For the Liverpool Orphans

by Anne O'Hagan

FOR THE LIVERPOOL ORPHANS.

BY ANNE O HAGAN.

An episode of real life on an Atlantic liner—How the Violinist planned to rescue the Stowaway, and why her charity missed its mark.

Be patient with the gods; nay, when through the mists that veil Olympus thou seest them, floating haired and roseate garbed, at ease reclining or gliding to the rhythmic sound of harp and flute, be not sure that they have utterly forgotten thee, that thy groans are naught to them, or that their harpist plays for thy destruction. Sometimes it may chance that in the idle seeming dancing of the deities, the destinies of men are wisely wrought, and kindly shapen. Therefore be patient.—From the unpublished "Olympic Philosophy," by Professor Wendell Hemenway, of Boston, U. S. A.

THE Stowaway sat on the lower deck, among the cattlemen. His elbows were on his knees; his chin was buried in his hands. With eyes of dull dislike he watched the summer sea coquetting with the sun and wind. The breeze blew to him a gay melody from the upper deck, where the Violinist amused her little crowd of fellow passengers. The Stowaway disliked the music. It was too insistent. He was filled with gloom and dread. Yet in some compelling way, which he could not understand, the violin made all the world move to its time; springing spray from the waves, throbbing engines, the very heart in his bosom, and the thoughts that labored through his mind in hot, useless, endless rotation.

It had been only a day since he, a gaunt, wide eyed lad, with high cheek bones and lips that would not quite close above his awkward teeth, had been led, staggering from long cramp and blind from long darkness, up companionways and over decks to the awful presence of the captain.

Had the quiet voiced, self contained gentleman who commanded the Ethelberta, of the Howland Line, been less quiet and less self contained he would have frightened the Stowaway much less. But there was something very disturbing to the simple mind of Mike Lannehan in the man whose power was so great, whose will was so final, that he did not need even to raise his voice when he wished his purposes executed. A sort of panic seized the boy, though he answered questions with as much assurance as he could muster. The captain's questions were searching.

What was the Stowaway's name?

"Mike Lannehan, sorr," replied the Stowaway.

"Where are you from?"

"Oi come from Kilkoyne last Thursday, sorr."

"How did you get to Liverpool?"

"Oi hed a little money then, sorr; half a sovereign."

"What"—here the captain's eyes had the gleam of one who would have enjoyed interjecting a picturesque expletive—"what made you think of hiding away on this boat?"

"Sure Oi was loafin' about the docks, thryin' to see which wan of the boats would be most like to tak me safe over, an wan day, whin no wan was lookin', Oi found the little tin cover to the hole there. An whin Oi lift ut up Oi see there's a big place in under where Oi can hoide. So whin Oi hear ye sail of a Sunday airly, an that the passengers must be aboord Satiddy night, Oi come aboord mesilf thin. An Oi get in under the tin cover. Thin Oi say a few prayers to the Blessid Virgin to kape all of ye away until we're fair started. An' she did," wound up the Stowaway with a confident look out over the unending tract of water.

Unmoved by this evidence of faith, the captain had continued.

Had the Stowaway friends in America? No; he had had an uncle, but that relative had died many years previously, and his widow had not written to the kinsfolk at Kilkoyne.

"But she had the right of that," the Stowaway volunteered. "She'd the right to be proud, fur me uncle done well whilst he lived. He sint me grandfather this watch wanst, an whin me grandfather died me father had ut, an now that they're all gone, God rist them, ut's moine."

"Good," said the captain amiably and judicially, as he took the battered silver timepiece. "This will reimburse the company for part of the loss it sustains at your hands."

"Sure ye're not tekin ut for good an all?" cried the Stowaway anxiously. "Oi'll be bound there's not wan of yer company but has a better wan. An what cud they want of me grandfather's watch?"

"See here, sir," said the captain patiently. "You don't seem to realize that you're a thief, stealing transportation to America on a Rowland Line steamer. But you are. You say you have no money. I'll have you searched to see if that is so. If it is, I take the only valuable you possess to repay the company in part for what it loses on you. You don't seem to realize, sir, that it's not only your passage out but your passage back that the company will have to pay."

"But Oi'm not comin back," said the Stowaway, "an as soon as Oi'm airnin a bit Oi'll pay the company."

"Do you think the United States wants a lot of stowaway paupers dumped on her shores?" inquired the captain blandly. "Well, she doesn't. She will not have you. She'll not let you land unless you have thirty dollars. And if I should let you escape she would fine my company a hundred. It is not wholly a desire for your society," ended he, wasting his satire, "that will make me carry you back."

The Stowaway was dazed at this patient explanation. He blinked, and his vague mouth opened more widely and more vaguely; but before his slow lips could frame a question, the captain had ordered him taken away.

"Throw him in with the cattlemen," he said. "And don't forget to lock him up when we sight Boston light. We don't want any fines this voyage. And, Harris—there's no need to underfeed him. He's a harmless looking creature, damn him!"

With which mild infringement of the company's rule against profanity on the part of its officers, the captain's professional annoyance departed, and his natural cool kindliness resumed its sway. Still, the Stowaway was scarcely to be blamed for having no great opinion of his good nature when finally he found himself among the cattlemen, with only his remembrances and his observations to cheer his voyage.

His remembrances were rather pathetic ones—of a poor little Irish settlement lying in the shelter of a hill that sloped down to a green valley on one side and to the sea on the other; of cabins that looked out upon one another in a sort of melancholy isolation; of footpaths that wavered up to the brow of the steep and down again to the sea the sea—that called insistently; the sea that the gulls might fly across, and that the weekly steamer clove so straight and proud; the sea that allured and invited with a promise of golden fullness beyond it. But now the boy, hearing it rush along the side of the vessel, longed to hear instead the tinkle of a Sunday bell; and seeing only sapphire immensity before him, yearned for hills that hedged him in and for paths where his feet might walk securely.

Yet his heart was dully rebellions against the thought of return. Through the thick haze that hung over his mind, the idea of a blossoming land of promise had struck. He wanted America—that the sea had promised him, that the gulls perchance flew to, that the steamers sought, that had been bountiful and blessed to one of his people. And America wanted none of him!

While he debated this hard problem in his mind, watching meanwhile the upper deck, where well dressed, indolent people strolled and played their hours away, the cattlemen told him stories of his probable reception in America. Having no cattle to tend, they had plenty of leisure, and the salt air sharpened their imaginations. The inquisition offered few such tortures as they assured him would fall to his lot during the few days before the return of the steamer. Prison doors yawned for him; for him stock and pillory and ducking stool were to be revived. The relentless fury that pursued those who would have attempted not only to defraud a steamship company, but to impose upon the United States government as well, was vividly pictured.

Mike Lannehan, listening with fear in the wide set eyes and the mouth that fell vacuously open, grew confusedly to dread the land that had beckoned him. And somehow all the disappointment and the apprehension centered in a dislike for the bright creature who caressed a dark fiddle with her cheek and mysteriously ruled the spirits of the little crowd above with the movements of her bow. He dimly felt that these were the representatives of the other order of things, the order of torture and banishment. And she, with her shining hair and her insolent music, was the very embodiment of the hostility that crushed him unknowingly and uncaringly.

Meantime the Violinist, who had a fondness for picturesque philanthropy, revolved in her youthfully generous mind a little plan for his betterment. She had played her way so successfully into the captain's confidence that she knew of the Stowaway's plight almost from the time of his discovery. On the day before the Ethelberta was to land she whispered to the captain, who was picturesquely disporting himself among his passengers:

"Tell them about the Stowaway, and I'll get my fiddle and will play you anything you want."

The captain shrugged his shoulders, but told the story, as movingly as seemed to him consistent with official dignity. His hearers were only languidly interested in the matter when the trays appeared with afternoon tea. Then the Stowaway, sitting below and biting his fingers to the flesh because of the clammy fear of unknown horror that was upon him, was forgotten. One young lady, to be sure, was vivaciously anxious to see him, and proposed an expedition to go below and look at him. But her sandwich was too thickly buttered, and she quickly became absorbed in that grievance.

"Did you tell them?" asked the Violinist softly of the captain when she came back.

"Yes," replied the captain, smiling cynically at her eagerness.

"Did they care?

"Not a-tuppence," replied the captain bluntly.

"They shall care!" said the Violinist, snapping her lips and sliding her violin lovingly beneath her chin. "They shall care. Watch me make them!"

Then she began to play very softly. It was a glad, childlike little tune, and it combined with the tea and the sandwiches to make the passengers gently disposed toward all that part of the universe not sharing their joys. Mild pity even for misguided stowaways was included in the feeling of comfortable benevolence it inspired. It gave place to something pastorally sweet—like lanes with hawthorn blossoms starring the hedges, and stars powdering the sky, and young lovers walking stilly hand in hand. Then there came a little undertone of melancholy; something was lost; was it a star from the sky, a blossom from the hedge? Surely not enough to spoil the sweetness of the strain; no, for there was the strain again; yet, yes—for there the wail was; and now it was the insistent note; it dominated; turbulent notes crowded upon one another; then, gradually, harmony once more not the sweet melody of lilac blooms and walks at evenfall, but steady harmony, like that of the spheres revolving to the music of nature's law; triumphant harmony, with here an echo of the old childlike merriment, and there a note of youthful sweetness, and there again a sound of a sob—but all brought into one, swinging magnificently along. As they heard it, people's eyes grew moist; their breath came quickly; now they remembered what it had been to hope and to trust and to lose, and all their hearts were stirred to keep away the bitter knowledge from any one who had still a spring-like confidence left. Now they were pitiful toward young things and toward illusions.

"I said I'd never play it," remarked the Violinist casually when she paused, "until I made my first appearance in America. My master wrote it for me. You'll have to pay—oh, such a sum!—to hear me do that in New York next winter. And you've got to pay me now. Ladies and gentlemen! This is not for those Liverpool orphans. Every other ship that plies the Atlantic has done its duty by them. They've had concerts innumerable. But we have a waif of our own. This is for the Stowaway. What will you give for the Stowaway? For he shall not go back, shall he?"

Her cap was off her sunny head, and she was standing with it outstretched. Into it coin and bills fell fast. It was quite full when she sat down with it to count her spoil, laughing and crying together.

"Ninety dollars!" she called out gleefully. "And forty cents! And oh, listen, people, listen! Professor Hemenway's address is here, and Mike Lannehan is to call on him for work. Oh!"

"I thought my gardener might need an assistant," said the professor, blushing as at detected crime.

"We'll have him up for inspection to-morrow morning while we're waiting for the doctor to come aboard, Miss White," said the captain beamingly. "You shall give the money to him ourself. And now I propose three cheers for the Violinist!"

"They're having a good time up there, ain't they?" said one of the cattlemen to the Stowaway.

"Yis," he answered monosyllabically.

"But you should hear them cheer at a bull fight," pursued the cheerful cattleman. "I've told you about our bull fights, haven't I?"

"Yis," said Mike.

"You want to pray to your Virgin and to all your saints that they won't take that way of punishing yon for stealing this ride and trying to cheat the United States government. Being gored by a bull is awful. Now don't you think it would be?"

"Yis," said Mike. Before his mental vision brutal heads and cruel faces crowded, fierce animals bore down upon him. The yellow haired Violinist fiddled, pressing her round chin upon her instrument. Then there slipped into place a fleeting sight of the sea from Kilkoyne; of an ivied ruin in the solemn distance, and of lonely, kindly little huts upon the hills. Mechanically he felt for his talisman, the old silver watch. He could not remember that he did not have it. And he groaned in his misery and slipped away from the jocular cattlemen, to lie all night at the steamer's stern, and to press his hands confusedly upon his hot forehead.

They lay outside Boston harbor next morning. There was a thick fog, and they waited to let the sun burn it away. The shrill, shuddering fog horn of the steamer and that on the lighthouse called to each other thickly through the mist. The passengers were impatient.

"Let's have the Stowaway up now to while away the time," suggested the vivacious young lady.

"Not yet," said the Violinist, who was crossly decisive, being annoyed at the delay. "Wait until the sun clears this dreadful veil away and the poor boy can see to what he has come."

Down below the cattlemen were happily engaged in putting some finishing touches to their stories. The Stowaway was highly amusing when in a panic. His parted lips were dry, but his red hair hung damply to his forehead. He was a comical figure.

He tried to pierce the thick pall with his eyes. He tried to shut out of his ears the calling of the fog horns. He tried to remember what he had once dreamed of his landing, but only a vision of a bull fight, with the Violinist playing for his destruction, would come to his mind. Then, suddenly, with great clearness, he saw the hill at home with the wavering paths leading across it; he saw the gulls flying, and heard the one sweet note of the Sunday bell.

Hearing that, he closed his uncertain eyes and his mouth grew firm with sudden decision; and before the monotone of the church bell had died away, or his vague lips had parted uncertainly again, he had sprung over out into the gray mist and down into the gray water.

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

So in spite of herself, the proceeds of the Violinist's first concert went to the Liverpool orphans.