Song of the Silent Harp

by BJ Hoff

  Michael sighed and tapped his fingers impatiently on the newspapers, then rose and went to stand at the window, looking up and down the street for some sign of Tierney. He, too, longed to do more in the way of donations, but he had already dipped deep into their small savings. Tierney, however, exhibiting his characteristic cleverness and knack for money raising, had organized a host of lads from school into teams, and among them they’d pestered a number of shopkeepers and tradesmen into donating generous amounts for the school’s “Friends in Ireland” fund.

  These days Michael found himself thinking more and more of his own “friends in Ireland.” Morgan and Nora were frequently on his mind. Back in November, when news reports of the famine had begun to pour across the sea, he had written an anxious letter to Morgan in care of his brother, Thomas. Each day that passed he watched with growing impatience for a reply.

  Strange—after so many years and an ocean between them, his mind could still see the two of them clearly. Nora was now a woman grown, a wife and mother; yet it was difficult to imagine her as anything but a small, sober-faced lass with enormous sad eyes and the tiniest waist in Killala. He hoped she’d been happy with the husband she’d chosen; Nora deserved happiness, she did, for she’d had little enough of it as a girl.

  As for Morgan Fitzgerald, he supposed that rogue could take care of himself well enough. Michael smiled at the thought of his old friend, with his harp and his poems and his roaming ways—and, always, his fatalistic but fervent love for Ireland. He was a vagabond, Morgan was. Ever the dreamer, he had been smitten with the wanderlust as a lad and seemingly never recovered.

  The man was a puzzle of many pieces, one or two of which might never be found. Michael thought he had as much love for his homeland as any respectable Irishman, but with Morgan it was more than love of country. It was an obsession. He could still remember the great oaf’s words to him when Michael had first told Morgan of his dream to see America, trying to convince him they should go together.

  Backed up against a gnarled old tree, Morgan had stretched his long arms, locked his hands behind his head, and smiled that thoroughly impudent grin of his. “Ach, Michael, I could never do that, and you know it. You intend to go and never come back. I could never leave our Lady Ireland for good.”

  To Michael’s way of thinking, Ireland was more the fallen woman than the lady, and he said as much.

  Morgan had laughed, shaking his head. “Aye, she’s a miserable island at that, but she’s claimed me entirely, don’t you see? There never was a woman quite so bent on owning a man as our Eire. She’s a fierce and terrible mistress, I admit, and most likely she’ll be my destruction. But beloved as she is to me, I could no more give her up than rip out my own heart.”

  Did Morgan still cling to his beloved, even now? Michael wondered. He prayed not, for surely she would drag him to his death along beside her—

  “Well, Da—I am here, but where are you?”

  Startled, Michael jumped and whirled around to see Tierney standing just inside the door, grinning at him.

  “Wool-gathering, it seems. I didn’t even hear you come up the stairs.”

  Tierney tossed his gloves on a nearby chair, then hung his coat and cap on a peg by the door. A shock of dark auburn hair, wet from the snow, hung insolently over one eye. The boy’s other eye was still dark from a mouse he’d incurred in last week’s scrap with the Dolan boy.

  The thought of Tierney’s frequent fights brought a sour frown to Michael’s face. “That eye is a grand sight.”

  The boy came to the table, his grin still in place. “Now, don’t go starting on me, Da. What’s for supper?”

  “There’s a pot of brown beans, and Mrs. Gallagher sent up a pan of corn bread. And I’m telling you again to quit calling me ‘Da.’ We’re not living in Ireland—talk like the American you are.”

  “Irish-American,”Tierney corrected, going to the stove to check the beans. “And you still say, ‘aye,’ you know. Can we eat now, Da? I’m starved.”

  “As you always are,” Michael retorted, getting up from his chair. “Set the table and I’ll fix our plates.”

  Tierney whisked around the kitchen getting the dishes out, flipping them carelessly onto the table as if they were unbreakable—which, Michael reminded him again, they weren’t.

  “Have you heard, Da? Eleven ships are sailing from here to Ireland tomorrow with food!” Tierney’s voice was boyishly high with excitement, though more often than not these days it tended to crack with the gruffness of approaching manhood.

  Michael nodded as he dished up a plate of beans and handed it to the boy. “Aye, and four more leaving from Philadelphia the day after. It’s in the paper.”

  “Can we go to the harbor and watch them sail out? You’re off duty tomorrow, aren’t you?”

  “I am, but need I remind you that you will be in school?” Michael shot him a stern look as he sat down across from him.

  The boy shrugged and reached for the corn bread. “I won’t miss that much. Not for just one day. Come on, Da—say we’ll go.”

  “I will say a prayer if you’ll hush long enough to listen.” Michael glared at him, but the boy’s tilted grin made him give over.

  “Besides, I hate that school, and you know it,” Tierney continued after Michael gave their thanks. “I wish I could go to the Catholic school.”

  “Catholics go to Catholic school.”

  “I know, and that’s my point,” Tierney muttered.

  Michael put down his fork. “We are not going to have this conversation again, are we, Tierney?”

  The boy shrugged, a gesture Michael increasingly disliked. “I will never understand why a lad born as a Protestant and raised as a Protestant has this cracked notion about becoming a Catholic.”

  “It’s the Irish way,” Tierney said, reaching for the butter.

  “I said we weren’t going to have this conversation again, and I meant it, boyo. But let me remind you of one thing: Ireland has bred a few Protestants as well as Catholics—myself, for one, and your mother as well, God bless her.”

  “I know that. But it’s different here in New York. The other Irish kids are all Catholic; they think I’m some kind of freak. And I’m just about the only Irish kid in the whole school. All my friends on the block go to Catholic school.”

  “What difference does it make, Tierney?” Exasperated with the boy, Michael was far too tired and cross to be patient. “Christ is the same Savior to Protestant or Catholic—if they accept Him as such.”

  “Sure,” Tierney muttered, pulling his mouth down in contempt. “And is that why the Catholics say theirs is the only church, and the Protestants say a Catholic church is no church at all—and anyone who disagrees with either one of them is a heathen?”

  Michael drew a deep sigh and picked up his fork. “That’s not the way with all Catholics or Protestants, lad,” he said between bites. “The thing that matters is your heart, don’t you see? I’ve told you about my friend back in Ireland, Morgan Fitzgerald?”

  Tierney’s face lighted up, and he nodded eagerly. Again Michael sighed. Morgan had become a bit of a hero to the lad, and he supposed he could blame himself for that. Tierney was charmed by all the tales of Morgan’s exploits repeated over the years. Ah, well, perhaps he’d pay more attention to Morgan’s words than those of his stodgy old dad.

  “Well, Morgan was never entirely convinced that the Lord is all that interested in our church buildings and doctrines and religious symbols. He seemed to think the Almighty would be more concerned about relationships: our relationship with Him, and with one another as well. And do you know, Tierney, the longer I live, the more truth I find in my old friend’s words.”

  The boy merely grunted, then shoveled another heaping spoon of beans into his mouth. His eyes danced as he chewed. “Well,” he said, swallowing, “when I’m grown and go to Ireland, I may not take to either church. Perhaps I’ll look up old Morgan Fitzgerald and become a heathen, like him.”

  “
Morgan is not a heathen—and will you stop with that foolish talk about going to Ireland!” Michael exploded, banging his fork down on his plate. “Why would you even think of it?”

  He was unsettled by the way Tierney met his gaze without wavering. The boy’s blue eyes, so much like his mother’s, turned hard and cold. “You’ve always known that’s what I want.”

  “Aye,” Michael growled, “and never have I understood why! Ireland is a corpse. Can you not get that into your skull? She is dead and rotting above ground. There is nothing there for us, nothing for anyone except death. Why do you think I left it in the first place?”

  If only he could help the boy to see what he had seen—the poverty, the defeat, the squalor…the misery.

  “Morgan didn’t leave,” the boy said with a calm that fired Michael’s anger even more. “He chose to stay and work to make things better.”

  “Morgan is Morgan—and perhaps a bit of a fool! Thousands upon thousands are fighting to get out of Ireland, to come here to America! They want what you already have—what you seem to hold so cheaply. Doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd that all those hordes of people are so anxious to leave behind what you seem to think is so grand?”

  “I still want to go. I want to go because I’m Irish.” The maturity and strength in the boy’s voice chilled Michael.

  “You’re an American. And you should thank God every day for it!”

  Tierney stared at him and, not for the first time, Michael felt a stirring of apprehension at the hooded, unreadable expression in his son’s eyes.

  Furious with the boy—and even more with himself for once again losing his temper with his son—Michael shoved his chair back from the table. “Eat your supper. Your foolishness has cost me my appetite. I’ll be doing some reading.”

  He half-expected the boy to defy him; he did so often lately. But Tierney simply lowered his eyes and went on eating.

  In the bedroom, Michael sank down onto the rocking chair that had been Eileen’s. For a long time he sat there, unmoving, staring at the bed he had slept in alone for so many years. A longing for his wife welled up in him, bringing him close to tears. He had not missed her this much in a long, long time, and he suddenly felt a dreadful, cold loneliness. His wife was lost to him, and he was beginning to wonder if his son wouldn’t one day be lost to him as well. He did not understand the boy—in truth, he never had—but that did not diminish his love for the lad. He only wanted…what? For Tierney to be like him?

  Sure, and that was a joke. Tierney was like no one else—not himself, nor Eileen, nor anyone else that Michael could think of. Tierney was different. And it was a difference Michael did not understand, a difference that almost frightened him at times. What would the boy come to down the years?

  He had such dreams for his son—for both of them. He wasn’t going to stay a police sergeant forever. He had set his sights on Tammany Hall, had already made some contacts he believed would take him there. By the time Tierney was fully grown, he hoped to be in a position to help him become whatever he wanted to be. But the boy seemed to have no dream, no dream at all, except to be as…as Irish as possible. And what kind of a dream was that?

  Michael closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the cushion of the chair. Suddenly he wished he didn’t feel so old. So old and so tired and so fiercely alone.

  Da would never understand. He expected his son to share his dreams, not to have dreams of his own.

  Tierney pushed his plate away and propped one elbow on the table, resting his chin in his hand. Well, he did have his dreams, and they had nothing at all to do with his father’s.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t love his da. Of course, he loved him, and he didn’t relish making him sad. But he couldn’t help the way he was nor would he change. Sometimes he wished that a man like Morgan Fitzgerald had been his father. He would have understood, would have encouraged his love for Ireland. Da never would. He loved New York and simply could not understand anyone who did not.

  Well, he did not love New York—he hated it. He hated its filth and noise, its churning masses of people. He hated it most of all for the way the entire city hated the Irish.

  Tierney got up, walked to the window, and looked out upon the snow falling into the city night.

  They’d keep us beggars if they could. In their eyes we’re nothing but dumb animals, fit only for hauling the manure from their streets, killing their rats, ironing their clothes, putting out their fires—or policing their precious city.

  Well, he wanted no part of this ugly place—he would be no part of it, not ever. He belonged to Ireland. In a way he couldn’t begin to understand, in a way he could never have put into words, the country owned him.

  One day he would go. He would travel the length and breadth of it, absorb it, merge with it, become one with it. Ireland was his home as New York could never be. Ireland was the mother he longed for, the bosom friend he craved, the missing part of his heart.

  Somewhere in Ireland, Tierney Burke would find his destiny.

  9

  Evan’s Adventure

  Ill fares the land, to hastening iils a prey,

  Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.

  OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774)

  London

  Roger Gilpin was no gentleman.

  Evan Whittaker had been in the man’s employ only days before making that judgment, and now, eleven years of service later, his opinion had changed not a whit. Sir Roger could be incredibly crude in his manners and attitudes; he had a problem with spirits, and his behavior when he had been drinking ranged from disagreeable to intolerable. He seemed to delight in ignoring the authorities, insulting his contemporaries, and destroying his enemies—who numbered many. Even in the eyes of his few friends, he was often a bore. To his servants, he was thoughtless, bullying, and downright intimidating. Evan seemed to be the only soul in his employ to whom Sir Roger gave even a measure of grudging respect. More surprising yet, he seemed to have actually become somewhat dependent on his reserved, mild-mannered secretary.

  Evan supposed he was nearly indispensable to his difficult employer. He didn’t arrive at this conclusion by way of conceit; it was just the way things appeared to be, however inexplicable the reasons. It was a fact that he wasn’t in the least intimidated by Sir Roger. He stood steady in the face of Gilpin’s frequent storms of rage. Indeed, Evan’s mother had always called him “unflappable,” though his father had thought him hardheaded. At any rate, his phlegmatic disposition seemed immune to whatever cruelty Roger Gilpin had a mind to inflict.

  Evan Whittaker was, in fact, the only employee who had ever remained at Gilpin Manor for longer than a year. The vulgar, self-important Sir Roger certainly did not inspire loyalty on the part of those who worked for him. Evan was an oddity, and perhaps that was a part of his appeal.

  He had often been asked by his peers, and on occasion by one or more of Gilpin’s acquaintances, why he had stayed with the difficult Sir Roger all this time. He had been offered a number of other positions over the years, and admittedly, he had considered leaving more than once. After careful thought, however, he always managed to talk himself out of the idea. His wages were outstanding, his living quarters more than comfortable, and he had grown used to the irascible widower.

  Another possibility loomed in his mind, but he preferred not to dwell on it—it made him appear so dull, even to himself. Could he have become so complacent about his life and indifferent to the monotony of his days that he was unwilling to muster either the energy or the courage to make a change?

  Of course, there had been a time when he would have welcomed an adventure. A shy, quiet youngster, he’d grown up as the only son—and a somewhat frail one, at that—of an aging clergyman in a small, depressed village near Portsmouth.

  As a boy, Evan had been plagued by a dreadful stammer, mocked, and ostracized by his peers in the schoolyard. His father had encouraged him to be brave and to trust God, and the lad had managed to obey at least
half of his father’s injunction. He learned to trust God, but the bravery never seemed to follow.

  And so Evan retreated into his books. Only there did the young outcast find what he was looking for—adventure, romance, the opportunity, through his imagination, to become the swashbuckling hero of his dreams. There he did not stutter; there he was not ridiculed by pig-faced schoolboys; there, at last, he liked himself.

  Evan Whittaker found his courage, and he found his faith. But he never seemed to find both in the same place.

  Even now, in his mid-thirties, Evan had difficulty reconciling the two. He still read avidly, and his literary tastes remained very much the same. He did enjoy a good adventure novel about explorers or pirates, and he had no trouble at all imagining himself as the danger-defying hero, complete with a cape slung casually over his shoulder and a sword on his hip.

  And Evan still trusted God. His faith, marked by a simple life of devotion, sustained him in his encounters with his ill-tempered employer and supported him in the mundane execution of his duties.

  Have faith and be brave, his father had said. Well, Evan’s life incorporated both—his heart rooted in the reality of Christ, his imagination caught up in the vast possibilities of fantasy.

  Yet something was missing. When Evan allowed himself the luxury of thinking about it, he realized with a pang of regret that the two significant parts of his life had never merged. There was no bravery in his faith, no courageous acting out of his love for God. And there was no faith in the bravery of his imaginative heroism—no spiritual life beyond the sheer joy of adventuring with the fictional characters that populated his books.

  Something, indeed, was missing. Somehow, somewhere, the two should have come together.

  These days, however, he had little time for considering such philosophical imponderables; he had all he could do to keep up with his regular duties. This exasperating business in Ireland kept Sir Roger in a continual fit of temper, which in turn kept the household in a constant state of chaos. Evan invariably found himself with more letters to pen, more dinners to plan, and more frequent tantrums and bouts of rage to placate.