAIDEN LANE . XV OF WAYS AND MEANS XVI FATHER o'lEAKY AT THE HIGH ALTAR XVII THE PATERNITY OP FATHER o'lEARY XVIII WHAT STEPHEN SAID XIX MRS. PARFITT GIVES NOTICE . XX THE ECLIPSE OF THE BLUE MOON . OP A rAOE 169 181 185 197 209 222 241 246 260 274 277 285 BOOK IV THE CALLING OP PEGGY THE LAST MEASURE 295 302 BOOK V I THE LITTLE SISTERS OF MERCY II THE WAY TO KEEP A SECRET . III THE WOODEN CHRIST IV AT FINUCHANE's .... V THE LONG ARM OF MATHEMATICS VI THE MIRACLE OP ST. FRANCIS XAVIER VII FATHER o'lEARY's MISSION VIII FATHER o'leARy's SECRET IX THE DOOR INTO THE WORLD . EPILOGUE 313 323 334 345 351 364 372 377 384 389 BOOK I THE GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD CHAPTER I THE WEEPING WOMAN If only it were possible to begin these things at the beginning. If only, and with perfect honesty, I could tell you that this romance of the house-tops began the moment that Peggy saw the light of the farthing candle in the trembling hand of Nicolas Gadd, as he entered the dingy little room of the house opposite. But I am obsessed with so scrupulous a sense of truthfulness when it comes to the hves of real people, that where there is ignorance, I must willy-nilly confess to it Invention wiU not do. For a few steps in the march of events, it might carry you along with me ; but as sure as fate should I find myself caught in some hazard on the way and then, how could I blame myself when you faced about, leaving me to pursue the journey by myself ? Without beating about the bush then, the evening when Peggy saw Nicolas Gadd showing the new lodger over his room, was not the first of it. B 2 3 4 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD It began years and years ago — long before Nicolas Gadd was bom — before Father O'Leary was dreamt of, or the forefathers of Mrs. Parfitt had thought fit to enter the married state. In fact — if there must be honesty about the matter — it began when our mother Eve tempted our father Adam with what the irrefutable historians have assured us to be an apple. I have no right to say anything about this. It probably was an apple. One of those hard, juicy fellows with a blush on his cheek that would endear him to the heart of any woman for his complexion alone. But when I think that the result of such temptation was a little child, it makes me for one have doubts about the matter. For the result of all this, if you choose but to come to end of it, is a little child as well. And there is nothing about an apple here. You will read of the vital relations between muffins and romance. There will be such entertainment as life can offer you with a kitten, by name Inky ; with a muffin-man, whom the whole neighbourhood knew by the name of Pinchers. There may be all sorts of comestibles; but never an apple that I know of. Perhaps, in this history, a muffin takes the place of it. Had, for instance, the Garden of Eden been in the district of Adelphi and the Strand, I can quite imagine Eve tempting Adam with a muffin. You never know. On a wet Sunday afternoon, they are priceless -and tempting things. But then the only gardens that I have ever heard of in Adelphi, are the gardens of THE WEEPING WOMAN 5 Charing Cross, and, high though the flights of my imagination may be, I cannot see Adam and Eve there. No — it was an apple, or nothing — well — or some- thing else. And since that is the real beginning of this history and a fear of plagiarism forbids me from starting there, I will set forth as best I can. It was the hoiu- of Benediction in the little chapel of Corpus Christi in Maiden Lane. I shall probably be accused of having too great a partiality for the hour of Benediction. But I cannot help that. I refer to my sense of truthfulness where real people are concerned. If Father O'Leary were here at my elbow, he would nod his wise old head, blinking those pale blue eyes of his and vouch for the truth of every word I said. It was the hour of Benediction, then. At that time of day and to that service come the strangest mixture of human beings you can conceive. To begin with, it is voluntary worship on their part. There is no such compulsion as there is in attending Mass. And whether it is that they are by nature religious, or the stress of circumstances driving them to the feet of God — like children to their mother's lap — I do not know. I want to think it is the latter. A mother's lap only exists on these sad occasions. She makes it for the purpose. Perhaps God does the same. I am positive the Virgin Mary does. However that may be, they look as though some 6 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD direful need had driven them there. Father O'Leary, in a joyful richness of brogue, used to say : " Faith, I'd sooner give Benediction for one poor rogue of a fella what had got himself into trouble than I would Mass for half the comfortable gintry in London." It is possible he might not have repeated that in the hearing of his bishop. You can never trust a bishop, not even round the comer of a street. It may be that he does not wear an apron in the Roman Catholic church — I completely forget — but there is something in the nature of him which the first fresh breeze is bound to catch, walk he never so sturdily. Then in a minute he is all orthodoxy. Bristling with it. You may, in this world, get a man to step over his counter and pass the time of day with you — but wild horses will not drag him out of his shop. Well, on this evening — if I told you how many years ago, you might distrust my memory — Father O'Leary was saying his beloved Benediction to a handful of poor creatures who had slipped in out of the streets into the hush of Maiden Lane Chapel. A few candles were burning before the high altar, a few before Our Lady, a few before the little painted image of St. Joseph. Imagine the sound of the sonorous Latin phrases in a broad and beautiful brogue ! It was like an organ with a sob in it. His singing ! That was execration ! Every note he foully mutilated with a benign expression on his face. It was a torture of the Inquisition. Brutal murder, done in all the fanati^ THE WEEPING WOMAN 7 cism of faith. Only the heart of him sang in tune. It was that, after all, which reached the hearing of God. But his chanting of the prayers was wonderful. It was so strange. And all those poor creatures, with heads bowed and faces hidden deeply in their hands, listened to it afar off, as they poured forth their own supplications in weird and vivid phrases such as educa- tion and custom had made it their habit to use. Before the service was quite over, one woman rose hurriedly to her feet and walked quickly down the side aisle to the door. - The chapel woman, who was kneeling in the last pew, declared that she saw her pass out, and that she was crying bitterly — great sobs shaking her whole body as she walked. But, as the chapel woman said herself, when Father O'Leary questioned her later — " They comes in 'ere and cries their heyes out — most distressful to God, I calls it — so I took no notice of 'er." And that was all that was ever seen of the weeping woman in Maiden Lane or elsewhere. There is little doubt, in my mind however, that she bears a closer relationship to this story than you might suppose from so brief an appearance in it. For this is what occurred. The candles were being extinguished on all the altars as Father O'Leary, having changed his vestments, walked down the church on his way to the presbj^ery. Before he reached the door, he stopped, as though some hand had thrust him back. There had lifted into the stillness of the place, a cry — 8 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD the waking cry of a little child. A tremulous, plaintive little sound which, to those who know it well, has a cunning way of rising up and up, then dropping with terrible precision right into the very heart of him who hears it. A cry, it is, that would echo and thump in the heart of every mother in the world. For a moment he stood still, counting the pulses that were throbbing in his head, as though, after a certain number, it were boimd to recur again. The next instant, he was hunting through the chapel from pew to pew. At last, wrapped in strange clothing — a petticoat of red wool, a man's waistcoat buttoned round to keep it all in place — and lying on the top of a little black box, he foimd the tiniest little baby he had ever seen in his life. And that, with your permission, is what I choose to call the beginning. CHAPTER II THE HEART IN MES. PARFITT HoLus bolus, lock, stock and barrel, Father O'Leary carried his btirden out of the chapel, through that little door in the porchway and up-stairs into the presbytery. " I'm just after finding a matter here that must be seen to," said he, and he laid the whole collection down on the table before Mrs. Parfitt's eyes. Now, nothing short of an event in the nature of a bolt out- of the blue could have made Father O'Leary so indifferent to Mrs. Parfitt's reception of anything that discorded with the daily routine. Mrs. Parfitt had been his housekeeper ever since that day when the Holy Church had thought fit to raise him from a curacy in Fermoy to the parish priest of Cap- poquin. From that day to this, her power over him had increased in proportion to his need of her. She ruled him, as it is said of some wives that they rule their husbands. What is more, he knew he was ruled. There comes a time when to submit to these things is the greater part of valour. " Shure, what there is of me, belongs to the church," 10 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD he used to say, " and what's left — faith there's no harm in a woman making herself the master of it, if her heart's in the right place." What is wonderful about this statement, beside its paradox, is that Father O'Leary realized Mrs. Parfitt's possession of a heart — a heart, moreover, set in its right place. With those thin lips of hers, that sallow face, the bright brown eyes set cunningly in deep hollows, and the straight, black hair plastered tightly about her head, there was no visible sign of a heart anywhere. Yet a heart need not be worn upon the sleeve to be seen. But the capacity of finding the true heart in any one is so rare, that those who possess it may only be met with in a day's march — and it is a long day's march at that. I would even give my blessing — such as it is worth — to the man who would put up a sign-post, directing one on the way. For I am ever in need of setting out on that journey of discovery myself and would walk endless days in the pursuit of such a person, only that I am bewildered for the road that I should take. Mrs. Parfitt had found him — by the chance of God, you would suppose — for her husband dying simul- taneously with Father O'Leary's promotion in the priesthood, she had applied for the situation of his housekeeper and had been accepted without more to do. THE HEART IN MRS. PARFITT 11 " Have ye any children at all ? " he asked her, well knowing she had not. In choosing a housekeeper you must ask these questions. It sounds as if you knew what you wanted. God knows you don't. To her English ears, untutored at that time in the brogue, she had somewhat misunderstood his question. Any children at all ? It sounded as if — well — she blushed at the thought of it. In those days, she had not forgotten how to blush. "No — I have no children — whatsoever," she had answered with dignity. And there, in that moment, in the sheer simplicity of his mind. Father O'Leary had discovered the key which was locking up her heart. " Mind ye — ye might get married again," said he, with his head on one side like a jackdaw. " I have my doubts of that," she replied, with asperity. There was the subtle taint of acid in her tone. But he knew well enough why it was there. " And yeVe no doubts about being my housekeeper ? " " I shouldn't have applied if I had," she answered. " I don't believe ye would," said he, and he took a pinch of snufF out of his waistcoat pocket. " Ye're that sort of woman," he added. " Ye can come over and begin to-morrow, Mrs. Parfitt. Mind ye, I'm not an easy person to deal with." He tried to look very stem as he said this. " I've got the very devil of a temper in me " 12 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD " And youVe got a nasty habit of taking snuif out of your waistcoat pocket," said she. " You can't expect me to keep your clothes clean if you do that." The look of sternness dropped from him. He gazed at her with admiration. " Will ye come to-day, Mrs. Parfitt ? " he said. " Just go an' tell Micky Sullivan to bring yeer things over at once." In such a manner as this, came Mrs. Parfitt down the road to the end of her wanderings. For the end of one's wanderings is usually a heart that under- stands, and some there be, who are still toiling on their journeys in search of it. You may see from this, if you have a mind for it, the subtle knowledge in the back of Father O'Leary's thoughts, when he foxmd courage to bring his strange burden up straightway into the presbytery and plant it down in front of Mrs. Parfitt's eyes. It was a baby, a helpless little infant — ^the smallest he had ever seen in his life. Fifteen years had gone by since that day when she had told him with dignity that she had no children whatsoever. Twice, during that time, he had been moved in pursuit of his duties. And in all these peregrinations, having no hesitation in openly abus- ing the authority that refused to let him settle down, she had followed faithfully. And now, there would never be any childi-en — one way or another — for Mrs. Parfitt. THE HEART IN MRS. PARFITT 13 One day, she had confessed to him her age. It came about — well, why go into the story ? A sister in America had not written to her for her birthday. Nothing is so upsetting to a woman than that her birthday should be forgotten at the time. Nor, for the matter of that, is there anything so upsetting to her, as when it is remembered afterwards. However that may be, in a momentary stress of emotion, Mrs. Parfitt confessed that she was fifty-one. Father O'Leary raised his eyes to heaven — and — " Glory be to God," said he. There was all the sub- mission in the world in his voice. It is an expression in common use in Ireland and, to a mind gentle in its judgments, proves no more than their close relation with the Deity Himself. To Mrs. Parfitt, who had long since grown accustomed to the sound of it, it meant nothing. But a wealth of mean- ing w£is there. The patriarch Abraham, raising the knife to plunge it into the heart of his son, coiald have praised God with but little deeper meaning than was in the heart of Father O'Leary then. So Mrs. Parfitt had passed the blessing of God. It was with but little misgiving then that he laid this strange bundle on the table before her very eyes. She gazed at it, puckering her brows in an ominous silence. Then, leaning both hands on the table, she looked up at the parish priest. "Well? "said she. 14 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD " Twas found at the foot of the altar of the Blessed Mother," he replied. " Shure, I found it myself." « Well ? " said Mrs. Parfitt. Father O'Leary's heart began to drop. The reitera- tion of that word was a little disconcerting. But he pulled himself together. It was hard to shake his belief in human nature. The man or woman who finds the true heart in you, goes on finding it through the deepest shadows and in the gloomiest of places. " Well — it's what we've got to do with it," he replied cheerfully. " Ye can't leave a baby on a black box for the rest of its life. It won't agree with it. I may be wrong, mind ye, but I've a fancy for thinking it was a woman who left it. I saw a woman " With a curling of her lip, Mrs. Parfitt lifted the little creature off the box and took it in her arms. " Of course it was a woman," she interrupted. " The shameful creature ! " And she was not converted yet. But then, a wonderful thing happened. The baby cried again. And sure enough, the cry rose and rose, up and up, and dropped right down into the heart of Mrs. Parfitt. In the twitch of a moment, she became a different being. There crept a greater tenderness into her voice as she soothed it, rocking it to and fro. There was even a trembling note in each word as she whispered to it — words that Father O'Leary strove in vain to understand. But a smile flickered at the comer of his long upper lip. He knew those words had a meaning. THE HEART IN MRS. PARFITT 15 " I- think," said he, under his breath and making for the door at the same time, " I think Til just slip down- stairs to the chapel — and — ask the " He was going to say — ask the chapel woman what she knew about it — ^but Mrs. Parfitt was not taking the slightest notice of what he said. When he closed the door behind him, she did not even look up. CHAFfER III THE MAGIC THIRD Theee is something so magical, so suggestive of legerdemain in the arrival of a little child that, in face of it, we become like children ourselves who have just witnessed the strangest conjuring trick in the world. Over two people, the magician places a box, calling it a house. If he is doing his tricks in the drawing- room, he just puts a magical cone over two rabbits. It is the same trick, only in the world he does it on a larger scale. For a moment he lifts off the house again, just so that you may make quite sure. There are only two people underneath. When you are perfectly satisfied that he has nothing up his sleeve, that his pockets are empty, and that the house has little inside it but a few pieces of furniture — to prove which he wiU rattle a stick round and round the box— then once more he places it back and the trick begins. Time passes in breathless suspense. And all the while he waves a wand over the house-top. He calls it the wand of romance. A few minutes go by — to you outside it seems but a few minutes — and then at 16 THE MAGIC THIRD 17 an upper window, you may perceive one of the two people inside staring out at you from above. Every minute this person keeps looking at his watch, as though he were waiting for some one who does not arrive. There is a worried expression on his face. At times, he puts his hand across his eyes. You might think, did you not know the inner meaning of those signs, that he was trying to shade them from the light. But the next instant he has taken his hands away once more, and is gazing anxiously at his watch. At last he disappears, quickly, as if some one had called him. This now is the signal ! The moment the magician sees it, he lifts up the box once more. And there you will find three people where before there were but two. Wonderful ! Marvel- lous ! You wonder and you wonder how it is done. It seems as though some supernatural power must have been at his elbow, helping him all the time. " The quickness of the 'and," says he, for he always drops his aitches, does the magician, "deceives the heye," and with scrupulous care he always picks them up again as he goes along. Then, as you examine the smallness of the third person who has crept into the box, you can see how possible it was for him to have concealed it after all. He might have pulled it out of his waistcoat pocket while he was attracting your attention to the furniture in the house. You can even recollect, when you come to think of it, how he expatiated upon the beauties of 18 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD a rocking-horse that stood alone in a big empty room. That probably was the very moment it was done. And then you know it is a trick — a trick of romance ; you know that the magician never made this tiny creature out of the air ; you know that when you saw the two people — alone, by themselves as you thought — the third person was really there all the time, had been there in fact from the beginning of the beginning. For when two people take it into their heads to creep under the magician's box, that box which the magician calls home, a third always creeps in with them. Often there are more. The magician does not stop at three. But sometimes it happens that these two are not even blessed, with the virtue of curiosity. They have no desire to see how the trick is done. And then, tired of waiting, the third Uttle person flies up with the smoke through the chimney. There can be no hope of seeing him after that. Now, never in all his life did the magician perform his favourite trick with so strange a box of a house as the Presbytery of the chapel of Corpus Christi, in Maiden Lane. And never did he choose two such odd people with whom to do it as Father O'Leary and Mrs. Parfitt. Perhaps the most cunning thing about him — for he is a cunning fellow is the magician — was that he should know that they wanted to see the trick done at all. As a rule, there is no performance of it unless you ask very THE MAGIC THIRD 19 particularly, couching your request in such diplomacy of language as will flatter his vanity up to the skies. Then and only then may he condescend to turn up his shirt-sleeves and begin. But Father O'Leary had said nothing. And Mrs. Parfitt, for her dignity's sake, had been as silent as the grave. Yet there was the matter, accomplished — ^under their very eyes. The magician had suddenly lifted the box and there on the table with both of them staring at it, lay the smallest little third person in the world. Ah ! he is a clever chap, that magician ! There is a man who studies his audience if you like ! He is a humorist too. What clever chap is not ? Jb'or once there was a lady, a Christian Scientist, who, fearing that that wand was being waved above her little house, flew tremulously to the aid of her beliefs. She held a thought against the third little person, declaring thereby that she would foil the magician in his machinations. And what happened .'' Ah, he is really a humorist that fellow, for he did the trick twice over with just one wave of his wand. He sent her two ! But at the Presbytery in Maiden Lane, it was humorous enough to send one. And then, the moment it cried, the moment she took it in her arms and Father O'Leary discreetly left the room, Mrs. Parfitt — like all women in the presence of a conjurer — forget to wonder about it any more. It was there. They are just the same in the drawing-room. When the conjurer lifts up the magic cone and shows you the c 2 20 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD wee third rabbit — while the men are left wondering how the dickens it was done — ^you will hear a woman's voice say, below her breath — " Poor little dear — it's terribly frightened ! " Bless her for it ! Directly Father O'Leary closed the door, Mrs. Parfitt began unbuttoning the waistcoat that kept in place the red flannel petticoat. From that onward — with various exclamations, mostly directed against the absent mother — for women are stem judges of each other in these matters — she searched through the tiny garments with which the wee mite was clothed. Satisfying herself on these points — into the details of which from an admitted and lamentable ignorance, I cannot enter — she opened the black box. On the top of its contents, written in a clean and well-formed writing, lay a letter. It was directed to Father O'Leary. Now Mrs. Parfitt was the most honest of women in the world. In her hands, one's possessions were as safe as if a thousand bolts secured them. But when a woman believes that she has another's welfare in her keeping — as they tell me a wife does so believe of her husband — there is no such thing as honesty in her nature. Believing it truly to be for Father O'Leary's sake, Mrs. Parfitt would have opened that letter; shame- lessly she would have read its contents and as shamelessly sealed it up again, keeping the secret in her own breast, had not the priest at that moment returned. THE MAGIC THIRD 21 Her finger was just beneath the flap of the envelope as he entered. "There's a letter," said she, eyeing him severely. " It's written to you. I didn't open it — never opening other people's letters." That delicious note of dignity on the defensive! Father O'Leary took it from her with a twinkle in his eyes. " Dea/r Father O'Leary,^'' — for this is what the letter contained. He read it out at once, well knowing her suspense. '■ This is my last confession. Forgive me. Father, for I have svwned. If God had given me help, I think I could have faced the pimishment. But what is there left when there is no strength to bear the pain of the punish- ment when it comes f I cannot go on. All reasoning has left me. I cannot argue that it is right to live — / have no strength to argue. For three days I have had no food. All I can see, is that I have no right to take my little Peggy where I am going. My chance has come and gone. I leave her chance with you. Why you ? I do not know. I heard you say in your sermon yesterday — ' If you wives or you husbands were Just to go home and look in the eyes of your baby child, you would more plainly see God than on this altar.'' And I looked down at my Peggy. But her eyes were shut. Perhaps that is why I have left her to you. , She will wake soon. Her eyes mil open and then you can look into them.'''' 22 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD He dropped the letter on the table and walked across to the window — turning his back. Mrs. Parfitt picked up the piece of paper. The writing was good. It was better than her own. " A woman like that ! " she exclaimed. " With her education ! She ought to be ashamed of herself." "Judging by what she says in that letter," said Father O'Leary, without turning, " she is. Shure, God help her." " Indeed, I wouldn't say that," rejoined Mrs. Parfitt. " The shamelessness of leaving a poor little child alone in the world while she just walks out of it as easy as you please — and leaves some one else to look after the trouble she's made. Thank you ! Well — I never did!" Father O'Leary came round on his heel with a swirl of coat-tails. " Mrs. Parfitt," said he — and he marched across to the table — " Shall I tell ye why ye're after saying a thing like that?" " You can tell me," said she, as if his telling would only be guesswork, and wrong at that. " 'Tis because ye're jealous of the poor creature." Mrs. Parfitt drew herself up. " I may be wrong, mind ye, but ye'd have had a heart as large as one of Patsheen's worzels if ye'd had a chUd to be pawin' at it with them ten fat little fingers. Ye'd have forgiven this poor woman sixty times over, if ye'd had a child of yeer own. Shure 'tisn't blame I'm put- THE MAGIC THIRD 23 ting on ye. It is not. God has His way of doing things. May be 'twas the way He saw ye'd have too big a heart. Faith, I've met some like that and all they'd be doing would be to spoil their children. I'm only giving ye my idea of it, mind ye. It isn't because I'm a priest that I'd flatter myself I knew any more about God than ye do. But, faith, I know ye've got a heart. They told me ye sent out to Mr. Wilkins over to tell him to stop beating that boy of his. Ye said he was disturbin' the whole neighbourhood. Shure 'twas yeer own heart he was disturbin'. That was the way wid ye. Why, Glory be to God, I've seen ye jump when a dog howls out in the street. I have so. Do ye hear, now — that's what I'm telling ye. Ye're as envious of that child there as ye can well be. Faith, ye wouldn't mind if it were yeer own, however ye got it. Shure, Holy Mother of God ! look at the way ye're huggin' the poor little thing — 'tis enough to strangle the life out of it. Will ye give it to me now, please, while I see what we'll do with it " And taking the little creature eagerly out of her arms, for by this time Mrs. Parfitt was too amazed to disobey, he clutched it awkwardly in his own and called it "Peggy." CHAPTER IV BEING WHAT YOU MIGHT EXPECT YouK own faults, and by the same token yotir own virtues too, it would seem, are those of which you most vehemently accuse others. It is because of these little foibles that human nature is so inimitably charming in its infinite variety. Mrs. Parfitt, keen an observer of human nature as she was, had never discovered this. For you only arrive at such knowledge through sympathy. A satirical view of life will serve you not at all. And Mrs. Parfitt, for all the heart which we now know her to possess, had somewhat of a bitter view of life. Accordingly, when in his outburst of criticism, she stood accused by Father O'Leary, there was nothing to be said. She knew it was true. But she deduced nothing from it. She never saw for one moment that he stood self-accused as well. Without a word of defence, she handed over little Peggy into his clumsy arms and watched him, seeing nothing, as he treated it in the way most men treat babies. Which is saying the best you can for them. *'For goodness' sake — keep it's head up," she ex- 24 BEING WHAT YOU MIGHT EXPECT 25 claimed ; " it's getting red in the face. The poor mite ! " And she said it contemptuously, for it was her parting shot. The last she had. He took no notice. Certainly he raised Peggy's head, but that was all. To show how little he cared for anything Mrs. ParlBtt could say now, he planted a resounding kiss on Peggy's round little cheek. Now there is more in life that a baby has to endure than you would imagine. Peggy could not endure this. With a kicking of her little toes, her eyes and mouth opened as though they were never going to shut, and she emitted a cry that drove the fear of God into Father O'Leary. The thought that he might have injured her for life pursued the blood from his cheeks. "Here — give her to me," exclaimed Mrs. Pariitt peremptorily, warm with the sense that nature was bringing her her revenge. " You don't know how to handle a child. It's not a rag doll. There's blood, not sawdust in it." He gave up his burden as a sheep gives up its wool — conscious of the inevitable. " Poor little didums, then," said Mrs. Parfitt, when she had regained possession. "Did they frighten its little life by giving it a smack on the face .'' " Full of apology and half under his breath. Father O'Leary murmured that it was meant to be a kiss. But Mrs. Parfitt was inexorable. She was tasting all the sweetness of revenge, for Peggy's cries were 26 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD beginning to cease, in the instinctive soothing of her arms. " Did they let the blood run into its blessed little head?" she continued. "They treated it like a rag doll, they did." Being alluded to like this, and in the third person plural, was more than Father O'Leary could bear. It seemed to multiply the enormity of his sins to such an extent that he felt them stifling the very air he breathed. He made hurriedly for the door. " I'm just after going out now," said he — in the voice of one who would make amends — "to see about the nursing of the little creature " — he looked fondly across the room. " Shure, the creature ! " he repeated. It meant contrition for all he had done. It meant every- thing. " There's that Mrs. Gooseberry in Covent Garden — such a name for a woman in Covent Garden, mind ye ! She's just had a baby what died. I'm going to bury the poor little scrap myself. I'll go and ask her now about the nursing of this one here." " I can nurse it myself." said Mrs. Parfitt, with some offence. " Nurse it ! Shure, ye can nurse it, but Glory be to God, woman, ye can't feed it." And with that winning stroke, he was gone. After all this bandying about of a baby from one person's arm to another, for all the world as if it were a common brawl, it may be as well to get on with the story. CHAPTER V THE IMPORTAKCE OF ASKING FOB, WHAT YOU WANT Now with all the best intentions in the world would I get on with the story, but the immediate present cries for consideration. Mrs. Gooseberry lived in the country, coming up to London every day to sell the produce of her garden. Of that very garden there is more to be told, but I swear, upon my honour, thkt I will not embark upon it now. Greater issues are at stake. For at that time of the evening, Mrs. Gooseberry was not to be found in the market and there was the whole night before them with a baby who, for all they knew, was in distressful need of a meal even then. Father CLeary had no sooner closed the door, than the thought leapt into apprehension. He opened the door again and thrust in his head. " D'ye mind," said he, " the poor wee thing may have nothing in the insides of it these past six hours, and faith, I shan't be in the way of seeing Mrs. Gooseberry till to-morrow morning ? I've only just thought of it. Now, how in the name of God are we going to keep it alive till then ? " 27 28 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD Mrs. Parfitt said nothing. This insistence on the matter was hard to bear. It was through no fault of her own. " D'ye think it ^ud take milk from ye out of a spoon ? " he asked. " Shure, woman, for goodness' sake answer me. It may be dying there in yeer arms for want of a sup to eat. Would it take milk, d'ye think now — faith, it might if I warmed it a wee bit ? " " Perhaps you'd like to give her a piece of undercut from the cold sirloin," she jerked out satirically. " Baptizing children doesn't seem to have taught you much about them. The poor little thing must have a bottle. You'll have to go and buy one. There's not such a thing in the house that I know of." Father O'LearyJooked perturbed. She might have asked him to go out into the streets and sing on the curbstone. He would have preferred even that. " Can't ye manage with some sort of a bottle we've got.?" said he. "Faith, I'll wash out any bottle ye like with soda — I wiU so." He made as if to go and search for one before she could disagree with the sug- gestion. " I'll be after finding one down-stairs in two . minutes now." Mrs. Parfitt smiled. He saw the smile and it chilled him. " And what are you going to do," she asked frigidly, " for the — ^the rubber thing at the end ? " " What rubber thing ? " " The— the rubber thing ! " ASKING FOR WHAT YOU WANT 29 She refused to say more than that. "Oh — Glory be to God! Shure, I'd forgotten that." " You'd better," said she, " go out and get the bottle without making any more fuss about it." And in abject dejection — he went. For a man who has sworn and kept the vows of chastity, this is not a nice thing to be compelled to do. He felt, as he crept out into the streets, that every one must know his mission. He hurried past the groups of little boys at the corners of the market, fearing lest they might cry after him the terrible secret that it seemed was burning in his face. A baby's bottle ! He wondered, vainly, why he was doing it. An hour before, he would not have believed such a thing possible. It is wonderful the demands the magician makes upon you, when he does his trick with the magic third. What, perhaps, is more wonder- ful still, is the way you implicitly obey him. With long, stealthy strides, he made his way quickly up the narrow side streets in the direction of Drviry Lane. No chemist with glaringly lighted windows in the Strand for him ! He knew of a chemist in a little alley off Old Drury. Only a red lamp burnt dimly outside the shop. The windows, half-way up, were of painted glass, in numberless little panes, with the sug- gestive row of bottles showing through the plain glass up above. It was a true chemist's shop of days gone by. Just the mysteriously lighted interior, with its big 30 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD bottles of coloured water, lit by a naked gas jet from behind, where you might imagine poisons and philtres compounded out of strange herbs. The very place in fact to buy, unseen, so incriminating a thing as a baby's bottle. To that very shop, hugging the shutters as he walked, Father O'Leary made his way. In those days, the chemist— I have no right to tell you his name, for I met his dalughter in the street only a short while ago, and it is possible she might sue me for damages — in those days, anyhow, he was a little man with pale yellow hair and a strange cast in one eye. He gave you the impression that he had lived there in that very shop, thtough numberless transmigrations of his soul. His face was lined with the tortured writing of the thousands of prescriptions he had compounded. His fingers were stained, past redemption, with the num- berless chemicals he had measm-ed out. Whenever he made out a prescription for you, he would answer no questions you might happen to ask, contribute to no conversation you might wish to make. But as he walked about behind the counter, from the shelves to his antiquated balance and back again, he would hum a song beneath his breath. It was always the same song. Always pitched in the same key. " Should she upbraid — I'll auswer with a smile." And that will show you how old he was. There is a doctor in Drury Lane, who has written ASKING FOR WHAT YOV WANT 31 prescriptions for me that I might go and hear him sing his song. His runs over the notes were exquisite to listen to — a perfect triumph of strategy. I always used to think that he first began singing it, when a love- sick youth came into the shop, imploring him to com- pound a philtre for some wayward girl who had dis- dained his suit. I can fancy the youth, seated on that little stool — the only sitting accommodation in the shop — and as he poured forth his woes, suggesting this ballad to the mind of the little old chemist with his wall-eye and his creaky voice. Heavens ! I look back ! Two pages, and Father O'Leary is still hugging the shutters ! 'Tis high time he reached the chemist's shop and got about his business. With one stride, when once he saw the shop was empty, he crossed the threshold. In two more, he had reached the counter. " I want," said he, in a loud voice — and then he had a violent fit of coughing and the longer the little chemist peei:ed at him over the top of a bottle of jujubes, the longer it continued. " Black currant and eucalyptus is very good," said the little chemist, " I make them up myself." And he emphasized himself, as all good tradesmen do. " You buy other people's," he added, " and you're only paying for the name." " Faith, it isn't a cold I have," said Father O'Leary, " it's a — well, I want a bottle." 32 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD The little chemist moved the jujubes on one side. " You mean an inhaler," said he. «Tis not at all," said Father O'Leary. "Well — we call them inhalers in the trade," said the little chemist. And with a flash of inspiration he added — "I don't know what you call them in Ireland." Father O'Leary sat down on the little stool and for one terrible moment of silence, fingered the gold cross on his watch chain. When that moment had passed, he looked up and, with a voice so quiet that the little chemist with one hand on the jujubes had to lean forward on his toes to catch the words, he said — " I want a bottle — ^please God. It isn't an inhaler at all — it's a bottle — a baby's bottle." -" Oh," said the little chemist, coming back on to his heels. " Why didn't you say so at first ? " Father O'Leary, disdaining to answer, took a large red pocket-handkerchief from his coat and wiped his forehead. The worst, thought he, is over. But you never know what twists and turns Fate may take in a matter of. this kind. He thought when once he had got the words out of his mouth that there was no more for doing but to pop the thing in his pocket and off, with triumph, as fast as his legs could carry him, to Mrs. Parfitt. Even when the little chemist appeared again behind the counter with an assortment of bottles in his arms ASKING FOB WHAT YOU WANT 38 for him to choose from, he may have been annoyed, but he retained all self-possession. He never flinched. There was the one with the long tube, said the little chemist, handing it out and entangling it with a pjrramid of scented soaps so that they all tumbled to the floor — ■ "Some prefer them." You could hear him saying it from down in the depths where he was grovelling for the scented soap. "It takes the child longer to get the milk to the mouth — consequent, it don't consume so much." His head popped up again above the counter. " How old's your baby ? " he asked. " Two — three weeks," said Father O'Leary — much as a man hits at something in the dark. " The wife not quite up to the mark, I suppose," continued the little man. Father O'Leary seized hold of a phrase out of the void — " As well as could be expected," he stammered. " Then," said the little chemist, obHvious of every- thing but his bottles and his soaps — " There's the one with, what you might say, no tube at all — just the " " Faith, that's the one," interposed Father O'Leary quickly — " Ye can wrap it up in a piece of paper, and none of yer twine or sealing-wax. Paper'U do." " Just the comforter at the end," persisted the little chemist quite unperturbed. " You'll take that one. Certainly." And he began to wrap it up in paper. " Been married long ? " he went on, as he crossed the U GREATEST WISS IN THE WORLD ends of the brown paper and folded them in. A young girl entered the shop and Father O'Leary looked wildly about him. " In the name of God," said he, " will ye leave me alone and give me that parcel ? " and, leaning across the jar of jujubes, he seized it out of the little chemist's hands. As he hurried out of the shop, he heard the young girl ask for a farthing's worth of vaseline. And he kept on saying it to himself all the way down Drury Lane — " A farthing's worth of vaseline — "" said he, " a farthing's worth of vaseline." It kept him from thinking of other things. CHAPTER VI MRS, GOOSEBERRY Says Bacon in one of his essays — " God Almighty first planted a Garden." I think of that sometimes when, in the pale dawn of the early morning, I see those sleepy wagons, heavy with roses, toiling up the narrow street of Long Acre on their way to the market. That which is unconsciously beautiful, is so beautiful to you who realize it, that it must almost take your breath away. And there is nothing so unconscious of its beauty, as a wagon-full of roses, lumbering through the squalid surroundings which shut away Covent Garden from the world. The man who makes a show of holding the reins of those willing beasts between the shafts, is more than often asleep in his piece of sacking. There is no one so unconscious as he of the beauty of that glistening glamour of pink which meets the pale grey dawn in those streets of dirty houses. The scent of them, perhaps, is in his nostrils as he sleeps. But that is nothing to the perfume, borne on the wings of your imagination, which comes to your senses as they pass you by. D2 35 36 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD Oh ! so many thousands of times it is said — " Go to Covent Garden in the early morning — it's a sight worth seeing." But who, saving those distressed with the fatigue of a night's long revelry and far from being in the mood which it deserved, ever go there ? At four o'clock, when the market opens, in the steely blue of a day just breaking over the smoke curtain of London, that place might be the very garden which was planted by the God Almighty. The banks of blossom are still wet with dew. There is that inde- scribable feeling in the air, as of the breath, cool in its passing the lips, of some dear woman whom you love. There is colour — great rainbows of it — that will be so generous as will come again and again in the grey days to your eyes. And everywhere and on everything, the faint dripping and wetness of water that as yet has not been tarnished by the day. The men who move silently in and out amongst the flowers on their stalls, are too heavy with sleep and the prospect of the day's work, to obtrude themselves upon your mind. They might be mutes, in the lavish garden of one whose ears will have nothing but the waking of the birds, and that faint breathing of flowers which, in the hush of early morning and late evening, you can just dimly hear. And thus, and in such a company, untouched as yet by all but the simple hands that have picked them, lie those argosies of flowers which that same night will droop and wither on half the dinner tables in London. You may see them at your restaurant, exclaiming on MRS. GOOSEBERRY 37 their beauty as you take your meal — but, oh! see them at Covent Garden, when they are as young as the morning ! They can tUm bright eyes to you then — eyes that have the broad, sweet stretch of the country still in their depths, as a sailor, just ashore, will show you in his, the deep, strong sweep of the sea. Oh ! Covent Garden ! Covent Garden ! In those early mornings, it is perhaps the more beautifiil for being one of the ugliest places in the world. There is no grace in its architecture — nothing but the suggestion of a doleful, tawdry Crystal Palace about its vaulted roofs of glass. With its rows of stalls, there is a pain- ful and British regularity — nothing so hap-hazard, or so fanciful in line as there is in the markets abroad. Empty of its treasures, it is one of the gloomiest of places, but at four o'clock, when the great gates are open to that pubhc which is ever fast sleeping in its bed, it becomes a Palace of Enchantment — a very Garden of Romance. For what is Romance, but coloiu- ? It is Romance when you see the mist of blue on the distant hills. It is Romance when you see shadows of piu:ple beneath the far-off trees. All this is Romance, because if you climb up to the distant hills, they are green ; and if you stroll in the shade of the trees, all is green there, too. But in Covent Garden, there are the colours themselves. You need no imagination to make them for you. The blues, the mauves, the scarlets, crimsons and purples, they all are there. However close you 38 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD may look, they do not change. And with it all, is that good, clean smell of the earth, mingling with the scent of ten thousand roses. If it were not for that alloy, the perfume of the flowers would be too great ; but there is no decadence in Nature. She does not cloy you with the scents she wears. There is that cleansing savour of the earth to filter through your senses, leaving behind, not the odour itself, but a lingering memory which comes to you in moments through your life — those moments when your eyes look far away into a distance which God has given you and you believe yourself in a garden^ — the garden perhaps that God planted, where the roses that grow there are red. Probably not one soul will read this amiable disgres- sion, fancying that it is conceit of mine and has little or nothing to do with Mrs. Gooseberry. But, I venture to think, it has to do a good deal. ^people have so much in common with their surround- ings — either in contrast or in likeness — that the two are well-nigh inseparable. No one, who has ever seen Mrs. Gooseberry, seated under her faded green umbrella in that part of the market where the little boxes of growing pansies and geraniums are sold, could possibly separate her from her Romantic environments of Covent Garden. She was so bewilderingly ugly, so compellingly material with her ample bosom and beaming round red face, that she became beautiful in vivid comparison with the wonder- MRS. GOOSEBERRY 89 ful flowers in whose midst she moved. Well — moved — is not quite right. She sat. Have you never wondered which was the more beautiful — Beauty or the Beast ? I can never quite make up my mind. Sometimes it is one — sometimes the other. For the Beast was a good Beast and they tell us — quite rightly, of course — that the beautiful is the good. Now, Mrs. Gooseberry was the very best woman in the world. She, if you like, had a heart as large as her ample bosom could hold. It beamed out at you from under her green gingham umbrella. You could no more pass by a great bank of roses without thinking them beautiful, than you could pass by Mrs. Gooseberry''s gingham umbrella without thinking her good. And so I chose to see her beautiful — ^the most beautiful woman I think I have ever met. There may have been something of this in the mind of Father O'Leary when her name came so readily to his thoughts. Certainly, she had just given birth to a baby who had died. But you do not chose a woman solely on that account to be a mother to the third person whom the magician has just given you. Unfor- tunately that tragedy happens too frequently lor it to be difficult for you to find such a person as you require. I think, therefore, that there must have been somewhat of the goodness of Mrs. Gooseberry in his mind when he selected this dear lady. For never is a man so careful as when he sets about choosing the mother for his child. She must have such virtues as go nigh to making her 40 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD unlovable. And if he loves her passionately which, for her weaknesses, he may ; then, torn between vanity and remorse, he will exclaim — " But how could she be a mother to my child ? " Yet you may be sure Father O'Leary was pleased with the selection of Mrs, Gooseberry. With a swinging step, he made his way up to that part of the market where she was sitting. There is human nature in a Roman Catholic Priest, you know, although you ai'e not really supposed to think it. His gait was swinging and his head, with that rough and ready silk hat on the top of it, seemed to beat time to his steps. And all this, because he had got even with Mrs. Parfitt over the matter of the nursing of Peggy. There were few things in life, beyond saying the absolution over some heart-broken degenerate, which gave him greater pleasure. Lastly of all, he knew that his mission was to bring balm to the poor aching heart of Mrs. Gooseberry. For when a woman loses a child just born, it is the loss of the clinging little fingers and the warm little lips that she cries over. It is a secret, and I tell it to you with some appre- hension, for it may make you think less of that loving creature who is lying so still and so patiently at home — but one baby is as good as another to that woman with the quiet eyes and heart still breathing with relief. My child ! Any other as good as my child ! Ah, I should not have said it. Perhaps I am quite wrong. MRS. GOOSEBERRY 41 The little bird who told it me, had just had her nest robbed and possibly the poor thing was distracted. Still — I believe that women will understand what I mean. Anyhow, in a vague and half-conscious way. Father O'Leary counted it in his reckoning. With a cheery smile that spoke, half sympathy, half promise, he approached her under her green gingham umbrella. " How's the world treating the flowers this morning, Mrs. Gooseberry .? " he began— obliquely, as is the way to approach every woman. It is always round the corner of some angle that a woman is to be met. For answer, she just picked the blossom of a pansy from out of one of the little boxes and handed it to him. " As bad as that ? " said he, putting it straightway in his button-hole. " Seems to me," said Mrs. Gooseberry — mingling her cockney with his brogue — " seems to me, people 'aven't no sense of 'ow beautiful flowers is. Look ^ere at these pansies — shillin' a dozen — ^penny a root. But d'you think there's a blessed one to come and buy 'em .'' " She looked up to the roof of her gingham umbrella for the answer. And the gingham umbrella replied, as you might have expected it to, with a solemn silence. For a little while then, they talked of flowers. She told him the woes of the whole market. It is never without them. For the people who deal with the treasures that the earth gives forth out of her bare breast 42 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD are usually discontented. Because Mrs. Gooseberry loved her flowers for themselves, she was probably an exception. "But— deary me," she always said, when she had poured forth her troubles, "I don't complain." So I take it that the expression of her woes in good cockney English was nothing more than a making of conversation. No one else in the market, that I know of, concluded with that little epilogue of resignation. Father O'Leary listened patiently to it all ; and then, by dexterous movements, calculated to touch her big heart with sympathy, he led the conversation round to the death of her baby. " Shure, ye're lonely, of course," said he, when he saw her great big hand, that never hurt a fly, picking secretly at the corner of her white apron. " 'Ow can I 'elp it .'' " she replied, tremblingly, but as brave as you please. Mrs. Gooseberry was not the woman to let her tears fall in public places. " 'Tisn't as if rd got fond of the little thing. I know that. Why, it was only two weeks old. But a child's a child, and when you've Ijrought it into the world you want to do your best to keep it there, no matter what it's going to turn out. See what I mean ? " She looked up at him with the question, and then, suddenly realizing that he was a man and, what was more, a priest, who knew nothing about these things, she swallowed her sorrow. With a jerk, she pulled her apron straight across her knees. MRS. GOOSEBERRY 43 " Oh — you don't understand ! " she said in a different voice. "But Gawd understands. 'E knows what a woman feels Vs been lookin' for the first sight and touch of 'er baby for nine long months and then, just when she's got it — puff! like a candle ! " Some sense in Father O'Leary was hurt to the quick. He had never felt so shut out from life, so alienated, so much an outcast before. It was a moment of weakness. Great heavens ! We all have them ! It was a moment when the great heart of a man must burst open the door which has been closed so abruptly in his face. That door, together with many others, opening to a network of life's passages, he had closed voluntarily himself when he took his vows. Many, perhaps, had opened them since and called his name, but he had not answered. And now, this Mrs. Gooseberry, with her warm sense of life and that great mother's heart of hers, had just opened the door that possessed the weakest latch of all. She had spoken right into the heart of him, and then, finding no answer, had closed it once more, saying — " Oh, you don't understand ! But Gawd under- stands ! " And that was more than he could bear. The next moment he had flung the door open wide — ^the next instant he was bending down close to her ear under the old gingham umbrella. " Shure, Glory be to God," he said quickly, " I luider- stand every word ye're saying. Didn't I tell Mrs. Parfitt it was the ten little wee fingers of the mite 44 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD that would have got at the heart of her ? Shure, woman, I understand every single word ye're saying. And ril prove it to ye now — I will so. What would ye say if I asked ye to bring up a little baby two weeks old ? Eh, what would ye say ? A wee scrap of a thing that lost its mother iust when its little fingers kept pawing for her all day long ! What would ye say to me, now, if I asked ye to do that this very day ? " Mrs. Gooseberry caught her breath. She laid her hand on his coat-sleeve and pulled down his head, so that she might whisper in his ear. " What were you before you went into the Church, Father O'Leary?" she asked. " Faith — I was a man," said he. CHAPTER VII AS MUCH AS THERE IS IN A NAME It is no go-as-you-please affair, this setting forth in the capacity of Chronicler on a pilgrimage of other people's lives. There ai'e canons to be observed and rubrics to be obeyed. Certain liberty is given you to wander down those enchanting little by-lanes, with their high hedges intertwined with biyony, their banks dotted with wee blossoms of china blue. But you must come back again. You must return to the high-road whensoever the voices call you. For instance, you have no right to make great business over a black box, without opening the lid, turning it upside down and shaking out the contents, helter-skelter, till you make sure that nothing remains behind. In the unwritten laws of narrative, no train of interest may be lit- which does not burn to some satis- factory explosion. Now a black box, being one of those properties in which every good showman conceals his most alluring mystery, it is incumbent upon him, sooner or later, to have it out upon the table. This is a pity. In a true pilgrimage, there may 45 46 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD be black boxes, secret cupboards, drawers concealed in old bureaus, with never the vestige of a mystery contained in them at all. Once I hunted for a lost will in an old house. It was a thrilling experience. There were all those delight- ful conveniences for the most breathless of mysteries. The old lady, for whose will I searched, possessed every piece of fumitm-e in which such things lie hid — from grandfather's clocks to an old oak chest with a secret recess contained within the lid. You may conceive my certainty that I had made an end of the business, when I discovered that cunning recess. With eager hands, I wrenched open the panel and found there — a dead mouse. One of the housemaids discovered the will eventually. It was in an envelope addressed to the solicitors and was standing on the top of the clock on the mantel- piece in the dining-room. The servant who discovered it, was the one whom the old lady had directed to place it there, just before she died. Now, here am I, the chronicler of a true pilgrimage, and the pity is that, having found little Peggy lying on a black box at the foot of the altar of Our Lady in the little chapel in Maiden Lane, I have, whether I like it or no, to turn out that box for you, from the letter on top to the sampler at the very bottom. In the excitement of finding Peggy — of feeding her too, for that matter — both Father O'Leary and Mi-s. Parfitt forgot about the black box altogether. I had AS MUCH AS THERE IS IN A NAME 47 well-nigh forgotten about it myself, when the thought of Peggy's name — for the letter addressed to Father O'Leary was unsigned — recalled it to me. You may as well be told it from the first. The only thing of importance which dropped out of that mys- terious receptacle was the name by which Peggy passes through this history. No guarantee is given with it that it was her right name ; but since these things are a convenience in this world and such importance is attached to them as passes my comprehension, it was considered as well to dub her with it then and there. You must know then, that the very next morning, when he had signed, sealed and agreed upon the bargain with Mrs. Gooseberry, Father O'Leary retui-ned to the Presbytery and the very first thing he asked for was the black box. "Will ye bring it up-stairs now to me," said he, " and we'll turn it out here on the table ? " Mrs. Pai-fitt obeyed — reluctantly, because she had cherished hopes that he had forgotten all about it, and was going to go through it quietly, by herself, that very day. " It's a wonder she had so much consideration as to leave these," said Mrs. Parfitt, as she drew out a clean white garment that looked as if it ought to be called a pair. " An' what are they ? " asked Father O'Leary, taking them tenderly between the tips of his fingers. " I forget what you call them," said Mrs. Parfitt, and 48 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD she pulled forth a little bonnet quickly, shaking it out in her hand. " But that's a bonnet," said she. " Faith, I can see that," said Father O'Leary, and he laid the other things on a far side of the table. " Then here's a day gown," she went on, drawing out the garments as a conjurer pulls ribbons out of a hat, " and this — well, I never ! This is a little flannel nighty." " D'ye mean to tell me the poor little mite has to wear all these things ? " Mrs. Parfitt rubbed her nose with the back of her hand and went on in silence. " Her little brush ! — bless her little heart ! And her sponge ! " " Faith ! she's got an outfit that 'ud take her for a journey to Australia and back." " And here — well, I never did ! " exclaimed Mrs. Parfitt. " Here's a feeding bottle after all." Father O'Leary took it pensively in his hands. " Yirra, if Pd had half a thought of that," said he. " A long tube, too — and I bought a short one. Why didn't ye look in that box last night, Mrs. Parfitt, before ye sent me on that old woman's errand ? " " It was your box," said Mrs. Parfitt. " I don't peer into things that don't concern me." He laid down the bottle quietly. I think he sighed. " But yours is the better bottle," said Mrs. Parfitt. "Thank God for that," said he. AS MUCH AS THERE IS IN A NAME 49 And then, at the very bottom of the box — crumpled and seared, like a piece of old parchment — they found the sampler from which Peggy was given her name. I could write about samplers till I was tired and you had long lost interest in the story. But I will say nothing about them. No little girls work them now, so I presume they will not be considered worth while talking about. I suppose little girls have better things to do than paint in dainty feather stitches and cross stitches those inimitable trees that grew in Noah's Ark. They are too busy to leave those pathetic little verses, worked laboriously in childish letters, for their children's children, and those children's children after them to read. I hope they have better things to do. Perhaps they have. It is a common plaint to mourn over the past. But I have so vivid a picture in my mind of the eager fingers, the bright, untiring eyes, and the young, fresh faces which set to work on the samplers that one sees. Simplicity was the art in them. And they will live so long as the threads of the canvas can hold together. Their little triangular trees, with straight, short stems, their peacocks, seated as no peacock has been seated before or since, their birds and their flowers, defy nature or .glorify it. I am not quite sure which. But they are so wonderfully unreal that they live in a world of their own. That world into which a child's eyes so often look, when it lies in bed, and stares and stares, just as you put out the candle. 50 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD There is much that might be said of samplers. But I am determined that I shall say nothing — ^nothing at least beyond what must be written of the sampler that lay at the bottom of Peggy's portmanteau. It was worked on canvas, the colour of old ivory, and the stitches were blue and they were brown. Long ago the colours had faded and toned into shades so delicate, as would be impossible to describe. Noah's Ark trees, with fluttering little birds seated high on their very pinnacles, stood jauntily with slim straight stems. A lamb frisked in mid-air beside a basket of fruit. Tall standard roses grew up the sides of the sampler with blossoms which the gardener who tended them might well be proud of. A number of little figures, seeming to have no meaning — ^but probably to the earnest fingers that stitched them, very living things — all combined in some mar- vellous geometrical design, to surround a little verse, worked in the daintiest feather stitching, in letters of faded blue. " This life is not all roses. May be 'tis full of care, But I have roses in my heart And birds sing everywhere." That Avas the verse. Underneath, in a little place^ all to itself, was written, in the same letters of faded blue silk — " Sarah Bannister ended this work in 1776." Father O'Leary read it all out, in much the voice as when a child repeats its lesson. AS MUCH AS THERE IS IN A NAME 51 " Indeed,'" said Mrs. Parfitt — " It is not all roses." " Ye're quite right — it is not," replied Father O'Leary — " Faith, it's a pansy IVe got in my coat now and this morning the market was full of carnations." , Mrs. Parfitt took the sampler from his hand with a staid — if you please — and to herself she read the verse through once more. " There are not many birds singing in Maiden Lane," said she, triumphantly. " Shure, Glory be," exclaimed Father O'Leary. " D'ye mean to tell me ye sleep through the noise those sparrows make of a morning." " Making a noise isn't singing," said she. "Faith, it's what I call singing when I say High Mass." Mrs. Parfitt rolled up the sampler and put it back in the box. With a sudden impulse. Father O'Leary picked it out again. "Who would ye think this Sarah Bannister might be ? " he asked. " I may be wrong, mind ye — I dunno — but it seems to me this might be a family relic. .The poor wretched woman kept it because her grandmother or her great-grandmother had worked it. And shure, if a' be I'm right, then Peggy's name is Bannister — Peggy Bannister." "You can't be siu:e of that," said Mrs. Parfitt awkwardly ; " you don't know how she came by the sampler." " I do not. That's quite true for ye. But it seems E 2 52 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD the way she ought to be called Bannister. What have ye thought about it yeerself ? " " rd thought," said Mrs. Parfitt, shifting her weight from one foot to another. " I'd thought she might be called Peggy Parfitt." Father O'Leary took out his big red pocket-hand- kerchief, and in the midst of blowing his nose, he said : " Well — Fd thought myself of calling her, Peggy O'Leary — "" He cast a hurried glance at Mrs. Parfitt. " It sounds right enough — " said he dubiously — as if he were critically weighing the matter with an unbiassed mind. " Peggy Parfitt," said the good lady — ^just audibly, and no more — ^trying the soimd of it as you finger the strings of some cherished instrument. " Peggy O'Leary," said he — in just the same tone of voit'e. "Well, you won't let her be called after Mrs. Gooseberry — will you ? " said Mrs. Parfitt, anxiously. " Oh — shure, not at all," he replied quickly. " Then it had better be Bannister," said they. They said it the same moment in a quaint little chorus of resignation. And that settled the matter. BOOK II CHAPTER I THE EEGISTEY OFFICE FOE PARENTS To be born, after all, is the main thing in this world. One can look about for one's parents afterwards. In nine cases out of ten, the tedious part oi the business is done for you. The registry office for supply- ing parents is a most excellent institution. You will find the name — Dame Nature — painted over the door in white letters. Moreover, there is a branch handy at every street corner. And I refuse to believe otherwise than that this excellent lady provides the most suitable situations for her clients. In her little waiting-room, most days of the week, seated on cane-bottom chairs, with their hands folded in front of them, you will see rows upon rows of anxious men and women waiting for the chance of a place. Usually there are more women than men. Mothers are more fashionable, so I am told. Why, all those little boys who go to sleep at school, their piUows wet with tears on the first night of the new term, they all have photographs of mothers by their bedsides. Oh ! un- doubtedly there is a greater demand for mothers. Fathers, I don't know how it is, but fathers are not 55 56 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD needed so much as they were fifty or sixty years ago. They have got the name of shirking their work. Usually, you will find them, sitting silently in that dreary waiting-room, with long, expectant faces and watching eyes. They know very well, every single one of them, that they have but a poor chahce in this world which has admitted the other sex into the competition. But the women, they gossip and they chatter. Women will. I believe that is why they are so popular. They discuss their previous situations. Splendid places they always are. No worry, no bother, their masters or their mistresses as good as gold and as fond of them ! Oh ! you would never have heard of such fondness before in your life. It is in this perhaps, more than in anything else, that the registry office for parents differs from that which is designed for servants in the ordinary sense of the word. Parents are servants too, of course; dominated by inexorable masters and mistresses, subject to situations that do not suit, to work that is not their place at all — but all this is in the extraordinary sense of the word. As a rule, they have a very fine time of it. The common or garden house-servant — if I am to believe what I hear — will give you nothing but complaint. But you ought, if you can, to go and sit a while in one of those waiting-rooms in the parents' registry office. It is not so easy to effect an entrance as you would suppose. Dame Nature will not admit you unless with the best of credentials. Even then you must plainly REGISTRY OFFICE FOR PARENTS 57 state your business. The nature of my business — for I have been there — I had better not relate. I may have said I wanted to write a book about it. We all want to put Dame Nature in a book — if we can. But, no matter with what excuse, you ought to try. It is the most touching sight in the world, to see a baby girl — minus one year old — stepping jauntily into that registry office. On her way to the secret sanctum of Dame Nature, where all the private business is transacted, she must pass through the waiting-room, where sit the mothers and fathers who, out of work, are ever hopeful, ever full of expectancy. She looks at one and then at another as she struts through. They see her glances falling to right and to left, like the drops of dew that splash at either sidp before the chariot wheels of the morning as it drives over the grey meadows. Some of them hold their breath with trembling excitement. Their hearts beat and their eyes follow her eagerly to the door through which she disappears beyond their ken. For to these, she is just the Httle mistress they have lived to serve. They could wait hand and foot upon such as her. They would prove their virtues "to the last one, if they were but given a month's trial. And the mothers fiddle with their bonnets ; they aiTange the folds of their capes. They set straight the bow of the bonnet strings that lies upon their breasts. And the fathers pull down their waist- 58 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD coats ; they draw out their watchchains and look at them — for a watchchain, you must know, is an essential recommendation in a good father. It is the reins by which every father is driven in harness. His knees, too, they must be strong; for they are the steeds upon which every mistress rides to her country estate of make believe. Once I saw a poor father in that waiting-room of the parents' registry office who had no chain at aU. A watch he had — a gim-metal affair that had not gone or weeks. He took it out and shook it several times, putting it hopefully each time to his ear. But it would not go. There was also the suspicion of a patch on one of his horse's backs, which considerably lessened its value. He looked at that too. He rubbed it with his hand, trying to wear down its edges. It was no good. And then— in walked a baby girl. He sat up quickly. His eyes took into them that expression which sometimes you see in the eyes of a little dog that has no home, and is begging timidl}' from street to street. You put out your hand. You say the half of a kind word, and the little fellow stops in the act of running away. He has two paws in the gutter and two paws on the pavement. He lifts up his head and — you know the look. That was the look I saw in this poor man's face as the baby girl passed through the waiting-room. Directly she had closed the door of the inner office, I observed REGISTRY OFFICE FOR PARENTS 59 him regarding the other men as they took out their watchchains. He even so far forgot as to feel for his own. And all the expression dropped from his eyes when he remembered that it, long since, had been sent to the Chapel of Unredemption. You could see quite plainly that he knew there was no hope for him ; that all that waiting was to no purpose ; that he would stiU be wanting a situation when the day had gone. It may certainly not have been in my own interests, but despair is too cruel a thing to watch ; so I leant across to him and I whispered — " Don't be an ass ; you've got a bootlace, haven't you.?" He turned with a radiant smile and thanked me. Then, stooping down, and making sure that no one was looking, he undid his bootlace. He pulled it out. Under cover of his coat, he tied it to his watch, slipping it through the hole of his waistcoat. Then he looked up, thanking me once more with a smile. Presently the door opened. Dame Nature popped in her head and called a name — « Mr. Greenfly ! " A fat, round man, with long thin moustaches, a lugubrious expression, and a rose in his button-hole, jumped quickly to his feet and hurried forward. The door closed. We all waited. Five minutes, he came out again — crestfallen, looking as though his luck had been tampered with, and he shuffled out into the street, more lugubrious in expression than ever. I heard it 60 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD said afterwards that the good lady thought she would never get him off her books. " Mr. Wrigglesworth ! " called Dame Nature. It was the man who had kept the little eating-house in Fetter Lane, whose business had failed. I knew him well by name, but had never seen him in person. To my surprise, my friend of the bootlace hastily stood up. Then I understood the absence of the watchchain and the patch in the horse's back. He hurried to the door, not forgetting to turn round once more to thank me with another smile before he vanished out of sight into that dread sanctum. Ten minutes went by and we began to look uneasily at each other. We all knew what a long time in that little office meant. Two women, indeed, tightened their bonnet-strings, as if in anger, and marched out. I waited on. At last the door opened, and we saw Wrigglesworth in close converse with the baby girl. She had got one hand on his bootlace, and was already giving him his orders. I heard her distinctly say, " Gee up ; gee up ! " and Wrigglesworth nodded and shook his head like a pure bred courser. Then Dame Nature came to the door and — " You can go," said she gently. " I'm sorry, but I shall not want you any more to-day. To-morrow at nine o'clock, please — sharp ! " And we walked away. Of course, it is no good my disguising any longer the nrntSTBY OFFICE FOE PARENTS 61 business which brought me there. I never said I was going to write a book about the registry office. To be quite honest, an excuse like that is not the least use in the world. I was there in the capacity which brings every one to such a place. I was looking out for a situation. They say you stand just as much chance if you advertise, but don't believe it. The registry office of Dame Nature is the best — the surest. I shall find employment there one of these days, if I wait long enough. Some little baby girl will pass through and cast her glance upon me. And then, if I have my watchchain on me at the time, I only hope I shall suit ! CHAPTER II AT THE FOOT OF THE HILL OF DREAJIS It was not until Peggy was five years old, that this tiresome business of chosing a parent had to he gone into. There is nothing worse than parent-hunting. House- hunting, servant-hunting, they are nothing to it. The law compels you to sign such interminable contracts with those whom you employ, that you must be very careful what you are about. Now the death of that strange lady — the weeping lady of Maiden Lane — had placed Peggy in such a position as can only be described by its similiarity to the case of the woman who, giving up her house, goes to live in some hotel where all attendance is included. Such an hotel, not conducted on any modern lines, was Mrs. Gooseberry's cottage in the country. Oh, it is a shame to liken it to an hotel ! The only similiarity was that during her stay there, all Peggy's parentage was included in the bill of fare. For in Mrs. Goose- berry, she had one of those mothers to wait upon her, whose bigness of heart had room for all the children in the world. And in Mr. Gooseberry, thei-e was a father FOOT OF THE HILL OF DREAMS 63 born to the service! He had a massive silver cui-b watchchain on his waistcoat. His knees were tireless and strong. Great gentle cart-horses they were, heavy at the fetlocks, sure of foot and jingling with harness. Just such amiable beasts as you will see between the shafts of a hay-waggon, bringing home the children from the hay-fields with a brave and joyous jangling of bells. Oh, there were fine rides for Peggy on Dobbin and Dapple when the evenings drew in and chairs were pulled up to the fireside ! VVith a little switch of willow, she would mount upon her steeds, grasping the silver reins with one wee hand, flicking her whip with the other. " Gee up ! Gee up ! " shouted Peggy in a short shrill cry, and then, with his somnolent country voice Mr. Gooseberry would begin the journey. " Once upon a time there was a very old man. Lord 'a mercy, he was old." " How old .'' " said Peggy. " Nigh on two hundred years," Mr. Gooseberry would reply, and stop in silence to think over and wonder at it himself " Gee up — gee up ! " cried Peggy — tugging at the reins. " Nigh on two hundred," repeated Mr. Gooseberry — and then, over the Meadows of Make-Believe, Dobbin and Dapple would start afresh with their awkward, ambling trot and on they would go — and on they would go, till they came to the Hill of Dreams. 64 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD And tiie Hill of Dreams— if you wish to know where it is — is that little white mountain in the comer of the big dark room up-stairs. That is the Hill of Dreams. You kneel at the foot of it every night ; you fold your hands and you shut your eyes. And then, after a little while, you climb up to the very top and, wrapping the clouds tight all round you, you see no more of the world till morning. For when morning comes, the clouds vanish. The sun looks in through the window and all the walls of that big, dark room dance with laughter. You open your eyes and the first thing you do is to count the prisms on the ceiling. That is the first lesson in arithmetic. Sometimes it is very hard. I have known there to be as many as five. But once your task is accomplished, then you climb down to the foot of the hill once more, and once more, having folded your hands and shut your eyes, the new day begins. You know it is a brand new day, because the thrushes sing as if they had never sung before and when you look out of the window, the ground, which the previous night was black as you climbed up the hill, is now as green, as green, as green. So these two — ^this couple of good-hearted creatures, passing into the years when the magician will no longer do his trick for you because the quickness of his hand no longer deceives your eye — these two were the parents whose attendance upon her for the first five years was included in Peggy's bill of fare. FOOT OF THE HILL OF DREAMS 65 The bill was paid every Saturday. Every Saturday, came Father O'Leary and Mrs. Parfitt down to Mrs. Gooseberry's cottage in the country. And every Saturday, after they had gone away, Mrs. Gooseberry found an envelope that jingled, sticking out of the top of the tea-pot that stood in the china cupboard in the parlour. On the first occasion that this happened, she was all for giving it back. " She don't cost me nothing," she exclaimed, feeling the money burning through the envelope. " Why I'd pay to have her. What I mean, it's like expectin' Gawd to give yer somethin' when yer feed the sparrers in the mornin'." " An' how d'ye know He doesn't ? " asked Father O'Leary, " only maybe 'tis the way He's more cunning at hiding it than I am. He doesn't want to hurt the feelin's of ye. Faith, I don't want to hurt them myself." He was looking well into the future when he said that. There would come a time, he had no doubt of it, when Mrs. Gooseberry, adding her two and two together and making that invaluable five which is to be found in every woman's computation, would come to think that Peggy was her own. Now Father O'Leary had different ideas about that. He was determined to be under no obligations when the time should come for Peggy to return to the Presbytery where her mother had left her in his keeping. The letter had expressly said it. " / kave her chance to you.'''' p 66 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD That little sheet of paper with its pathetic lines was amongst the moi^t priceless of his possessions. In company with the musty petals of a rose, a thin strip of pale blue ribbon and a card printed with the announcement of Miss Mary Connelly's reception into the convent of Mercy, Cappoquin — it lay in a drawer of which the key was closely in his keeping. Even Mrs. Parfitt had no suspicion of the existence of these sacred relics. She had tried the drawer. She had asked him for the key, and, receiving some vague answer that had distracted her mind, she had completely forgotten about it. This, I suppose, is what one must call sentiment. A withered rose — a faded ribbon. A man, no doubt, is a fool to keep them. In a work-a-day world there is little place for such things as these. And yet, so long as a man believes in the meaning of a faded ribbon or a withered rose, he will believe in the mean- ing of God. But in a work-a-day world, so they will tell you, there is little place even for this. I suppose they know. All that they meant, to Father O'Leary, beside such meaning as this, can never really be discussed in this history. If the events which follow have a voice — ^which most events do possess — it is possible that they will not remain silent on the matter. But just as Father O'Leary of his own accord never showed them but once to any living person, so it is not right that they should be alluded to here. Sometimes in a long night, waiting FOOT OF THE HILL OF DREAMS 67 through the heavy hours for the relief of morning, he would rise from his bed and light a candle. Then, unlocking the drawer, he would take out those three sacred things, and, laying the rose petals gently in the palm of his hand, he would smell their musty odour. But it was the scent of a rose that came to his nostrils — ^the scent of a siunmer day. And not the first rumbling of the carts in Covent Garden, but the faint . humming of bees came murmuring to his ears and mingled with the whispers of a moimtam stream, pursuing its busy little way over the worn, brown pebbles. You may laugh — we all of us do when we find it in others — at such sentiment as this. Yet the alchemist who can change his night into day, who can bring a breath of the air of summer into a cold winter morning, tinkling the heather bells in his ears and sounding the gurgling note of a mountain stream, he is farther on his way than most of us to that discovery which will make the priceless gold out of the poorest metal in the earth. But it was not as the alchemist, storing a bottle of precious fluid with the treasures on his shelves, that Father O'Leary placed that letter amongst his sacred relics in the little drawer. There was no necessity for him to remind himself of the trust which the weeping woman had placed in him ; yet there he laid it, as it were a document — a deed of agreement — according him the rights patent in the life of Peggy Bannister. P 2 68 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD Now what the life of Peggy Bannister was to Father O'Leary, you have every right to ask. A Roman Catholic priest who has taken his vows of chastity, which range over the whole field of thought, word, deed and contemplation, can have but little interest except in the souls of those with whom he comes in contact. Their lives should be nothing to him so long as they are well lived. He is wedded to the Church and so much and no more does the Church demand of him. Yet when Peggy was five years old, and Mrs. Goose- berry, referring to the period for which he had arranged to leave her in the good lady's hands, wrote him a letter saying— " / Jhel as if she was my own child, and dmi't see no reason why I wants to part with herj" he felt the beating of his heart grow hesitating. It was what he had feared. For during those five years, visiting her every Satur- day, bringing her sometimes to stay for a week or so in the Presbytery, Father O'Leary had found out one of life's secrets. They are the wisest of men who sit at the feet of a little child. And in the clear blue of Peggy's eyes, in the light ringing of her laughter, the parish priest had discovered more than he had ever read in the pages of Mivart's philosophy. It was not long before he found the essential qualities FOOT OF THE HILL OF DREAMS 69 in a watchchain, or learnt the way a knee can jog just like any old horse on its way to market. And these, mind you, are more important acquisitions than know- ing what becomes of the unbaptized infant after death. The man who can tell you that, will in all probability be the first to kill it when alive. Here, in these matters. Father O'Leary excelled even the willing Mr. Gooseberry. You would wonder, had you seen him, why he had ever become a priest. His fund of stories was greater ; his power of invention unfailing in its infinite resource. A thousand times over, Peggy would confuse poor Mr. Gooseberry with a swift question which, taking him unawares, could only be answered by a dubious scratching of the head. But she never outwitted Father O'Leary. When you can outwit a Celt, there is no limit to your powers. The quicker she put her questions, the more to the point he answered them. With her hands on her hips, standing in amazement, Mrs. Parfitt used to listen to them. " I never did," she would say to herself when alone in the kitchen afterwards, "I wish I could tell the stories he does." She was jealous of those stories — bitterly jealous she was ; for Peggy would leave the daintiest of allurements in the kitchen — even the liberty to scrape the dish in which the cakes were made — to go and ride the cock- horse to that famous cross at Bambury where lived the old lady who — according to Father O'Leary — knew all 70 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD the fairies and all the witches in Christendom. Frdm that fund of folklore which is the birthright of every Irishman, he drew the thousand stories that caught tight upon the threads of Peggy's fancy. "■ Up the airy mountain Down the rushy glen We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men." She would beg Mr. Gooseberry to repeat that to her when she came back from her visits to London. But he could never remember it. There were no little men that he knew of — only the old fellow who had a power o' years on his shoulders — nigh on two hundred. And she had heard of him so often before. But with Father OXeary, the little men were always up to some mischie£ Fresh mischief every time she came to town. Out of the far corners of his memory, he drew forth the old stories he had listened to round the open hearth. From the ashes of the years that lay behind him, he resun-ected his childhood, finding the spirit of it in the echoed questions in her eyes. A strange, gawky, half-conscious thing that child- hood seemed. He wondered at it, when he saw it again ; wondered and realized how much he had let slip by ; how much he had forfeited for want of that precious realization of youth. There can be but little amazement then, that that letter of Mrs. Gooseberry's brought hesitation to the beating of his heart, FOOT OF THE HILL OF DREAMS 71 For five years he had sacrificed Peggy, jaelding to the dictates of his conscience. Now it was a matter of stem struggle to put aside his own inclinations and listen to those dictates once more. Whoever the weep- ing woman was, she had had some meaning in her heart when she left Peggy in his keeping. But did that meaning imply that he was to keep her to himself or to remain merely a guardian of her interests ? The Friday night on which that letter arrived, he wrestled in the wilderness upon his knees, at the foot of the Hill of Dreams. It is no smal'l gift in this world to be able to pray. For there is some great distance into which thought travels when once the knees are bent and the hands are clutched tightly across the eyes. And, if you have the mind for it — or as it has been said in a great book, the ears to hear — some answer is echoed back across the darkness. You will catch the faint reply that whispers from the lips of a waking conscience. That, after all, is the chief benefit of prayer. A voice, wakening, answers. And some there are who chose to call it God, some conscience, and some the far- ofl^ memories of what is right and wrong. Whatever it may be, if your knees are truly bent and your hands are truly clasped, there is an answer. When Saturday morning came then, and Father O'Leary met Mrs. Parfitt on the stairs, he took out his red pocket-handkerchief and, violently, he blew his nose. 72 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD " Fm after receiving a letter from Mrs. Gooseberry," said he, " an' she says 'tis the way she ought to keep I'sggyj instead of us having her to live here in the Presbytery. Now what d'ye say to that ? " Mrs. Parfitt shut her lips tight and her nostrils quivered. " I think she is quite right," she replied. For one moment Father O'Leary's eyes slowly opened, and then a subtle thought sped like lightning, twinkling across them. " Faith, I think so too," said he. CHAPTER III THE EXERCISE OF DIPLOMACY It would be impossible to describe the feelings and the thoughts passing through the minds of these two — this old parish priest and his elderly housekeeper — as they sat silently in the train which bore them out into the country. There are some desires common to all of us. We know of their existence as well as we know our own names. We see them in everybody and everybody sees them in us, and yet, with the exercise of what we imagine to be our diplomacy, we believe ourselves able to hide them from the whole world. These two, maintaining a discreet silence after that first expression of opinion on Mrs. Gooseberry's letter, could see each other's thoughts as plainly as they could read the notice about heavy luggage on the racks at each side of the carriage. But Father O'Leary wais quite confident that Mrs. Parfitt knew nothing of his attitude in the matter. And Mrs. Parfitt's thin lips twisted to a smile when she thought how readily she had deceived him by her eager acquiescence to Mrs, Gooseberry's suggestion. 74 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD " Fancy — Peggy's five to-day," said she — after a long silence, " just think of it — ^five years since that evening you brought her up to the Presbytery." "It is indeed — " said Father O'Leary — "Have ye brought her a present at all ? " He said it casually, intending in that one move to expose her duplicity. As if he couldn't see through her ! As if he believed that she really thought it best for Mrs. Gooseberry to keep Peggy in the country ! " Oh — how well you reminded me of it," she replied — " I must buy her some little thing in the village^ — " and, being incomplete in her education of the lie generous, she could not forbear from feeling that little parcel, already concealed in the hanging pocket underneath her skirt, just to see if it were quite safe. Father O'Leary looked out of the window rather than expose her at that. He guessed how large a hand had dipped into her savings to buy that selfsame present which, he was to understand when he saw it later, had been purchased at a moment's notice in the village shop. There was one of the same order bulging in his own pocket. He felt for it too, wondering how simple Mrs. Parfitt could be to so plainly give herself away. " D'ye think I could get her something in the village too ? " he asked presently. Mrs. Parfitt took out her handkerchief and wiped her face. " I dare say," said she. " I think I'll get her some little things to wear," THE EXERCISE OF DIPLOMACY 75 " I've been wondering covdd I get her a doll," said Father O'Leary. She had no doubt he could — but scarcely at the shop where she would have to go. " Shure — I didn't suppose that," said he quickly. And then, they both of them looked out of the window. " Ton my word," thought Father O'Leary — " she's a simple poor creature." Mrs. Parfitt thought much the same of him. When, therefore, they reached their destination, they both set off to make their phantom purchases. And Father O'Leary, watching Mrs. Parfitt enter the draper's shop, said, with a laugh to himself — " Shure — God bless the woman ! " And Mrs. Parfitt, peering out of the window of the draper's establishment, seeing him enter a shop farther down the street, muttered to herself with a smile — "The poor man — he didn't want me to know he'd been thinking of it for weeks." At last, each with a parcel swinging ostentatiously from their fingers, they met at the bottom of the street. " Have ye got what ye wanted .'' " said he solemnly. " The best I could," she replied — " I ought to have thought of it before when I was in London. And you.?" " Oh — 'tis a cheap little scrap of a doll," said he — " there wasn't much to choose from," 76 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD And then, a pair of children in a world of children, they set off to see their child at Mrs. Gooseberry's cottage in the cotmtry. Oh — it was delicate business that they had to transact there ! To let Mrs. Gooseberry know that they had not the slightest intention of allowing Peggy to stay in the country — to do it, moreover, without the one having the faintest suspicion of what the other was about. You hear of delicate missions of diplomacy in the courts of Europe. They are nothing to this. In matters of state, your personal feelings at least are left out of the question. The emotions that pass, when it is necessary, across your face and the emotions you keep concealed beneath an exterior of calm indifference — these are merely those of your country. They leave your heart beating not one pulse the quicker or the slower than it beat before. But when it comes to the custody of a little child, you are faced with a different problem altogether. There are strings of emotion set vibrating then which no mute in the world can silence. You may see them trembling in every look ; you may hear the throbbing note of them in every word. And these two — ^this parish priest, vowed to denial of the most wonderful gift in the world; this elderly housekeeper, deprived by circumstances of her first, her greatest right — were no doubt the more deeply affected. For procrastination is the sin of most of those two THE EXERCISE OF DIPLOMACY 77 people who take shelter beneath the magician's box. They postpone and they put off. " It's time enough," they say, " to ask the magician to conjure for us. Let's have our own youth first." And the woman considers her good looks, and the man — no less a fool than she — consents tp consider them with her. As if they mattered to him ! As if, really, they mattered to her ! But when you find two people who have been crossed off from the magician's book of clients, and set them forth on so delicate a matter as the recovery of a third little person from one who holds her dear, you will meet with as much emotion as you could want. Father O'Leary had made up his mind that Peggy was to return to the Presbjrtery. For that matter, so had Mrs. Parfitt. But whereas she had merely the human desire of a childless woman to conceal, he was for maintaining all that strange dignity which becomes the celibate ; for I gather that it is a breaking of your vows to find the need of such recompense as this. I am certain it must be a breaking of them to fight with all the cunning you possess, lest such recompense should be lost to you. While we are about it, we may as well suppose that there is some mitigation for your sin if you do it with yoiu- head so covered as that you cannot perceive how easily you are observed. For Father O'Leary was cunning. He showed such craftiness on that day as would have dubbed him an Irishman with never the trace of his brogue at all. 78 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD It was the very first moment that was the most trying to bear ; for when Peggy came tumbling in her eager- ness down that narrow garden path between the avenues of roses, and when, a tangling mass of arms and legs, she twined her little body about him and called him " Daddy O'Leary," it was as much as he could do to keep the tears out of his eyes — as much as he could do not to hold her to him as if she were the very echo of his life. If you do not see Peggy, even were it only out of the corner of your mind's eye, then there is little use in my showing her to you. It is not the least bit of good talking about hair the colour of a baby field-mouse, because, to begin with, you may never have seen a baby field-mouse in your life, and do not know the pale, indescribable brown of its silky fur. Were I to say that her eyes were the colour of those two grey-blue pebbles you see twinkling at the bottoin of the little brook when the sun is laugh- ing at it, you would get no impression from that at all. You might ask. Which two ? But that would be all. And, however accurately I described her tiny fringe, lying tight like a little comb upon her forehead; her wee face, like a field-mouse too, for it had that wistful, apprehensive look of some small animal that knows not whether to eat or run away ; no matter how minutely I gave you details of her smaU. warm lips, half puckered, always ready to smile; or her short, upturned little nose, that had a mischievous wink of light right at the THE EXERCISE OF DIPLOMACY 79 very tip of it — you would still know nothing about her unless as, hoping for your sympathy, I trust you have already caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of your mind's eye. For Peggy is that child, that little girl, whom every single one of us would like to call our own. We have got the picture of her tight clasped in some small locket, the strings of which are made fast around the secret comers of our hearts. The only request I make, then, is merely that you open the locket and just look inside. When once their meeting was over. Father O'Leary braced himself for the task in front of him and, unclasp- ing her little fingers from about his arms, he bent down and just whispered in her ear — "Mrs. Parfitt." The poor woman was standing on the little path, admiring the colour of a red rose, which some insect had cankered. It was the first that came to hand — the first thing upon which she could rivet her attention in order to conceal that aching throb at the heart which comes so readily when you think you are forgotten. " Goodness me, Mrs. Parfitt," said Mrs. Gooseberry, who was standing by, nursing her own feelings as well, " that's all eaten with green fly. There are better than that." " Oh — but the smell of it," said Mrs. Parfitt, bending over the rose. " It may be damaged, but it's still a rose." And as she said it, she felt that some poet might have 80 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD written such a phrase; she felt that it had no little allusion to herself. But then came the scampering of feet, the whirligig of arms, and the. clutching of fingers round her alpaca skirt. She heard the voice that meant more than poets could ever write, shouting, " Mummy Parfitt ! Mummy Parfitt ! " The rose might have been fit for a prize in Temple Gardens then for all she cared. " Psggyj" she whispered, under the little tails of pale brown hair that fell over Peggy's ears — " My little Peggy." " I didn't know she called you Mummy," said Mrs. Gooseberry. Oh — I don't blame her ! We all have our hopes that we are the only one. " Always," said Mrs. Parfitt. Father O'Leary fell to examining the blighted rose. Green fly or not, he buried his nose in it. " And what do you call me, Peggy .'' " asked Mrs. Gooseberry. How could she resist saying that .'' Any woman would have done the same. There was never a note of spitefulness in her voice. However shy you may have been at first, when once you have been called mother, you want the whole world to hear of it. Father O'Leary looked up quickly from the bhghted rose. " Won't ye come and see the little present I've got for ye, Peggy.?" said he, and he dragged forth the doll from his pocket — a doll that shut its eyes and THE EXERCISE OF DIPLOMACY 81 did all manner of odd tricks with just the slightest persuasion on your part. "Fancy," said Mrs. Parfitt— « he got that in the village. Did you ever think they'd have sale for a splendid doll like that ? " " Faith, I'll be bound it's nothing to the things ye got yeerself in the draper's shop," said he — " Mind ye, she went into the draper's shop over, Mrs. Gooseberry — " he went. on. " And how do you know what sort of things I got .'' " interrupted Mrs. Parfitt sharply. " Shure, I can make a shrewd guess," said he. But Peggy did not care where they came from. They had come. When you are five, essentials are the only things that count. For it is only when you are of an age to count your years upon the fingers of both hands, that you are truly a philosopher. That wizened, grey- haired, skull-capped old fellow, bent over his bulky volumes, leaving his dish of food untouched, to be eaten by the household cat, he has long since lost the fine thread of his philosophy in a veritable maze of side- issues. The little nighty with pink ribbons, the handkerchiefs with lace borders — it might have been real lace for the dainty look of it — and the doll that shut its eyes, they may have dropped from the skies, for all she worried about it. And when she smothered them with kisses of gratitude. Father O'Leary and Mrs. Parfitt forgot to worry too. After all, what did it matter ? G 82 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD What did matter, however, was the delicate diplomacy needed in all that was to follow. For when Mrs. Goose- berry, who had been shifting about uneasily from one foot to the other, pulling dead leaves off rose trees and behaving generally as one who either has a great deal to do, or does a great deal in order to seem occupied — when at last she put a handful of dead leaves into the pocket of her apron and, looking up, as though it had just occurred to her, said : " Did you get my letter last night, Father O'Leary ? " he knew that the trumpet had sounded for them to enter the lists. " Your letter ? " said he, as if for the moment it had slipped his memory and he were at the same time quite prepared to recall it. " The letter I wrote you yesterday mornin'. You must 'ave got it last night or first post to-day. Mr. Gooseberry give it to the postman 'isself." " Oh — shure, I did, of course," said he. What a fool he was to forget it ! He would be forgetting his own name next ! " Well ? " she said. " Perhaps you'd like to come into the parlour ? " He shot a quick glance towards Mrs. Parfitt. But do you think she took any notice of that covert look.? Not she ! He could see by the sharp set of her ears, that she was listening to every word ; but to all intents and purposes, she was busily engaged with Peggy, oblivious of everything else about her. " Into the parlour," he repeated, and all for Mrs. THE EXERCISE OF DIPLOMACY 88 Parfitt's benefit. But still she did not budge. Then he gave up hope of her. It was not fair ! Well — ^was it fair to leave him to struggle alone with a woman nearly as clever as the two of them put together ? But he was not to be beaten. "Come along, Mrs. Parfitt," said he, "'tis the way we've to go into the parlour." Acknowledging her first defeat, Mrs. Parfitt followed them, Mrs. Gooseberry leading the way, and then Father O'Leary found a moment in the hands of that courtesy which demands that ladies shall go first. He slipped behind to speak to Peggy. Taking both her little hands in his and stoopjng down so that his eyes looked straight into hers, he whispered — " Would ye sooner stay here or go to London ? " The two grey-blue pebbles looked back solemnly into his eyes ; for one moment, the sun forgot its laughter at the brook in which they lay and, in that moment, all the struggle he had had the night before at the foot of the Hill of Dreams, came back to Father O'Leary's mind. For this was yhere the answer to his great doubt was to be found. " If you wives or you husbands were to go home and look into the eyes of yoiir baby child, you would more plainly see God than on this altar." Those words came back to him then, as he waited for her answer. At his age, surely, he might have ex- pected to find all the great crises, such as one meets in G 2 84 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD youth, past and done with. Yet here was one, perhaps as great as any through which he had yet suffered, face to fijce with him now. You might never have thought it, to see that man of sixty years and that baby girl of five, looking solemnly into each other's eyes on a tiny garden path between that perfumed avenue of roses, you might never have thought how much the whole joy of life in one of them depended upon the other's answer to a simple little question. Yet it would have seemed, from the solemnity in her big round eyes, that Peggy had some intuitive sense of all that lay trembling in the balance. For, notwith- standing that he offered no allurements whatever choice she might make, there was that slight set of the lips when a man is waiting for judgment. She saw him swallow once or twice ; his throat swelled as the emotion passed away. And though, being able to read in none of these signs their true meaning, yet she felt that here was suddenly a serious moment in her life. The silence was so long, that he was about to repeat his question, urging her to answer ; but then she leant forward and touched her lips on his bristled chin. " The g-ass wants cutting on you face," said she. He swallowed twice and replied that that was not an answer. Then she flung her arms round his neck and she whispered in a whole torrent of sentences — THE EXERCISE OF DIPLOMACY 85 " I want Daddy O'Leary — and I want the little men — and I want the Leprechaun — and " " And don't ye want Mummy Parfitt ? " said he. We can all afford to be generous, some time or another. The pity is that not all of us realize it until it is too late. She stroked his bristled chin again, then nodded her head vigorously, and, armed with that assurance, he left her. CHAPTER IV WHEEE EVEN DIPLOMACY FAILS In the parlour, Mrs. Gooseberry and Mrs. Parfitt were already seated. Mr. Gooseberry, his round face beam- ing, his small eyes twinkling above the rosy cheek bones crowned with their little tufts of hair, was standing with his back to the mantelpiece. And on the table were four glasses of cherry brandy. If only you could have seen that little parlour ! There was one small window, set deep into the old wall. On the sill of it stood pots of great-blossomed carna- tions. Through the old-fashioned lace curtains, as rich and generous a garden as you could wish your eyes to see, spun all its patchwork of colours in the sxmlight, and into the room, from the open window, came again and again the sudden hum of insects as they made swift adventure, drawn by the cool shadows within. Then last of all, away over the meadows that lay beyond the end of the garden, there came the faint strains of the village band, making music and parching their throats at the same time in honour of the Saturday afternoon. As he entered the room, Father O'Leary held up his hand, calling their attention. Mrs. Gooseberry sat up, 86 WHERE EVEN DIPLOMACY FAILS 87 thinking he was going to deliver final judgment on the matter then and there. " D'ye mind that ? " said he. " What .'' " they asked in chorus. " It has a way of making me think the night the Holy Father died in Cappoquin," " Did the Pope die in Cappoquin ? " asked Mr. Gooseberry. « He did not ! "" said Father O'Leary. « He died at Rome. But the night we heard 'twas all over with him, the boys came out with the band and up and down the Main Street they marched, with all the candles burning in the windows, and they playin' a tune fit to burst themselves, same as ye'd play the Dead March in Saul, or whatever ye call it, on the organ. Faith, they meant well by it — ^they did indeed, but 'twas the only time they knew." " And what tune was that ? " asked Mr. Gooseberry. He was the only person interested in what the priest was saying. " 'Twas ' Good-bye, Dolly, I must leave ye.' Mind ye, they meant no harm by it all. Twas the way they'd just started with their drums and their fiddlesticks to make a band out of themselves and shure isn't it the likeliest thing in the world that that 'ud be the first tune they be able to vamp .'' 'Twas the way that band reminded me of it." Mrs. Gooseberry looked up at him in disgust. <' We 'aven't come here to talk about the band. Father 88 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD O'Leary," she said — " Will you take a sip of that ? I made it last year out of the best crop of cherries we ever 'ad. And will you pay a little attention — what I mean, you 'aven't answered my letter yet/' She made a great mistake if she thought that Father O'Leary was not paying attention. That little story about the Pope and the band was just a small dip- lomatic move. When entering a shop, the article you want to purchase is surely the last your eye falls upon. Even then, it is out of compassion for your dealer. " Well," said he, cautiously — " Twas very good of ye indeed to write what ye did." "Very good," murmured Mrs. Parfitt, sipping from her glass in much the way that a bird drinks — ^that is to say with head lifted in appreciation after each little drop that touched her tongue. Mr. Gooseberry bent over her and said under his breath — " You're right there, Mrs. Parfitt. I say as it's the best I've ever tasted." " I was talking about the proposal in the letter," said she. " Oh — well then — beggin' your pardon," he replied and stood upright again — ^beaming as ever. These little accidents do happen, you know, in the best of regulated discussions. And when, by bestowing a glance upon Mr. Gooseberry, she had taken due notice of the interruption, Mrs. Gooseberry proceeded. *•' Not gQod, ^ I can see," she continue^. " What I WHERE EVEN DIPLOMACY FAILS 89 mean, I've got children of me own — and in a manner of speaking, youVe got none." " Faith, it's more than a mere manner of speaking," said Father O'Leary. " I've got none without any talk about it at all." " Yes — isn't that what I mean ? " said she. " You've got none — and neither has Mrs. Parfitt. You never did 'ave no children, did you, Mrs. Parfitt .'' " She put the question with the best-hearted ingenuous- ness. There was no intention in her mind that it shotild sting as it did. But Mrs. Parfitt, with that bitter view of life which she possessed, could see nothing but the cruelest accusation which one woman can make to another. Her cheeks flushed — of coiu-se, it may have been the cherry brandy — but underneath the table, in her lap, she tore off the button from her black kid glove. " And if I didn't," said she — " is that any reason why you should throw it in my face ? I did have a child if you want to know. It died." Now this statement took Father O'Leary so com- pletely by surprise that, for the moment, he lost his presence of mind and, instead of leaving the matter alone, he challenged it. "Why — yeer husband told me ye'd never had the first inklings of one," said he. "I can't help what my husband said," replied the poor woman, struggling bravely in her difficulties. ^4 tt*§P f'sU a heavy silence in whiclj thoughts 90 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD scampered through the minds of every one of them ; thoughts, hard put to it to escape from the suspicions that followed on their heels. " Well — ^Lord 'a mercy, you never know " began Mr. Gooseberry. "That'll do, William," said his wife. " 'Twas about the cherry brandy," said he. "It's a warming thing to the insides," said Father O'Leary, and he swallowed half the contents of his glass. "Well — as I was saying — '" Mrs. Gooseberry went on again — " Peggy's got no mother — she's got no home neither." "She was le/i at the Presbytery,'" said Mrs. Parfitt with clipped words and Father O'Leary mentally placed one score in his favour. For this is diplomacy — this inveigling of others into doing what you are so eager to do for yourself. He pressed his advantage home. " Shure, for the matter of that," said he — " she was left at the foot of the altar of the Blessed Mother. An' ye wouldn't be keeping her there for the rest of her life." " I was thinking of the letter that was left with her," replied Mrs. Parfitt in self-defence. "Whoever her mother was, she left her with you." With an apparent amount of reluctance, he admitted the truth of that. "But this morning," said he, feeling for the first WHERE EVEN DIPLOMACY FAILS 91 time for some years for' that pocket- full of snufF which Mrs. Parfitt had long since done away with — " this morning ye thought this idea of Mrs. Gooseberry's was a right good one. Shure, Glory be to God, it takes all the trouble out of our hands." " Peggy's so good," said Mrs. Parfitt, with distress — " that she doesn't give much trouble — not more than I mind anyhow." Now all this was going just as Father O'Leary would have wished it. Mrs. Parfitt — he blessed her heart from the bottom of his own — was fighting every inch of the battle for him. Without knowing it, she was saying the very things he wanted to say himself, and, preparing to congratulate himself, he began by taking the rest of that glass of cherry brandy. It was half raised to his lips, when the amiable Mr. Gooseberry, who had no more cleverness in debate than the babe unborn, broke in with his cheery voice. " Fve been thinking," said he, and they all tinrned to gaze at him — " that if Peggy was left in the charge of Father O'Leary — 'tis Father O'Leary should say what's to be done wi' her — and not a one else." There was the whole pot a-boiling over into the fire, and not one to lend a hand to help him out of the difficulty! For what is the good of diplomacy when you are faced with methods so ingenuously direct and simple as these ? The truth is, that when you enter the lists of diplomacy, you had better see to it that your antagonist is fighting with the same weapons as 92 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD youi'self. It is always being proved in this world that the two-edged sword of Goliath is of no avail against the common stone in the sling of David. Only suppose, if, when with the sharpest of tactics, you are cleverly beating about the bush, and your opponent on the other side just pops his head over the top and calls out the old formula — " I spy ! " Well — what can you do ? It is about time to lay down your stick and, asking him to meet you half-way, discuss it with him in the ditch. Even this takes a cool head and needs some doing. For the moment. Father O'Leary was so bewildered that he sought to gain time. " Will ye be so kind," said he — " as to say that all over again .'' " And Mr. Gooseberry, beginning to realize by now that he had said something more than ordinarily to the point, flushed up to the roots of his hair, drove his hands deep down into his ti-ousers pockets and repeated it word for word. After the second time, they all turned eyes upon Father O'Leary once again and, in a silence more heavy than I can say — a silence in which the old clock ticked so loudly, a bluebottle beat itself so violently against the window pane and the village band in the distance lifted its melody with such a burst of music that they could hardly bear the strain of it — they all waited for his answer. It was a long time in coming. In exasperating WHERE EVEN DIPLOMACY FAILS 98 deliberation, blinking his eyes, he drew out his red pocket-handkerchief and loudly blew his nose. It was just the noise he made for Peggy when the little men were asleep, and the horns sounded their blast as they dared to go a-hunting. At last, folding up the red pocket-handkerchief, putting it carefully away in his pocket, he looked up and — " Daddy O'Leary asked me which I'd do — and I'se going to London," shouted a voice through the window. " Glory be to God 1 " said Father O'Leary, drawing a de^p breath. " Lord have mercy on us ! " exclaimed Mrs. Parfitt, with her hand to her breast. Mr. Gooseberry looked round, a beaming smile spreading broadly across his face. And Mrs. Gooseberry was silent. CHAPTER V THE CONFITEOR Thkke was something lying heavily on the conscience of Mrs. Parfitt. From the moment that Peggy had outwitted all diplomacy and settled these diflScult matters for herself, the good lady had maintained a solemn and almost unaccoimtable silence. It was not until they were seated in the train once more, returning silently on their way to London, that she turned and spoke to Father O'Leary. For some long time, she had remained gazing out of the window, looking alternately from the open meadows as they passed, to the place on her black kid glove where once the button had been. At last she turned her eyes on him. " That was a lie about the child," said she — " a bare- faced lie." "Shure, didn't I know that," replied he— " the moment Pd made a fool of myself by saying what yeer husband told me ? I could have bitten me tongue out and that was the way with me." " I can't forgive myself for it now," she went on with a trembling lip — " but it just slipped out before I could stop it." 94 THE CONFITEOR 95 " There's no call for you to be forgiving yeerself at all," said Father O'Leary — and he gently patted her arm. " 'Twas the way ye ought to have had a child — and ye, thinking ye ought, and that good woman saying ye'd ne'er a one, kind of got in yeer mind till ye thought ye had one. Shure, I don't call that a lie at all. 'Tis only a mis-statement of what might have been the truth if it hadn't happened to be the other thing. Oh, for goodness' sake, don't let that hang on yeer conscience ! " Mrs. Paxfitt pulled herself together with a sigh and, drawing the glove button out of the palm of her hand where it had been lying in concealment all this time, she dragged out the broken threads with her teeth. Presently she looked up again. " And what were you going to say," she asked — " if Peggy hadn't come to the window just then ? " " Shure, I'm trying to think," said he. BOOK III CHAPTER I THE HOUSE OPPOSITE The years scamper by at such a pace now-a-days, that one's own children are beginning their jjomances before we have had time to get well done with our own. Indeed, there should be no getting done with them at all. The cloak of Romance — if you do but get the right material for it at the beginning — should last a lifetime. It is the material that matters. All those dainty frillings and embroideries, those gorgeous linings and those elaborate stitches, make not one ha'porth of difference in the wear of it. The great pity is that the majority of us mistake that cloak of Romance fca: a Sunday-go-to-meeting gown. It is not. If made of the right stuff, it is the most serviceable^arment you can wear in a world, the climate of which is none too generous, the roads of which are none too smooth. It is as wdl, whilst you are about it, to get it made of one piece. The fewer the seams the better. Though, indeed, I have seen one whose cloak was a veritable patchwork quilt, so mended was it in torn and thread- bare places. Still, I was assured, it kept out the cold. The gorgeous lining had long since worn to ribbons ; H 2 99 100 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD the delicate embroidery was all faded and dull. Not one of those dainty stitches had held, which once had bound the seams together, and in its tattered glory it was a dismal thing to behold. But the owner still caught it tightly about his shoulders. He could not see himself in it. That perhaps was a mercy ; for he had false pride and might have cast it from him. Certainly, he took it off and showed it me ; smiled at the patches and sighed— reminiscently — sadly too, I though^Bat one little tear which had never properly been darned. He knew at least what it was like, if he did not realize the sorry figure he cut in it. But I for one was glad to see him still wearing it, and when, by recounting to him some little story of my own, I helped him on with it again, he shrugged himself down into its well-worn corners, telling me, with a confident nod of the head, that I need not think I had all the luck in this world. Bi^t as I was about to say, it is better that it should be made of one piece. And if it be lined at all, I would recommend — but what are the good of my recommendations ? You have had yours made by this time — or you are just going to get it made. There are your own ideas — or perhaps yoiu* tailor's — already settled in your mind. In any case — don't go without it. It is the most useful garment in the world. It is true, though, that hardly have we got our own shoulders to wear their accustomed places into that cloak of Romance, than off go our children to be measured for the garment too. THE HOUSE OPPOSITE 101 Before he knew where he was, Father O'Leary found that Peggy was seventeen, and, by some odd little looks that sometimes hurried in their frightened way across her eyes, he knew that she was thinking about the great mystery of the world that lay before her. Here then, at last, after seventeen years' journeying, over roads that may sometimes have seemed unnecessary to you who have been patient enough to follow, we come to that moment of the chronicle in which Nicolas Gadd, with his farthing candle, entered the rcraKi on the top floor of the house opposite. It was a late evening in August. Her work, in which she assisted Mrs. Parfitt, being finished, Peggy had slipped away to her bedroom under the roof. There was a r broad sill to the window of that bedroom.. Seated sfflfiways, with your back against the embrasure, you could see across the forest of chimney-pots away over the Strand — over the river — over Lambeth to the dim, faint ridge of hills, before which the great city fades away into a mere fringe of houses. We choose our corners in this world, much as a cat chooses its favourite cushion. They linger in the minds long after, through the years, when the place that held them has almost vanished from our memory. This was Peggy's corner. A comer is always the most sacred place in the world. It is in a corner that a jackdaw stores his thefts, that a school-boy hides his catapult and all those thihgs that make life worth living. It is in her comer that a 102 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD school-girl conceals that first letter which a man, many years older than herself, has written to her. A letter, perhaps, that he dashed off with an unthinking pen — signing it " yours sincerely " rather than " yours truly," adding a " God bless you " because, in the haste of the moment, his pen happened to be running that way. It is in our corners, too, that we dream the few dreams that are left us. Such a corner in the world was this to Peggy, this windo\\|pil in her tiny bedroom with its sloping ceiling under the roof. Of all she had thought and wondered when, in spare moments of the day, she had crept away there to be alone, it would need a pen divine with inspiration to describe. The thoughts of a girl of seventeen, brought up in the hedged innocence of life, such as she had found in the Presbytery with this celibate priest and his ichildless housekeeper, are too wonderful, yet too vague and indeterminate to grasp. They are little white butterflies, hovering, yet never touching, now over some terrible abyss, now over some rushing river. But hovering, always hovering they are, until with tired wings they settle upon some simple flower in an old garden. And there, content to forget the gaping chasms and the roaring waters, they lay back their wings in the warmth and brilliance of the sun. For the world, to a girl of seventeen, is full of these deep, dark precipices, those cataracts, roaring forth such messages to her ears as, for the noise of them, she cannot THE HOUSE OPPOSITE 108 understand. But there is always the flower, growing wild in an old garden, for her to rest her eyes upon. That flower, whose name is wrapped up with romantic stories which cannot, yet must for the time, be true. If this gives but the faintest impression of the strange workings of a girl's mind, then, let it be under- stood that such was the mind of Peggy Bannister, as she sat on the window-sill, a silhouette against the sky of an August evening — a sky all orange and dust. It was after seven o'clock. Here and thei^ a light began a-twinkling in far windows over the house-tops. The band in Charing Cross Gardens was making that music which, being free of charge, one has no right to criticize. There are hundreds, in those darksome little alleys of Adelphi, to whom such music is the most beautiful in the world. The strains of it, generously softened by the distance, were drifting up in faint whisperings on little breaths of wind. The hum of traffic in the streets below was hushed — that quiet hush which comes when the day of work is just over and the night of pleasure has scarce begun. Through the thin curtain of her dreams, Peggy listened to it all — as you listen, ill-9,ttentively, to the monotonous voice of one who reads aloud. With dreams, even in her eyes, she watched the curling lines of smoke that issued from the dense forest of chimney-pots below her. It was then, suddenly, that she beheld the light of the candle in the house opposite. She could see the shadows of the thin wooden banisters, thrown like the 104 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD bars of a cage upon the walls, as Nicolas Gadd made his way up-stairg. From that moment, her attention was caught. She watched, waiting to see what would happen. The door of the bedroom on the top-floor opened. It was a room, such as her own, with sloping ceiling under the roof. Indistinctly, she could see the bare- ness of it all — the cheap chest of drawers — the little iron bedstead — -the whitewashed walls. But otice her eyes had taken in these details, they sought again the face of Nicolas Gadd. With a beaming smile of unaffected appreciation of the place, he was showing a new lodger over the worst room in the house. His hand, holding the candle, pointed first to the bed — the chest of drawers and then — other articles of furniture which were out of sight. In his awesome, wheezy voice, with the breath for ever hissing through that tube he had in his throat, she could almost hear him whisper — "A "beautiful room — every comfort. No carpet on the floor ? But there's nearly always a fire lighted in the room underneath." And then, her gaze wandering from Nicolas Gadd, she could just discern in the darkness the face of the new lodger peering over his shoulder into the cheerless room. At that moment, a gust of wind, scurrying through the passages, blew out the flame of the little farthing candle. She heard the door bang, and found her heart beating unaccountably in the darkness. CHAPTER II HOW BABIES AEE BORN Apparently, that was all. One way or another, the new lodger had decided about the cheerless bedroom under the roof. Which ever way it was, the door was opened again in the darkness, the candle re-lit when it was closed, and down the stairs once more the light descended, the glow of it peeping out through the different landing-windows imtil it reached the ground floor. Then it disappeared. Like a kitten, watching the antics of a fallen leaf in sudden gusts of wind, Peggy, with her head in each direction as the light appeared, kept it in sight until the last glimmer. When, finally, it had vanished, she leant back again against the embrasure of the window, pursuing new dreams, one after the other, until each was lost in the twilight. Who was the young man whose face she had seen peering over the shoulder of Nicolas Gadd ? It was impossible to say. They were strange people who came to that lodging-house of Nicolas Gadd's. None, perhaps, so strange as Gadd himself. A vapour of mystery clung about him, apart from that horrible, inhuman tube in 105 106 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD his throat, the name of which she could not pronounce. They said in Adelphi that he was fabulously rich, that he owned many of the houses in the neighbourhood. Yet he lived in squalid rooms in his own lodging-house. The muffin man who, one wet Sunday afternoon, had been told to come inside and count out his muffins, declared that there were no cushions on the chairs, and that the horsehair was sticking out of the sofa, when you might have thought that a few pence would have mended it. He was mean, too, was Nicolas Gadd, for once he gave the muffin man a French penny neatly sandwiched in between the two other coppers in payment for three- pennyworth of muffins. The muffin man had told Peggy this himself, and she believed everything he said. He had always spoken quite openly about himself. He had told her how he came all the way from Walham Green, which was almost as far as she could see from her window-sill. He had told her without reserve about the poor profits that he made out of muffins, and how hard it was in this world for a man to make his two ends meet. Peggy never rightly knew which two ends of him he meant, but she believed him all the same. For Peggy was one of those creatures to whom, if you talked with straight eyes about the Jabberwock, would firmly trust in your honour that you were telling the truth. The lodgers, then, in Nicolas Gadd's house, were not as strange as he ; but they were strange. The last man HOW BABIES ABE BORN 107 who had occupied the little room with the whitewashed walls under the roof, had been taken away by a police- man early one morning. Peggy could see them far away in the street below. She had asked Father O'Leary about it, for a crowd had been following, and it had seemed that something was the matter. " 'Tis some poor fella," said he, " who has got on the wrong side of life." And that evening, when she said her prayers at the foot of the HiU of Dreams, she made a gentle little request that the "poor fella" might be able to climb back again. For life, from that moment, was pictured in her mind with- a wall running down the middle of it — a wall, topped with broken glass bottles, such as had protected Mrs. Gooseberry's orchard from the road. And one side was the right and the other — well — that was the side the " poor fella " was on when the police- man found him early that Monday morning. Ever after- wards, from that day, she somehow connected the little bedroom on the third floor of the house opposite with the wrong side of that wall which was topped with the broken glass bottles. There may have been some of this association in her mind when her heart beat so unreasonably at the sight of that young man's face contrasting vividly with the cunning feattues of Nicolas Gadd by the flickering light of his farthing candle. For beating it certainly was, even then. She wondered why. She could feel it in a strange little pulse in her throat. She rubbed her 108 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD hands over her eyes. Was it because he had seemed so young, so fresh to life to be on the wrong side of it already ? For there he was, like the other " poor fella." She had not a doubt about that. From this she began speculating upon when the policeman would come to fetch him away as well. The policeman was a nice man. She knew the policeman well. He had passed the time of day with her, and shown her many other little courtesies besides, ever since she was eight years old. But it was no good her appealing to him. When he spoke about duty — and he often did with a large "D" in his throat — his eyebrows knitted together, and he looked unutterable things. Once she had appealed to him on the subject of a little boy who had stolen a herring from a stall in New Street. At that time — she was ten^— she had thought that the policeman who caught the miscreant punished him himself. Constable X03 had not exactly undeceived her on that point, for it had grossly flattered his vanity. He had pulled at his moustache, stuck out one leg and, loosening the belt around his waist, had answered her question from a general point of view, avoiding incorrect details. " For them as does wrong, miss," he said oracularly, " there's only one thing — " and he toyed with one of the silver buttons on his breast. " What's that ? " she asked in a little breath. HOW BABIES ABE BORN 109 He drew back his foot and struck out the other one. "The Law," said he. So that there was no good in her approaching him about the young man. Could she warn the young man herself ? She began to fancy how it could be done, and then, as the sky changed from orange to dust, from dust to smoke, from smoke to a grey of pearl, her dreams changed too, drifting, imperceptibly, the one into the other, as colours are^blended through the threads of a piece of silk. She made up little stories, the quaintest of concep- tions, about the people who lived in the houses below. At odd moments they would appear at their windows, in all sorts of costumes, doing all sorts of odd things. Men in their shirt sleeves might be seen shaving — even at that hour of the day. Women woiild be doing their hair— or sitting, tight pressed up against the window, sewing little garments against time ; trying to catch the last moments of the light while it held. There were some who seemed always to be washing up dishes, no matter what time of the day it was. They never had any opportunity of a meal for themselves. That was one side of life, if she had only known it. But there was none of the realist in Peggy. The only food that Father O'Leary had given her was the manna of idealism, making life itself one of those fairy stories that come true. And so, from her little perch on the window-sill, with no GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD all this kinetoscope of the world passing before her, she saw none of the seamy side of it. A seamy side there was indeed. There always is. But, for those who have the heart to see it, there is the plain cloth, too. It is very plain sometimes, perhaps — very, very plain indeed ; yet there are few in this world, when you come truly to look into it, who will not rather turn out that plain cloth side to the light. To every one of these people, appearing in their odd moments through her dreams, Peggy had given names. When your stories are real stories, the people in them must have names. You will find that out when you come to tell a child of six some little narrative of your own. Fortunately for her, Peggy never came across these individuals in the streets. The houses in that quarter are so massed, so jumbled together — for all the world like a pack of cards, by reason of which you cannot tell whether they are standing on their heads or their heels — ^that she never knew upon which thoroughfare they faced. Nor, indeed, had she any great inclination to find out. There may — ^you never know with these children — have been some fear in the heart of her that she would discover the identity of the Lady Godiva who so often brushed out her hair at six o'clock in the evening. She might have learnt that that beautiful creature was nothing more nor less than the proprietress of a fried fish shop, with a name, terrible to think about, painted up over the door. Now where the name Lady HOW BABIES ABE BOBN 111 Godiva is a blissful sound, surely it were folly to prove it to be Mrs. Huggins ? At that moment, when the Lady Godiva had just left her window, with hair burnished and brushed, Mrs. Parfitt softly opened the door of Peggy's bedroom. So silently did she peep in, that Peggy never heard her. For a short space of time, Mrs. Parfitt waited, hoping that she might turn of her own accord, when it could not be said that she had disturbed her. But Peggy never looked round, and, with a smile that might have been of disappointment, or simply of satisfaction, just according to the light in which you saw it, she closed the door as silently as she had opened it and disap- peared. Peggy's mind was too far away then to be disturbed by any slight interruption such as this. When the Lady Godiva had va,nished, she had fallen to watching the smoke as it curled and twisted, upwards and upwards, like winding scarves of silk, from the endless rows of chimneys that stood above the house-tops. It was to this dream, the last of aU, that her mind always came. For this was the most wonderful. This was the wild flower in the old garden upon which, with tired wings, her mind always rested. There had come a day, once, when Peggy was nine years old, and the muflSn man, in a thoughtless moment had said — ^gleefully — with a beaming smile that nearly upset the whole tray of muffins — " I'm goin' to 'ave another baby. Miss." 112 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD " When ? " asked Peggy. " Next week as ever is," said he. Such events never take place in a week that never was. It is only misfortunes that happen then. " What are you going to call it ? "" she asked. Its name, you see. Almost the first question. "Well — that depends," he replied. And the very way he rang his bell seemed a mystery to Peggy. She would have asked him more questions, but he descried a frantic arm waving wildly from an upper window and he fled. You know one does wave frantically for the muffin man. He so easily gets away into other streets. That evening, still nursing her mystery, Peggy had placed both hands in Father O'Leary's and, with those grey-blue pebbles of hers, she had looked up seriously into his eyes. " Daddy O'Leary," said she. "Well— ?" he replied. " How is babies born ? " she asked. Mrs. Parfitt, who was clearing away the supper things, picked up a salt-cellar and left the room. His glance pitifully followed her. " Faith," said he — " it's a terrible long story that." Without another word, she climbed up on to his knee and took hold of his watchchain. " Gee up ! " said she. There was nothing for it, then, but to start on the hazardous journey. " Well — " he began, after a long pause — and in that HOW BABIES ARE BORN 113 pause he had found time to say a little prayer. I^must tell you what the prayer was, for never was a poor man placed in such a predicament, and the repetition of that prayer may help others in the same plight. " Holy Mothet — help me to teU a dacent lie." Its simplicity is its recommendation. Moreover, if there is but little time, as usually is the case in these matters, it is conveniently short and to the point. « Well,-" said he—" I'll tell ye. There's a fella what hangs about the chimney-pots ; ye'll see him on dark nights when it's as black as that old hat of mine and ye can't make out yeer hand in front of yeer face." " How can you see him, then ? " asked Peggy. " Ah — shure be a good child and don't be asking questions," said he testily — "faith, aren't I tellin' as fast as I can how ye'll see him ? He's as much like Santa Claus as two pins. There's divil a hair to choose between 'em." " What's divil mean ? " asked Peggy. For the first time in his life. Father O'Leary was made conscious that he used the word. " Did I say divil ? " he asked. " You did," said she. " Yirra, I must be excited," said he — " for I generally swallow that word backwards, whenever I hear it coming up my throat. It's not a nice word — it is not. Will ye forget I said it, please, while I go on with my story. I was saying this fella's the dead spit of Santa Claus. 114 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD He is so. And he has the divil of a big sack on top of his shoulders and 'tis the way it's just filled up to the brim of it with babies." Peggy slipped her arms round his neck and whispered in his ear, for fear any one was listening. " You said it again," said she. "Did I.?" he asked in amazement. "Well — Glory be to God — 'tis a fright I am with myself Shure, I hardly know what I'm saying. If I say it again, don't stop me, because it destroys me altogether with the story. I shall be forgetting the whole of it." I'^ggy unclasped her arms. She kissed him and promised to say no more. "Well, 'tis the way he puts the babies down the chimney," continued Father O'Leary — "and if there's nobody there, or it may be they are there and don't want to see them — shure, God help them ! — well, there's nothing for them but the poor little things catch alight and go up with the smoke through the chimney." " The creatures ! " said Peggy. " It is the creatures, indeed," replied he — " but shure, they don't feel it. They're fast asleep. Didn't I tell ye the night was as black as that hat of mine ? And faith, that's the way babies are born. But I wouldn't ask any one about it if I were you. There's divil a one, but hasn't been outside playing, when the feUa came — and they'd be sorry for it afterwards. Asking them HOW BABIES ARE BORN 115 would only remind them of it." He stopped suddenly with a quaint expression of misgiving. "Tell me," said he — " Did I say it then ? " Peggy nodded her head, once, twice, thrice. " As many as that ? " said he. " No — only once." " And will ye forgive me ? " At that moment, Mrs. Parfitt had returned and found Peggy, with her arms round Father O'Leaiy's neck, Bestowing the absolution of her kiss. « Shall I take her up to bed ? " asked Mrs. Parfitt courageously. She had been standing in the kitchen ever since, with one hand on the dresser and the other on her hip, saying long prayers which had never reached Father O'Leary's for swiftness. " Shall I take her up to bed ? " she repeated, with less courage than before. " Shure, she's quite happy where she is," Father O'Leary had replied in triumph. Here, then, was the birth of that dream, the last upon which her mind rested. There came, in the years that followed, a half-frightened, half-tremulous suspicion that that story which Father O'Leary had told her was not quite, not absolutely true. But she could never thrust it completely from her beliefs. And so, the dim substance of it remaining, you find her on this evening in August, when seventeen years had shed their summers on her mouse-coloured hair — you find her, seated on the window-sill, watching the spirits of the babies in their I 2 116 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD long, grey, trailing vestments, as they lifted up to heaven. Occasionally, after that evening when Father O'Leary had told her about the " fella " who was the dead spit of Santa Claus, she had asked questions, always wondering why Mrs. Parfitt got so busy and had so much to do that she could never answer them. And then, after a time — the time when she began to suspfect that it was not all true — her questions fell to silence. She asked no more. By the time she was seventeen, it begS,n to dawn upon her that there was no "fella'" with a sack on his back after all. Often, she used to look up to the sky, following the grey trails of smoke, and aloud — for she was one of those little fairy people whose dreams are the most real things about them — she would say — « I expect it's God." She was expecting it was God then. The smoke went up to heaven with every indication that her suspicion was correct. At last, as the lights in all the houses began to glow, and the tinkle of hansom bells grew louder, there was a knock and the door opened again. " Peggy," said Father O'Leary — " are ye never coming down to have yeer supper .'' Shure, what are ye doing, child.?" " I'm thinking," said Peggy. " What are ye thinking of ? " " The smoke coming out of the chimneys." HOW BABIES ABE BORN 117 Father O'Leary tiomed hurriedly to descend the stairs. " Well — Fm going to have supper," said he. In a moment she was down from the window-sill and running after him. On the stairs, she caught his arm. " Daddy," said she. " Holy Mother," he began under his breath. « Well," he replied. "There's a new lodger come to the top floor of Nicolas Gadd's. D'you think the policeman will come and fetch him away ? " "Faith, I shouldn't be surprised," said he, with a breath of relief. " Ye'd better tell him that he ought to be careful of himself." CHAPTER III INKY It is here, that Inky — than whom, there has been no other kitten her like before or since — it is here that Inky finds her way into this chronicle. I do not question, I unhesitatingly agree that it is bad workmanship to introduce into any history, that which does not concern or lead to its ultimate develop- ment. When, therefore, I first reviewed the events of which this chronicle records, I felt that the question of including the character of Inky — however charming, however full of fascination she might be — was one in which the scales must be well adjusted before the balance was decided in her favour. But now that I view them, spread out before me, as it were in one whole piece of patchwork, I cannot find it^ either in the heart, or the judgment of me, to let her go. She is that one small patch of cheap red flannel, in the company of hundreds of pieces of vari-coloured satins, which add the subtlest touch of reality to the patchwork quilt. When you see that little piece of red flannel, you know how driven was the poor lady to eke out her lis INKY 119 material to make the perfect square. You know also, if it so be that you are generous-hearted, that she had made it the last ambition of her life to complete that dainty handiwork ; that she yearned to be remembered in this world by those who thankfiilly drew it about their shoulders ere they went to sleep. You wiU suppose moreover, that, hard put to it to find that other piece, she took her scissors and, lifting her alpaca skirt of many folds, she cut it off her petticoat. And last of all, you will imagine her little sigh as she heard the scissors snip. And it is just this that I claim as my reason for bringing Inky into this chronicle. I want to make the perfect square. And so I see in her the resemblance to that little patch of cheap red flannel, for she was only a common little cat. You will see her like peering through the railings at the top of many an area steps — yet never her like. There has been no other kitten like her. She brings with her, just that shght touch of reality, subtle yet quite common reality, which, in our eyes, must justify her existence. For Peggy found her, starving, whining, peering down into the deep, black water of the river on the Embankment as though she were just about to determine upon that terrible wish — the most awful, yet pardonable wish that life can bring to you. And Peggy, having in the heart of her that greatest wish in the world, not yet awake it is true, but murmuring as it were in its 120 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD slumber, she brought her home, tight wrapped against her heart. When first she saw the little creature — ^her thin black tail erect — but we come to this later. The band was playing in Charing Cross Gardens again, the night after Peggy had seen the new lodger with Nicolas Gadd. Thither she went, begging the penny of Father O'Leary for those little orange-coloured programmes — the most generous programmes I know. They give you admission into that circle where sit the elect penny public of Adelphi. What is more, with a free and easy hand, they throw in a seat along with it. It may be next to the woman who sells you candles and White Rose oil in the daytime. But at night, what does that matter .'' At night, when the shutters are up, and we can but pay for our seats, we are all of a muchness. It is that paying for the seats that does it. To be imable to do that, is to be outclassed. The greatest insult I ever heard, moreover the one which had the greatest efifect, was offered by one Irish- man to another. It merely serves to point the truth of what I say. They had been clashing their wits together and neither had the advantage of the other. At last said one — " Yirra, ye ould yahoo, ye ! Ye haven't the price of the sate ye're sittin' on ! " There was no more to be said ; for unfortunately it was true. Oh, undoubtedly, so long as we pay for INKY 121 our seats, we are brothers and sisters. It is not a bit of good our criticizing the bonnet or the skirt of the woman who serves us with candles and White Rose oil. She is criticizing our hat and the cut of our trousers.^ By the same token, the little girls and boys, crowding around you in these places, whose savour perhaps is not the sweetest in the world, are at perfect hberty to exclaim, when you discreetly put your handkerchief to your nose — " Eugh ! He smells of scent ! " They have every right to the exclamation. And here, perhaps, I see a faint shadow of difference between them and you. For I presume that you, at least, do not say aloud what you think. At least, I hope not. Here, then, went Peggy, timidly buying her pro- gramme and choosing her seat on one of the chairs which range around that bandstand, for all the world as if they were meted out for a parcel of school children come to learn their lessons. They are so ambitious, these Park Bands. They do so want to educate the public ear to what is good in mtisic. And so they play the Peer Gynt — the Schubert symphony in C. They will give you the Dead March of Chopin with never a note of the grave in it. How can you bring a note of the grave into a trombone, when all the time you are thinking of that comfortable little public-house in Duke Street where you hope to rest and drink your beer when your work is done ? But the good people, the penny public of Adelphi, sit 122 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD patiently and listen, taking their cues of applause from that one educated gentleman amongst them, who knows all the classics off by heart — and says — in a loud voice so that every one can hear — " My God ! " when the comet plays a wrong note. He is a happy fellow all the same, is that educated gentleman. I believe he would be really disappointed if the cornet played all his notes correct. It would rob him of that glorious opportunity of turning round to the assembled company with an expression as if to say — " There ! What do you think of that ? That's what the County Council gives us ! That's what we have to pay rates for ! " It would rob him too of that golden excla- mation — " My God ! " which earns for him so many a glance of admiration and respect. From him, the lady who sells you White Rose oil, takes all her cues. When he says " My God " she screws up her face as if she were biting a lemon. The vibrations of that false note may long have passed her by. But that is not the point. There are some people who do not find their disapproval of bad music until the next day, when they have seen the papers. Her paper is the face of the educated gentleman and she reads it in large type. Moreover she reads it then and there. He is quite a useful man, is the educated gentleman. The Coimty Council should put him on their books. They should pay him a salary. He is an excellent fellow and gets his meaning home far deeper than does the conductor who, as he wields his baton with a loose INKY 123 and dainty wrist, is saying to himself : " Just a couple of stiflF 'uns and then home." There is an old man too in the audience who taps his foot to every beat of the music. He is probably an advanced musician as well ; but he is of no service to our la;dy of the White Rose oil. She takes no lead from him ; for his foot goes on a-beating through all the notes good and bad, with the same amiable regularity. I have even seen him go to sleep over it ; yet his foot still goes on a-beating. But when it comes to the selection from a musical comedy which, sometimes, this highly learned band of the County Council does descend to play — ah ! then our lady needs no cue from any. Her bonnet bobs in time. The little aigrette of beads sways gaily to the music. And on her ample lap, she strams her fingers to the notes to let you know that there is a piano in the sitting-room at the back of the little oil shop and that the noises which issue therefrom are hers. Here it was, amongst all these that Peggy sat, know- ing no more about music than the rest of them. It was just the being there, the rows of cheery, gaudy lights about the bandstand, the noise of the music and the lines of strange faces that looked so white and tired in the vivid illumination — it was just these things that pleased her. Moreover, she made up stories about the people, even here. When you can make up stories, the world is a wonderful place. She made up a story about the young man and the 124 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD young girl who were sitting just in front of her. The girl held a baby in her arms. She whispered to it as it blinked its eyes. All babies listen with their eyes. What is more, you would be surprised to know how much they can hear. She was a fair, grey-eyed girl, with a lovable lock ot hair that would fall loose upon her forehead. Her face was tired, but very, very patient. Now and again the young man, her husband, drew her attention to some passage in the book which he was reading. It was an old tattered volume of Shakespeare. He was reading the Sonnets. " Look," said he. Leaning over his shoulder, she read the line his finger pointed to, then smiled into his face because she had not understood a word of it^ and thought how clever he must be. Again she would whisper to her baby, the baby would blink his eyes, and glancing up from his volume, the young father watched them, wondering if any man had ever chosen so beautiful a wife as he had chosen, or possessed so fine a baby in the world. Peggy made her story out of them. That was not hard. They made it for her. She made her story out of the man who was ostentatiously drawing pictures on little pieces of paper. He was very shy of being watched, was this artist. Whenever any one tried to see what he was doing, he covered up his little sketch with his hand and pretended to have forgotten all about it. But if they waited long enough, they were INKY 125 bound to catch him off his guard. It was so tactful, the way he let them catch him, just when their curiosity was up to the pitch he had desired — but seldom before. But, as Peggy's eyes wandered up and down the lines of faces, they met another pair of eyes some little distance away, gazing intently at her own. Suddenly, her heart began whispering in short, quick beats. She looked away. Her eyes would have none of that, and back they came again. Swift though her impression had been, lasting but the touch of a moment before the farthing candle had blown out, she knew this was the new lodger at Nicolas Gadd's. There was no mistaking his clean, fresh face, the simple eyes like a dog's that watch your every movement. There was something about those eyes — a something that had not as yet described itself in her mind — which she could not mistake. Again and again she forced her eyes to steady themselves in some other direction, but back they would come, and back they would come, just, if you please, to see whether he were still looking. And every time they met afresh, her heart set to a-whispering and a-twittering for all the world like some fussy little sparrow that has dropped out of its nest before it has properly learnt to fly. It came at last to be that she was frightened. There appeared that look in those eyes of hers, that look of the field-mouse, not knowing whether to eat or run away. Oh, but the look was intensified a thousand 126 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD times now ! She tried in vain to read the print on her little orange-coloured programme. But the Overture to Euryanthe, by Weber, meant nothing to her. Why, she could not even pronounce it. The Dream Pantomime from Hansel and Gretel caught her attention for one brief moment, and then, only because it was by Humperdinck. There is some promise in a name like that. There is a story in it straight away. You can see a cave in a mountain. You can hear the rap-tap-ting a' tong, tong, tong, of the little hammer as it jumps from the red-hot iron to the ringing anvil. And if you peep inside, you can see the wee, hunched-up figure of the dwarf — Humperdinck — plying his trade. This is the value of names. It even for the moment called to her mind the little rhyme that Father O'Leary had so often told her of the Leprechaun — ''Tip — tap, rip — rap, Tick-a-tack-too ! Scarlet leather, sewn together. This will make a shoe." And all this — just out of the name of — Humperdinck. But it did not last for long. Once more her eyes came up from the programme, and she found the eyes of the new lodger gazing gently, patiently into hers. Then no orange-coloured programme, no names or memories of the fairies could hold her then. There was no doubt in her mind as to what she should do. She ran away. In a moment, when she saw that he INKY 127 was not looking, she slipped from her seat and hurried away in the opposite direction to which his head was tin-ned. It brought her out on to the Embankment. That did not matter. It was quite as easy to go round by Villiers Street back to the Presbytery. When once she knew that she was out of sight, the whispered beating of her heart died gradually down to silence. For it was not that she had been frightened of him. How could she have been frightened of him ? Why, he had looked frightened of her! He was a stranger to London, that was certain from the wonder in his eyes. So much, at least, she had realized of him. But the fear that she had had was none the less poignant in her breast. It was that timidity, perhaps, that the butterfly has, when it soars over the boiling cataract. It knows, no doubt, that there is little fear but it will reach the wild- flower in the old garden, on which to stretch its wings. Yet there below, is the roar of the rushing waters, which lead, if it did but know it, to the quiet river that washes the banks through the meadows of content. In those moments, Peggy's fear had been nothing more than this. Yet it had driven her to run away. And only when she was outside the gardens on the Embankment, did she feel quite safe. But safe of what.? That she had no words to express. And then it was that she saw Inky. On the parapet that guards the dark water, she 128 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD beheld a little black figure, its tail erect — a slim wire stalk that has been stiffened upwards at a sharp right angle. With its front legs walking straight and its back legs walking sideways, it was hugging the very edge of the wall. One false step of those wee, black paws and it would have been lost for ever. Peggy held her breath. "Kitty," she whispered, and her hand stretched _gent1y out to reach it. When Inky saw her, she opened her little mouth. You could see her tiny tongue, as red as red. But scarcely any sound came forth in that piteous, silent cry. She was too weak, too hungry to whine aloud. She opened her little mouth. She took one step towards Peggy's hand. One step more and then Peggy's fingers closed round the thin, emaciated little body. Then, nestling close up into the folds of Peggy's coat, and finding it warm where all the world was cold, she began to hum her song of thanksgiving — a rolling, gentle noise, so weak that Peggy had to bend down her head close to the little body to hear it. All fear was gone then. As she bound her arms tight round it, her heart took the beating of another note. It was as though some strange, great wish that she had never expressed had been realized at last, and as fast as her legs would carry her, she hurried up with her little burden to the Presbytery. CHAPTER IV IN WHICH HISTORY SETS OUT TO BEPEAT ITSELF If it were not permitted of history to repeat itself, • the chroniclers would be in a poor way. They would, in fact, be as hard put to it as the lady of the patch- work quilt, to make a perfect square of volumes. But, thank the Fates I such liberty is permitted. When, therefore, Peggy brought up the kitten into the Presbytery and, holus bolus, laid it down in Father O'l^ary's lap, the old priest looked up at Mrs. Parfitt and — " I dunno," said he, blinking his eyes — " but either I'm getting fuddled in me head, or this has happened before." " It was one evening after Benediction," began Mrs, Parfitt — " about seventeen years ago." " That'll do," said he. And then, with a wink in his eyes, he looked at Peggy. " Is it the way ye want me to go and get her some milk ? " said he. They marched down to the larder together. "May be the poor mite 'ud like a wee bite of this cold mutton ? " said he, his hand hesitating on the milk jug, " Meat ! " exclaimed Peggy, " Why she's only two K 129 130 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD or three weeks old ! I only hope she'U be able to lap the milk herself." Father O'Leary nodded his head, accepting the reproof, " I'm not a bit wiser," said he, aloud to himself. " How wiser ? " " Oh, shure — wiser than I was. It was a cold sirloin then." " Well — ^hand me down the milk jug," said Peggy, too intent upon her little burden to listen to his mumbling. He did as he was bid. As he passed it to her, he looked inside. " Shure, Glory be to God ! " he exclaimed. " There is no milk at all." Peggy's face fell. " I must go and get some then," said she. " Is it at this time of night ? " he replied — " Here — give the jug to me. 'Tis the way Fate has the twist of all this. Give me the jug. I'll just slip down to New Street with it meself." And out he went, the milk jug tucked under his coat. Mrs. Parfitt heard of his departure from Peggy, and if it can be said that a person smiles in all solemnity, then let that expression of countenance be imagined in Mrs. Parfitt. "He wanted to give the creature meat," said Peggy. " Indeed," said Mrs. Parfitt — " well — I'm not sui*- prised." HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF 131 It was very brief, that remark, meaning nothing to Peggy. But Father O'Leary would have found the amazing amount of substance it contained. In five minutes he returned, opening the door cautiously first and peeping in. " Where's Mummy Parfitt ? " he asked guardedly. " Down in the kitchen," replied Peggy. He stepped right in, closing the door and unbuttoning his coat. "I've brought a pint," said he — "will that be enough ? " He gave her the jug. She kissed him impulsively. The next second she had almost forgotten his existence. Inky was lapping up the milk — looking up sometimes to give a brief note of her song, then swallowing it again with the milk. " The poor wee mite," said Father O'Leary. " The creature ! " said Peggy. " Say that again," said he in a whisper. " The creature ! " she repeated. " Ye didn't tell Mrs. Parfitt I went out to get the milk, did ye ? " he asked. Peggy nodded her head. "Sch! Sch! Sch!" said he, " Why ? " asked Peggy in surprise. " Oh, shure, 'tis only the way she mightn't think it dignified. 'Tis nothing at all. Ye didn't tell her I thought the kitten might be taking a bit of the cold mutton, did ye ? " K 2 132 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD She looked up at him with solemn eyes, nodding her head once more. He fingered the gold cross on his watchchain. " I'm sorry for that," said he. " But why ? " " Oh — shure, no why — only just." There was a little pause. " And what did she say ? " he asked. " She said — ' Indeed I'm not surprised.' " "Oh— Glory be to God! Did she say that ? Oh, dear!" " But did it matter ? " said Peggy. " Well — it did matter," said he — " and in a kind of a way of speaking, it did notJ" " Well — say it didn't," she begged. " Faith, I'll do anything in the world to please ye," said he. Peggy slipped an arm round his neck. " I know what matters most," she said. "What is that?" She dragged his head down to a level with Inky's little body, so that, for aU the world, he looked Uke a sun-worshipper, making obeisance upon a mat. " Listen to that," said she — ■" if you put your ear very close, you can hear her hum in between the milk." With both eyes screwed up, he listened with all his might. " Ye can indeed," said he — and a big smile spread over his face as he leant his cheek against the floor. HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF 133 At that moment Mrs. Parfitt entered. " You can — what .'' " she asked. Father O'Leary scrambled to his feet. There was a speck of dust on the knees of his trousers, so he had to bend down, hiding his face, to brush it off. " You can — what ? " repeated Mrs. Parfitt. " Hear her hum," said Peggy, still lying on the flodr. Father OXeary's eyes met Mrs. Parfitt's, they were still looking to him for an answer. " Hear her hum," said he meekly. CHAPTER V THE HEKO FOE KOMANCE The heroine of Romance is she who, sitting by the still, deep pool that lies in the heart of some forest of Arden, waits motionless, watching the placid water until, gazing over her shoulder in the crystal reflec- tion, there appears the face of her lover. Then she runs away. The hero of Romance is he who, mounted upon some brave steed, his heart stout-beating with a great and boundless hope, searches the world over for the maid whom he must win. With his sword ever loose within its scabbard, his eyes ever alight to danger on the road, he journeys tirelessly on, in his quest of great endeavour. He has no fear in face of the fires of fate. He lacks no courage before the waters of destruction. And then, finding the maid in the forest, with a chaplet of daisies about her head, his heart turns to water, his courage to a breath of wind that fans upon his cheek and is gone. The dangers through which he has passed, the fights he has waged, the battles he has won, seem only as playthings to the terrible knowledge he discovers in her eyes. I'ii THE HERO FOB ROMANCE 185 In that moment then, as she runs away, he becomes, not as the huntsman pui'suing his quarry to the earth, but as a little child, following, with footsteps that are blind, that light of the will-o'-the-wisp which leads, he knows not whither, nor does he ask. There may be other heroes and other heroines than these ; but, however much the world has need of them, they do not touch Romance. Peggy Bannister — Stephen Gale — these two must touch the very heart of it. For one of the first qualities of Romance is that you are a child in the fingers of destiny. There can be no such thing as taking Fate into yoiu" own hands. If you have not within you the heart of a child, then it is a warfare, is life — in the which you are the captain of your soul, leading it to victory or to defeat. A noble warfare maybe it is ; but blood is spilt and tragedy is always lurking there, like a vulture to feed upon her prey. Now in Romance, there is no bloodshed. You will find no tragedy there. For Romance is that childlike submission to the beauty which is inevitable in life ; that J beauty which every one of us may find if our eyes are \ but young enough to see and our hearts but young enough to understand. And the youth of Peggy is so tangible a thing, that there can be no need to question it. For youth it is, neither in being innocent, nor in being ignorant, nor in being young ; but in the way you know the big facts of life. Eveij one knows such facts exist. There are 136 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD none so innocent as can avoid such knowledge as that. But those who can wrap them in the simple garment of Romance are they that are young, yoimg with a youth that last's throughout the threescore years and -ten, and carries old folk still laughing, still crying, still children to their last journey up the Hill of Dreams, Peggy had youth then. We have no doubt of that. Father O'Leary he had his youth as well and Mrs. Parfitt too, in her own peculiar way. But Stephen Gale, the new lodger at Nicolas Gadd's, you may wonder how he at twenty-eight, comes to be possessed of such a quality. They are always so very old, these boys of twenty-eight. Perhaps it is work and the stem responsibilities of life that make them so. The clerk in the city office who finds it necessary in this world to wear those paper cuff- protectors with their elastic bands, who carries in his pocket the correspondence he has received over a period of six month's until at last it almost spoils his figure, is so weighted with care that his cheeks grow pallid, grey hairs peep out on to his temples and he forgets that it is just as manly to be young. He has a whole family of appearances to support. His coat must be the latest cut, his boots the latest fashion. He must carry a coloured handkerchief up his sleeve. It must match his shirt. By the same token, it must be in harmony with his tie. He must keep in touch with the theatres. He must entertain that man who has a friend whose brother knows a man who is THE HERO FOR ROMANCE 137 acquainted with a leading actress. And all these things are responsibilities which sap him of his glorious youth. It is responsibilities such as these which, in our cities, make the young man of twenty-eight, so old. Their weight is more than he can bear. The cares and tribulations that they bring are more than he can hope to battle with. From being old then at twenty- eight, he totters sadly through life, till his office stool falls empty and some other youth grows aged in his place. Yet there is one calling in this life — one of the few that is left us — where responsibilities weigh no more than feathers in the breeze ; where there are no tribula- tions to distress and harass the gentle mind and where men are always children, never growing old, never passing into that pitiable decay which you may see in the thousand faces in the city streets. It is the calling of the sea. And this it is — this calling — to which Stephen Gale belonged. Once in its life, so they will tell you, a reindeer must touch the sea. Wherever it may be, however many the miles which separate it from its desire, there comes that moment in its life when, raising its head, it scents the far-oiF brine. There is no power can hold it then. With a thumping heart and eyes bright set with purpose, it journeys forth, leaving the herd. For days and days together, never touching food, never soothing 138 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD its lips with water, it struggles on. Many there are that die of hunger and fatigue in obedience to this strange summons of the sea. Yet once the call has come, they do not flinch, they do not hesitate. The distant cry of those breaking waters finds so deep an echo ; the far-oflF murmur of those boundless winds strikes so deep a note that, leaving all dear to them, seeking danger and braving death, they must answer that penetrating call — the call of the sea. And it is so with men. And it was so with Stephen Gale. At the age of fifteen, running away from school, leaving his parents, leaving his home, with a heart thumping and with eyes bright, he answered to the music of that call. The touch of the sea was in his fingers. The scent of it in his nostrils. He could not shut his ears to the sound of that cry. One night they found his bed empty. The call of the sea had reached him. He had gone. So far it is with the reindeer, as it is with the man — so far but no farther. When once the reindeer feels the wash of those salt waters on its breast ; when once the great breadth and depth of the sea's solitude has. lain before its eyes ; then it returns to the herd, the great call answered, the great desire fulfilled. But there is only one thing that can win back the man when once he has seen the grey-green waters, or heard the booming of the waves on shore. For when once the sea has called him, then it always calls. Its cry is as Missing Page 140 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD Oh, it is little wonder that sailors are children till they die ! That gazing out to sea through the long watches. That absence of all contact with man, that constancy of contact with God, these are the conditions in which it is impossible ever to leave childhood. Their playmates are the stars. Is it any wonder that they believe in fairy tales ? Their work is that endless conflict with the sea. Is it any wonder that they have no time to grow old ? For that is the secret of it all. It takes time and it takes leisure to grow old. And that is why, in the beginning of this digression I have cited to you the city clerk with all his responsi- bilities and all his cares in life. No wonder he is old at twenty-eight. He never sees the face of God from the beginning of one day to the end of it. We none of us do in the cities of the world. Therefore, since it is incumbent upon me to choose for my hero of Romance one who, seeing the maid whom he must win, follows her with the blind eyes and the fearing heart of a little child — so it is that I choose a man, voyaging upon deep waters. I say I chose him. That is not true. In choice there is free-will ; but I have no free-wiU in this matter. Stephen Gale was a sailor. But had he not been a sailor, this story had never been written. I had no choice but to take that which I found. CHAPTER VI AN ACQUAINTANCE In London it may justly be said of you that you are alone when your only acquaintances are the landlord of your lodging-house, the muffin man who plies his trade down your street and the little maid-of-all-work who makes your bed of a morning. When the Elizabeth Warren was docked for repairs off Limehouse Reach and Stephen Gale came up to London until further orders, these were the only people he knew. Now there is not much to be said for an acquaintance with a man to whom you have to pay money every week. It seldom ripens into friendship. There is something about the man which savours of meanness. You give him a wide berth. A woman, a landlady, she is a different matter. In nine cases out of ten, she brings you your meals and stands by while you eat them. Her conversation has in it the same principle as that of Sequah's band which was played to drown the cries of the patients. She talks that you may have no opportunity of saying what you think. In despair at last, you will admit, perhaps, that the hashed veal is excellent. Then she goes away. You cannot go back from that statement. She, therefore, is different. 1« 142 GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD But a landlord — well — you can avoid him, and say what you like to the little maid-of-all-work. She will never repeat it.* We rule out Nicolas Gadd then. Even had conversation with him been likely, that tracheotomy tube would have made it distinctly dis- agreeable. With one finger on the orifice in his throat, he would hiss out his words at you. They never seemed to be human words. It was like the miracle of some animal that speaks. Not a