Cosmopolitan April 1935 Page 72/73

St. Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland, but 'tis St. Cupid that drives the divil out of a man! 

The Man Who Gave His Heart Away 

by MARY C. McCALL, JR.

Illustration by W. Smithson Broadhead 

MICK and Moira Kelleher lived for the two years of their marriage in that part of Dublin called the Coombe. A tenement in the Coombe is an unlovely place in which to live. This particular building had been a grand house when Dean Swift was a boy. In 1916, it was a cold, dirty warren housing more cold, dirty families than should have been crowded together inside its walls. 

All the time Owen was paying court to Moira,
he was reminded that she was another man's widow.
All he got was the smiles and kisses
she had left over from the child.
continued on page 94

Mick had brought Moira there as a bride; had taken her away from her father's farm in Wicklow, where there was little enough money, but where the air was sweet and the rich earth always yielded food. Mick was no townsman. He'd been head groom for a gentleman who hunted with the Ward Union, and he was used to his own decent room over the stables. But he took Moira away from the country sounds and smells and sights, and brought her to the Coombe, where the streets were noisy with drays and lorries, whining town voices and the screech of trams, odorous with the reek from the public house on the corner, the smoke from thousands of chimneys and the smell of bitter poverty. 

That was because Mick was in love with Ireland. Dublin was his place because it was there that the revolutionary leaders had their meetings. It was the center of the planning and plotting, the secret orders and the secret drills which were to set Ireland free. Then the caldron of revolt boiled over, and there was fighting-barricades in the streets and bullets pockmarking the old stone buildings near the Liffey bridges-desperate fighting at the Four Courts and the General Post Office. 

Paddy Doyle brought Moira the news that Mick was dead, his chest torn open by machine-gun bullets. Moira had loved Mick, but she took quietly the news that he was dead. She cried quietly. There was no ecstasy of grief. She had been sure, somehow, that Mick would go. He had been ready for it-eager, really, to give his life for a free Ireland. 

And there was another reason why Moria allowed herself no mad outburst of sobbing. She was carrying a child. The child stirring in her commanded her attention. So completely was her mind fixed on the child that even her husband's death took second place. 

At home when she was a young girl, she had been a great one for dancing, running about like a colt, eating sparingly because there was too much fun to be had to spend overmuch time eating and sleeping. Now she cared for herself because she was feeding the child, guarding it till its birth time. She moved slowly and kept herself calm for the child's sake. 

After Mick's grand military funeral, Moira went home to her father's farm. Eileen was born there just as winter was drawing in. 

As the winter softened into spring everyone knew that Owen Duffy, who worked in the Innisfail Arms, the public house in the town, was courting Moira. In his free hours he was always at the farm. Not evenings, because evenings were the busy time in the bar parlor. But early afternoons and mornings even, Owen Duffy would be at the farm, and on Sundays he'd be at the gate to walk with Moira to six-o'clock Mass and back with her to breakfast.

Calling and going to Mass with a young woman were the regular signs of courtship, so those who had never seen what went on in the house when Owen was there with Moira looked on this as a regular courtship. They imagined, if they thought of it at all, Owen codding with Moira, laughing over the small jokes that amuse lovers, taking a kiss and a squeeze when he could. 

All the neighbors, Owen's relations and Moira's, liked the match. Owen was a steady fellow and well liked. He had a downright way and an honest look. Mr. Geoghan, who owned the Innisfail Arms, was as fond of Owen as if he were his son, and said often that Owen would make a good publican in his own right some day. Owen Duffy was a good catch for any girl, and Moira was a nice bit of goods, too-tall and fine-looking, with her fair face and hair so black it was blue in the sun. To be widowed at twenty with a child born after its father's death is sad for a high-spirited girl. 

So Owen's suit was looked on as a good thing for him and for Moira, and for the little one, too. But if the neighbors and relations had known the inside of it, it would have seemed a strange kind of courting. What happened was that Owen sat and watched Moira care for the child-washing her little clothes in a tub outside the house; curling her hair that was black and soft as a bird's breast; knitting tiny white stockings for her when she had a moment to sit down; bathing her; holding her to the breast and smiling to feel the strong pull of her baby mouth and the touch of her small fingers. She had few words for Owen or anyone while the child was awake, and when the baby slept, she talked of how she'd smiled, or how she'd reached to touch the cat or blinked at the sun. 

Now it's fine for a woman to love her child, but it must have been hard on Owen, since this wasn't his child but Mick Kelleher's. All the time, every hour he was with Moira, he was reminded that she had loved another man. 

WHAT'S GONE is gone, and only a man who was a bit touched would be jealous of the dead. But a widow, even a widow with a child, gives her sweetest smiles and listens hardest to the man who is to be her husband. All Owen got was the leavings of. Moira's thoughts -the smiles and the attention and the kisses, you might say, she had left over from the baby. 

A proud, quick-tempered young man with a great conceit of himself would never have stood for it. "I'll be first," a man like that would have said, "or I'll be nothing." But that wasn't Owen's way. He was easy-going and even-tempered; more a kind man than a wild, passionate one. He was content to sit watching Moira-loving her for her care of the baby, even though it was not his- thinking, most likely, "When she bears me children, she'll be a fine mother to them." 

The baby took to Owen as she grew to the noticing age. She'd crow and smile, seeing him in the doorway, hearing the deep rumble of his voice. When she had her spells of crying, he could soothe her quicker than Moira, even. 

Maybe that's what decided Moira that she'd kept him waiting long enough. The banns were read after Mass one March Sunday, and in April they were married. Owen had the lease on a cottage just a step from the Innisfail Arms and the store -a good house with slates on the roof, for Owen was thrifty and had saved against his marriage. 

For two years the marriage went along well. Eileen grew from a beautiful baby into a beautiful small child, sitting on the doorstep rocking her doll, or running after the bigger children with her arms spread and her short, fat legs twinkling. Owen had the contented look of a man who comes home nights to a peaceful house. 

Terry Geoghan was getting on, and there was talk he'd soon be selling out the business to Owen. The Innisfail Arms was as good a public house as you'd find in a day's traveling, and everyone said how fine it would be for Owen to step into the proprietorship. 

In that second year, Owen and Moira had a child of their own, Sean Duffy. Moira took the best of care of the boy, but she didn't give all her love to him the way she did with Eileen. 

Then, in midsummer, Owen's brother Kevin walked into the pub one noon. The town had nearly forgotten Kevin, though that forgetting had taken five years. He had left those parts when he was a boy of fifteen, and as wild a boy of any age as the oldest man or woman could name. 

When he was only nine he was sent home in disgrace from school. When he was twelve he ran off to be a jockey at the Leopardstown track, passing himself off for sixteen. Then there was the business of his winning a grand new suit of clothes and a fine two-year-old horse playing cards with the young Esmond boy, whose family had the big demesne outside the town. 

He was a cross to his decent family from the first. There wasn't a girl in the town or on the farms around who wasn't warned by her parents to have nothing to do with the young rip, and there was hardly a girl paid any heed to the warning. 

At last the Duffys shipped him off to New Zealand where they had relations, and everyone was agreed that it was good riddance to bad rubbish. Everyone except his good, steady older brother Owen. He'd always had a soft spot in his heart for Kevin, though no two sons born of the same parents were ever more different than these two. 

Many's the time Owen took the blame for Kevin's escapades, until Kevin grew so wild that old man Duffy couldn't be fooled any more. The things he did only he would have done. It wasn't in Owen even to think of them. When Kevin was shipped off at fifteen, Owen, who was ten years older and already a hard, steady worker, made no secret of missing him. "He was wild," he'd say, "but he was lively, and a great hand at a song." Maybe Owen regretted having none of that wildness in himself. Many an honest, sober man looks at an unprincipled rogue, laughing and loving with no thought of the consequences or who's to pay for his fun, and thinks, "There, with a bit of better luck, go I."

Owen was made to be an honest man, sober and faithful and respected by all. He didn't have to fight down any devil inside him. The seeds of wildness weren't in him. But there's no doubt he loved his bad brother and missed him. 

Then, this July noonday, in walks Mr. Kevin Duffy, big as life, and that was big because he stood six feet two in his stockings. He was down-at-heel as far as clothes went -his toes peeking out of his shoes, and his coat thick with the dust of the roads. Owen was alone behind the bar when Kevin walked in, very solemn, but with a smile hiding behind those sky-blue eyes of his. 

"A pint of dark, Mr. Publican," he said. 

"Blessed saints," said Owen. "It's you!" 

"Right you are," says Kevin. "'Home is the sailor, home from the sea.''' 

"But how did you come to leave New Zealand?" 

"By request," said Kevin. "And the less said about that, the better. It's a queer country, anyhow, with no taste for innocent fun." 

That day Owen gave Kevin two pounds from his month's pay.

When the bar was closed, he was off home to Moira to tell her his brother was back and would be staying with them while he looked around for a job. But Moira had heard of Kevin Duffy -seen him, too, in her girlhood. For all that she'd been lively and liked a bit of fun, she was the only one of the girls who would have nothing to do with Kevin Duffy, and that day she made Owen understand she felt the same way still. 

"He'll not set his foot in this house," she said. "He left here a vagabond- a wild, trouble-making bad hat. And he's the same today, or I'm sadly mistaken." 

"But he's just after being thousands of miles from home for five years," said Owen. "He's my brother. There was never any real harm in Kevin. He was lively, but he was young." 

"No harm!" said Moira and sniffed. "He'll do us no harm because he won't come here." 

So Owen had to explain to his brother that his home was closed to Kevin; but Kevin passed it off with a laugh. 

In three months, he'd sold shares in a gold mine in Kalgoorlie to old Mrs. Dillon, who had the name of being so close with her money her purse had cobwebs in it. He had no way to show her he owned the mine, or that there was a mine at all. He wrote her a receipt on a bit of paper and took the money. From old Mrs. Dillon, who had lived on bread moistened with tea and sloppy food like that since she lost her teeth, too mean to go to Dublin to have a plate made.

He charmed the money out of her, that was the only explanation- the way an Indian conjurer charms a snake out of a basket. She found out when the spell of his smooth talking had worn off, and she'd had the priest write to the company in Melbourne he'd said were working the mine. Word came back that Kevin Duffy had worked for them once for a week as a digger, and had been discharged for incompetence, impudence, and the seduction of the foreman's wife. 

OWEN MADE good the money to the old lady, but it cut a terrible swath in his savings. He gave Kevin a piece of his mind, and Kevin smiled at him and told him he was the salt of the earth. 

"But it was a swindle, pure and sim- ple. It was not honest. You cheated the old woman." 

''I did," Kevin said. "It was wrong of me, surely -but I thought of those fine pounds, shillings and pence, sewed into the ticking of an old woman's bed and not buying any fun for anyone. You know, they say if pearls are not worn they sicken and die, losing their fine glow and luster entirely. It must be the same with money. The grand gold sovereigns must feel the chill of death on them when they're hoarded away and not used." 

"But in the end it was my money you took," Owen said. 

"I'm sorry it come back on you," Kevin said. "The trouble with me is I'm a short-thinking fellow. I see the fun and the joke, and not the real injury behind it. But I'll cause you no trouble from this out. You'll see."

They did see -when Kevin prized open a window in the Esmonds' grand house when the family was in England for the season, and had a dance in the ballroom for all the wild boys and girls within ten miles. Kevin led the sets himself. He smashed the lock off the wine-cellar door and filled old Joey Kilbourne, the fiddler, full of the Esmonds' champagne. 

There was more of Owen's money gone when the Esmonds' steward came home from his father's deathbed in Carrickmacross and found the destruction. His job would be taken from him, he said, when the family came home, and Owen knew it was true and gave him the money to mend what could be mended and to send to France for wine to take the place of what was gone. 

It was after that Owen and Moira, Eileen and Sean left the town, slipping away without a good-by to anyone. 

"As long as that brother of yours is near enough to talk to you, you'll give him whatever you have," Moira said. "You'll never be a publican in your own right, but always working for a man with more sense than yourself. You have a good name, Owen Duffy. You've made it for yourself by living a good life. But that one will dirty it with his wild ways. I won't raise my family in a town where fingers will be pointed at them because the scapegrace of the whole county is my husband's brother." 

She said "my family" but she meant Eileen. She was ambitious for her husband, but mostly because his getting on in the world would help her in her plans for Eileen's future -for the future of this girl who was not Owen's daughter. Already, with the child not more than a baby, she was planning for her schooling and even for a fine marriage for her. 

It seemed to her that Kevin's sense of fun might lead to real disgrace and disaster; murder, maybe. She wasn't clear in her mind just what might happen, but she knew surely that Kevin would trade on Owen's softness toward him to bleed him of his savings, and would use the money he charmed away from him to rob him of the decent reputation he'd made for himself. 

In Athlone it seemed that they were safe from Kevin. Owen went to work at the Shannon Side Hotel. A second son, Rory Oge O'More Duffy, was born to Moira. Eileen grew -grew beautifully. She was the pride of the sisters at the school. She took prizes in music, sewing and dancing. 

She was high-spirited and happy, but there was no trace of that queerness in her which had made her father fall hopelessly in love with Ireland. Mick Kelleher had loved Ireland to distraction, putting her above wife and child, good hard common sense and an orderly way of life. Eileen had no such unbalanced love for anyone thing. 

The thirteen years in Athlone were rich years for Moira, seeing Eileen growing so lovely and good, seeing her husband building up a name for himself, seeing their savings mount. Owen had his eye on a nice little place near the hydroelectric plant, where a well-run public house would have splendid custom. 

And then Kevin came to Athlone- Kevin, fresh out of jail for assaulting a member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police force. The policeman, it seemed, had objected when Kevin, with a drop or two taken, wanted to sit on the shoulders of the statue of Admiral Lord Nelson on top of the pillar in Dublin. 

This time it wasn't a case of paying for Kevin's behavior. Owen gave the money of his own free will because thirteen years is a long time; because the plans Kevin had for buying a farm and settling down sounded so commendable; because in the evening he spent with his brother Owen laughed more than he'd laughed since he was a boy. Somehow Kevin's presence made a drink delight the palate, a good song fall more sweetly on the ears, an old story seem suddenly young with wit. 

Owen came home in high spirits. "Kevin was in the place today," he said. 

"Who, Da?" asked Eileen. 

"Your uncle Kevin." 

"He's no uncle of yours," said Moira. "Get off with you to bed, child." She watched Eileen's slim figure out of the room. "How much did you give him this time?" she asked, and there was frost in her voice. 

"Now, Mother," said Owen, "he's a changed man. He's buying a bit of land just to the west of here. It'll be paying in no time. He's been in the States since, for a bit, and he knows all about machinery and electricity. It'll be up-to-date, with all the new wrinkles." 

"And your money’ll turn his machines! Our money. How long would that one stick a farm?" 

It was only two years this time till Kevin caught up with his brother. Owen was sole proprietor of the Daniel O'Connell Licensed Hotel on the North Circular Road. Moira was queen of a small immaculate house with a bit of garden in the front. The boys, Sean and Rory, were good sturdy lads, and Eileen was seventeen, in her last year at school. 

The scientific farm, it appeared, had failed. Kevin had worked for a time in the hydroelectric plant, but there'd been a little trouble. 

"These women," Kevin said. "The lively sense of sin that comes over them after a bit of fun, so nothing will do them but to make a clean breast of it to their husbands! I was thinking, now, it's persuading I'm good at. If I could get a place with some liquor firm, as a traveler. A word from you, now that you have your own place and are buying from these lads every day in the week. . . " 

It wasn't Owen's intention to let Moira know that he was recommending his brother, but he was never a great hand at writing letters, and when he began hunting pen and ink in Moira's neat parlor, she knew something was in the wind. 

"This time we can't move," she said. "We can't, and we won't. You have your own place now, and that fine Riordan boy who's going to be a solicitor is walking out with Eileen. So-" 

"Now, there's no need for us to move," said Owen. 

"No," said Moira; "it's him that must go." 

"Ah, sure, Mother, we can't forbid him the city. He's changed entirely." 

Owen wasn't sincere in that. Kevin at thirty-five was unchanged. He himself was a different man from the old Owen Duffy who had played soccer and gone fishing for eels in the summer. He'd put on flesh. He was settled; settled and a little fat. But Kevin was the same still -still lean; still young. His smile had the old quality of warming the heart of anyone he turned it upon; his eyes were still brightly blue, like a child's. He could still tell a story so the dead men in St. Michan's vaults would have to laugh. He could still sing. 

"No," said Moira, "we can't drive him out." Then her eyes changed; they were misted as if she were thinking so hard that her vision was blurred. "Do this, Owen Duffy. Let you ask your brother to have his dinner with us on Sunday." 

Owen stared at her. "Are you serious, Moira?" 

"I am," she said. "Never more so." 

She'd just thought of Sara Meighan. Sara Meighan was a fine woman. She was a leader in the parish. She had a nice little income of her own. Somehow; she had never married. 

"She was too good for the common run of men; too sensible," Moira said of her. 

"Oh, that one," Eileen said. "She was born forty years old and strong-minded." Eileen was foolish, sometimes, but then she was very young. 

Why not? Sara was a sensible age for Kevin. There'd be no foolishness when she had the managing of him. And it was sad, really, for a woman to go through life without the companionship of a man of her own. Sara Meighan would see to it that Kevin kept to the straight and narrow. He'd be drawn to her nice little house and her nice little income, but Sara would see to it that he took no liberties with herself or her money until they were decently married. 

Right now, if there was any trouble or scandal, the young Riordan lad who was going to be a solicitor would stop calling on Eileen. The Riordans were a fine family with a spotless reputation. 

So Kevin came to dinner after Mass on Sunday, in a decent blue suit his brother had bought for him, with Moira's knowledge and approval. Sara Meighan was there, too, looking capable and good, and a little past her first youth. 

Moira had taken care to tell her brother-in-law about Sara Meighan's comfortable income, and when she saw how charming Kevin was to Sara, she felt encouraged. All during dinner he talked about America, about Australia. He'd look from one face to another as he talked, as if to say, "Please like this story. If you don't like it, I'll feel bad." 

Moira found herself thinking of the days when Mick Kelleher was courting her, though Kevin Duffy and Mick were not alike. Those days of her youth, those early days of love, had had great richness. Somehow, Kevin Duffy, whom she'd feared and fought against for years, brought that rich quality into her dining room.

Sara colored under his glance, brightened and softened under it. For that moment when. Kevin's eyes rested on her, she was almost a pretty woman. The boys forgot to squirm and giggle. They goggled at this uncle of theirs as they goggled at the conjurer at the Christmas bazaar. Owen beamed and chuckled. In his delight at having his brother under his roof, he opened a bottle of special port and pressed it upon Moira and Sara and Kevin. 

"She's taking to him, and he to her." Moira thought. "It'll be a match. He'll cause no more trouble, and Eileen will marry Richard Riordan, who's a gentle- man, or the next thing to it, without a breath of scandal from this rogue to spoil her chances." She looked at Eileen then, happy in her plans for her darling child. 

Eileen's eyes were shining. They were like pools of blue water with sunshine on them. No, like sunshine somehow sparkling up through pools of blue water. Her milky skin was flushed with pink at the cheeks; her lips were parted a little over her white teeth. The sight of her always delighted Moira’s eyes, but today she was lovelier than ever. 

After dinner Kevin sang, while Eileen played his accompaniments on the piano which was Moira's pride. Every song seemed somehow a flower laid with respectful ardor in Sara Meighan's lap. When Kevin asked to see her home, it was as if his life's happiness depended on her saying yes. 

For two weeks after that there wasn't a sign of Kevin at the house. But he dropped in to pass the time of day with Owen at the pub, and Owen came home in high excitement. 

"B'garra, Moira," he said, "I think that daft plan of yours is working. Kevin was in today. 'How goes the world?' I says. 'Fine,' says he. 'I'm in love at last.' 'Again?' says I. 'No,' says he, 'for the first time. I won't say I haven't been crazy after this one or that one, but they were foolish girls no man with any sense could stand the company of more than a day and a night. There was no solidity to it,' he said. 'Nothing lasting. It's what I've wanted all my life,' he said. 'Someone to keep me in order; make me toe the mark by her good common sense. It's marriage 'I. want,' he said. 'And when the time comes, I'll hope for your blessing and Moira's, because I've been a burden and a trouble to you. But I'm a man with a gift for making my way in the world",' he said. 'With a woman I can look, up to beside me, I'll be a credit to you yet.' " 

"It's a miracle, that's what it is," said Moira. 

It was a fortnight later that Moira found the note on Eileen's pincushion, written in the fine clear script that had won her prizes at school. 

Dear Mother: 

Kevin and I will be married when you read this. I'm afraid you'll be angry, but don't be. We knew right off we were made for each other. Kevin has a very good post. Will tell you more when I see you. 

Your loving daughter, Eileen 

For six months Moira swore that she would never look on her daughter's face again. She said it over and over; then she would burst into tears again. Owen was beside himself. He had never seen Moira like this. He knew no way to comfort her. 

Then, one day, Moira's loneliness for her child became so unbearably acute that she took a Donnybrook tram and went to see Eileen. Eileen's last unanswered letter had said: 

We are settled in a ducky little house in St. Mary's Road. Kevin is doing famously. Only I miss you and wish you could find it in your heart to come to see me. 

The child was probably heartsick of her bad bargain by now. She'd take her home. There'd be no hard words or recriminations. The child must have suffered enough. "Come home with your mother now, darling," she'd say. "All is forgiven and forgotten." . 

This was a fine house in a nice street, nicer than the Riordains ', even. Moira had a moment of wild fear that. Kevin had broken into the house in the owner's absence. She knew surely that the rent on it couldn't have been paid. 

A neat maid in a cap and apron answered the door. "I'll see is Mrs. Duffy in, ma'am," she said.

The parlor shone. There was a clean was a- clean, bright fire on the hearth. The flames twinkled back from the brass coal box and the lusterware on the shelves. 

Eileen came in. She was beautiful to her mother's starved eyes. She'd always been beautiful, but there was a difference now. She had a dignity, a serene look about her. 

"Mother!" she said and kissed Moira. "I'm glad you came. We'll have tea. I have so much to tell you." 

Her mother sat staring at this child of hers while Eileen talked, gayly, happily, with that calm contentment. 

"Kevin is selling motors," she said. "And such a success as he is at it! The sales manager says he's never seen his equal."

"Well," said her mother, "it's the first time that one ever stuck at anything." 

"Yes," Eileen said, "I know. But it’s like this with him, I think. He's found someone he loves; someone he wants to take care of and do things for. There's one person like that for everyone. It needn't be a man and a woman. With my father, it was Ireland. With Da, it was Kevin, his brother. With you, it was always me. It's a special kind of love. That one person--or thing, maybe-- owns your heart, so you'll do anything for that one of all others, and do it gladly. 

"Always before with Kevin it was what could he get out of this one or that one with his charming ways. But with me . . ." She smiled as if her mind were fixed on some profound inner happiness. "It's what can he do for me. If you never find that one person, you’re like a plant trying to put roots down and not finding the soil for it."

"You have it all very plain," her mother said, but it wasn't easy for her to be angry any more, because the sight of Eileen was so comforting to her after half a year of loneliness. "And who's your one person, if I may ask? Is it my fine Mr. Kevin, that's so transformed because of you?" . 

"No," Eileen said simply. "And it's better it should be that way. I love him. I love him dearly, but. I'm still- I'm still myself; not given over to him altogether. He can't wind me around his finger. No, I'm like you, I think, Mother. I've known it since . . . 

"You wouldn't know me now for the care I take of myself- eating milk and porridge, and walking, and minding my step on the stairs. That's because we have a baby coming in six months. And for me, everything's second to that. Even my dear. Even my Kevin."