The Secret Journey (31 page)

He took the key, which Miss Mangan had managed to free from the little metal ring, not without difficulty, for her short fat fingers were clumsy. He put it in his pocket. ‘Well! that's that,' he said, and for the first time in the whole of the hour she had been with him, Father Heeney sat bolt upright in the chair. He clasped his hands round one upraised knee, and looking across at his stout visitor asked, ‘Do you hear much from Gelton now?'

Miss Mangan too sat up. ‘D'you mean from my sister?'

‘Yes,' replied Father Heeney.

‘No! We never write. It's a sort of understood thing between us. Silence is mutual.'

‘But you must have heard something, Brigid, and something very important indeed,' went on the priest, now at last getting into his stride, ‘—er, I mean, to make you go off there at a moment's notice, so to speak. Has something happened?'

‘I don't know! I can't tell you, Father,' replied Miss Mangan. ‘I have an old friend there, a Miss Pettigrew. I believe her father and yours were great friends. But maybe you can't remember her. She has a little shop in Gelton. If I hear any news about my sister, or anybody at all on that side of the water, I hear it from her.'

‘Fancy!' said the priest. ‘You seem a funny pair of sisters.' He smiled at Miss Mangan.

‘To be quite honest, Father, all is not well there! I mean, my father's condition is bad, from what I hear. Indeed, I had a letter only yesterday from my old friend, and she tells me Father's condition is very low. Very low. And I'm afraid. You see, all along I have hoped to bring Father back home. He is very old, of course, and paralysed too. But I cannot bear to think of his dying in that horrid hole. You see, Mother is buried here. We have our own family grave in Cork, and I know it would be a satisfaction to him—and to Mother—that he should lie beside her. Sometimes I have regretted my rash action. You see, I let my sister take him away to Gelton, and really, Father, the place she lives in is abominable. Father was dead against her going off like that. And now I sometimes feel she is so bitter. Indeed, I feel her bitterness has taken a nasty turn. I sometimes wonder if she didn't drag Father to Gelton to make him realize to what extent she had sunk. It's disgraceful. She is the only one of our family to have gone to such lengths. She has a large family—and my God! what a family. M'm, my mother, I remember it so well—she said, “Nothing will ever come of your sister marrying that harum-scarum from Dublin.” How right she was! How right she was!' Brigid Mangan paused to recover her breath.

‘Don't you think I am doing right, Father? You see, I feel in myself this great desire to have him home again. He must lay his head to rest soon, and what better than in his own land, Father? I think it's perfectly disgraceful the way our people leave home. Gelton is full of the miserable people. I have two brothers in America, as you know. They used to write to me once a month. Now they never write at all. America has gone to their heads. They wanted me to go out. Thank God, I had more sense. I often wonder if there isn't something wrong with our lovely land that so many people fly away from it. Ah well! They'll go and still go, I suppose. But I am quite happy and contented here, Father. Everything is so peaceful, so clean, so beautiful. The people, God bless them, they are content. But if we didn't have our beautiful religion, there'd be hardly a soul left in the land.'

‘Yes,' replied the priest, who wasn't at all interested in the stout lady's philosophizings, ‘but tell me, do you think it's safe? I mean, the old man is so ill, helpless, and a great age.'

Miss Mangan's face expanded in a hard smile.

‘Eighty-three, Father, but that's no great age in our family. My grandfather lived to a hundred and two.'

‘But it's taking risks, Brigid, and you know it. Do be cautious. Think over the matter.'

‘I have. I've been thinking over the matter for some time, Father. I'm unsettled. I can't give my mind to anything for thoughts of him. I feel so terribly sorry for him. Alone in that house with such a crew. No! I believe I am doing the right thing, Father Heeney. Besides, my father might live for years——'

‘Don't tempt Providence,' said the priest, wagging a long thin finger at her.

‘I know! I know! But it worries me. It's on my conscience. I ought never to have allowed my sister to take him away, and I have wondered many a time why she never gives me news of him.'

‘But you say you never write yourself. Brigid, can you expect anything else?'

‘Well, that's Fanny's fault. My silence follows hers as a matter of course. But I have written now and again; and when I was last there it was pitiable.' Here Brigid Mangan's voice broke, and she went on falteringly:

‘He didn't know me. Think of that. Not even when I knelt down in front of him and spoke. He only looked at me—oh, it was terrible—he looked at me in such a peculiar way as though he were accusing me of something. But I was so distressed at the time, maybe I only imagined it—though I always remember his eyes. Poor Dad! Poor Father! so lonely! so lonely.' And she began to cry.

Father Heeney got up from his chair and stood over her—one long thin hand resting on her broad shoulder. ‘Come now, Brigid. You mustn't upset yourself. I know it's sad about Mr. Mangan and how you feel for him. I understand. But calm yourself. You mustn't let yourself go like this. Think of the journey. Think of the joy of seeing him again—alive—even though he is dumb and helpless—and think, too, if with God's help you get him on that boat, think of how he will look when he sets eyes on these shores again. Who knows,' he concluded, as he patted her affectionately on the shoulder, ‘who knows but your father might speak—might recognize you. God in His mercy, let us hope so.'

‘Do you think so, Father? Do you think so?' and Brigid Mangan caught at the sleeve of his coat.

‘Anything may happen, Brigid. Anything. It's God's will. Now get up and go home. You must lie down for a while. The excitement of the journey to Gelton has upset you. Shall I come in to see you before you go, or will you drop in here as you pass by? I suppose you'll take the tram to the station?'

‘I suppose so,' replied Miss Mangan, rising at last from the chair. She smoothed her coat, buttoned her gloves, and then for the first time became aware, as she put her hands to her head, of the extraordinary position of her brown toque. She lifted it half off her head, readjusted it and asked, ‘Is my hat straight, Father? Was that why you were laughing when I came in?' and she began laughing herself.

‘Perhaps it was the old hat,' replied the priest.

They shook hands.

‘Good-bye now! I'll see you soon again,' he said, and he watched her stout figure sail down the gravel path and so into the street.

‘What a nuisance!' he said under his breath. ‘What an infernal nuisance!'

Miss Brigid Mangan hurried home. She was quite satisfied now, and all her thoughts were of the journey to Gelton.

Brigid Mangan lived in a big old house in the Mall. She had lived there some years now, ever since her mother's death. With the exception of a tortoise-shell cat, whose devotion to the buxom mistress was constant and unswerving, she lived entirely alone, and the peaceful rhythm of her life was only broken by the arrival of some priest missioner or nun who was visiting the city. She was the only unmarried daughter of her family. Her two brothers were now married in America, and her sister Fanny in England. Miss Mangan, rather than marry a man, married an idea. She wedded her life to a high purpose—which purpose, in her own words, ‘was seeing to the welfare of God's ambassadors, and of His house.' If passion had ever entered into her life, none of her family had ever heard about it—indeed, at the age of twenty-and-three it seemed an established fact that Miss Brigid Mangan had no intention of stepping over the brink into the maelstrom of married life—and all married life to this lady of the strictest propriety was a sort of dizzy whirlpool. At least, looking back upon the years, she could congratulate herself, especially after what she had seen. There was her sister Fanny. But hers was but one example. There were thousands of others like her—but at least her sister's experience was near enough to her to make her realize, and realizing, make her think over and over again in that well-ordered mind of hers, ‘How fortunate I am. How fortunate I am.'

Yes, she was very happy. Not for her the noise and bustle of the world, whose feet already stood on the threshold of that other world—that dream-world she had built around her, that nothing save the urgencies of daily life ever touched. She looked after the altar at St. Andrew's, she washed the holy linens, she put up the visiting priests, she had even looked after an august bishop, and would have felt competent enough to look after the Pope himself, had he essayed to honour the simple, homely chapel of St. Andrew's with his presence. In the evenings, when she was not dressing or stripping any of the three altars which St. Andrew's prided itself on possessing, she could be found in her sitting-room, by a cosy fire, the tortoise-shell cat at her feet, busy with her work. Sewing-basket at her side, silks and linens on her knees, and a needle in her hand, Miss Mangan sewed and spun and weaved the cloths and the surplices, for the honour of God and for His church. The whole atmosphere of the house breathed the sanctity of the purpose to which she had now willed her life. Day followed day, year followed year, unchanging, the same calm flow of life, unruffled, untroubled, for her world was now free from the mesh of that other world, which seemed so far off—the world in which her sister dwelt, in which her brothers and her father lived. The house in the Mall sheltered her, held her fast. Now she was off again, making one more adventure into the world, the world of Gelton to be exact. ‘And this will be my last,' thought Brigid Mangan as she turned the key in the lock and entered the house. ‘How glad I am to be back! I have only to be away a few hours and I get such a feeling of contentment when I come back again.'

In the silence of the big old house she could sit down and think about her plans. Seated in her plush-covered rocking-chair, she rocked herself gently to and fro, and eventually the cat, which jumped on to her knee and proceeded to make itself comfortable there. She closed her eyes. There seemed so much to think about, so much to do. A journey to Gelton was an event at any time, for to Brigid Mangan it was like going into the darkened jungle, becoming lost in the festering life there, but this journey, her last, she hoped—she had already vowed it to be her last—was even more adventurous, more full of possibilities than ever, for after all she was going into that industrialized world that seemed so strange to her after the calm life of Cork, she was going there to drag her father out of the jungle. ‘A jungle it is, and will always be. Thank God that I had enough sense not to follow in Fanny's wake. I have half a mind to write to Fanny and tell her my intentions—at the same time—no, perhaps I had better not, she certainly won't thank me for writing. Anyhow, we haven't written each other for over a year. Why should I bother now?'

After a while she gave an extra hard push with her foot, and the rocker moved backwards and forwards at such an angle that the cat made a sudden leap for terra-firma, leaving the stout lady to continue that flight upon the wave of so many conflicting thoughts. ‘No, I don't see why I should. The only thing is that she will have to be made to see reason. She must, after all, see that it is best for Father. Who knows, he may live for years.' She could not dare Providence by venturing to hope that by some miracle, perhaps, the sights and sounds of his native land might give him back his speech. It seemed too much to hope. Still, the important thing was to get him home. One never knew what might happen after that. ‘Yes, to get Dad home again. That is the main thing, the main thing.' She derived some assurance from this thought, her anticipations rose, her eagerness to be off increased. But she hadn't completed her plans. ‘I must make up my mind one way or the other,' she was telling herself. ‘One way or the other; if I write to Fanny I must go and put up there. If I don't, then I must put up with Miss Pettigrew. Miss Pettigrew,' she repeated. ‘What a marvellous old woman that is,' and Miss Mangan got out of the rocking-chair, went to her black bag that lay on the sideboard, and took out a thickish envelope, addressed to herself, only one of many similar letters which she kept in her dressing-table drawer upstairs. This, when it had received its second and final reading, would go to join its brethren upstairs, amongst the bows and feathers, the buckles and button-cards, and not least the moth-balls.

This long letter, for Miss Mangan had already taken it out of the envelope and opened it out, had arrived the day before yesterday. It still seemed something much more than coincidence that this letter should reach her at the same time as that wonderful news from Mr. O'Toole. ‘I was right all along,' thought Brigid Mangan, ‘and now I think I can see why Fanny has suffered him all these years. She is more clever than I thought!' She began to read. Suddenly she exclaimed, ‘It's funny—the handwriting is different, and there's a candy smell about the notepaper. I wonder now? I'll just compare,' and putting the letter down on the table, she went off upstairs with the envelope. ‘Yes, it is different. Somebody must have written this letter for her,' she said to herself. The large, childlike handwriting of Miss Pettigrew had given place to a caligraphy almost revolutionary in contrast. ‘I wonder who wrote it?' she kept saying to herself, and the question remained. ‘I wonder?' she said again. Then she began to read. Judging by the changing expressions that came and went across her round red face, it seemed apparent that she had only skimmed the document at the first reading, for Miss Pettigrew had many new things to talk about, and it was her extreme volubility that accounted for the uncommon length of this letter, the longest letter she had ever written.