Heart of the Lonely Exile

by BJ Hoff

  Daniel was remotely aware of soft weeping, coming mostly from his mother, beside him, and wee Tom, on his lap. Even the mute Johanna wept, her grief for her sister issuing forth in strangled-sounding sobs that made Daniel’s own throat ache.

  He did not cry, at least not aloud. As he drew Little Tom closer to him, his heart wept in silence, his spirit grieved, but he shed no tears for Katie. Even when Mr. Dalton prayed with deep feeling and eloquent words, Daniel could not cry.

  It wasn’t that he was deliberately trying not to cry. Indeed, he did not understand the dryness of his eyes. Was he so unfeeling, then, that he could not shed a tear or two for his own Katie, his best friend in the world since childhood? Guilt-stricken, he had attempted to force the tears any number of times since her death, but to no avail.

  Had his heart grown hard from all its loss, battered to stone by wave after relentless wave of death? How could he not cry for Katie? Katie, with the green eyes that glittered like emeralds in the mist at the sight of a spring morning’s rainbow. Katie, who had bandaged his thumb the time his whittling knife had slipped, then kissed it to make it heal properly. Katie, who had called him her hero-lad, ever trusting him to turn bad to good and clouds to sunlight. Katie, his own Katie, lying cold and stiff and lifeless in the small white coffin.

  He had failed her. In the end, he had been able to do nothing to help her, nothing at all. He had not even been with her when she drew her last breath. And now she was gone from him, gone forever, and he felt as if she had taken a part of himself with her. Something inside him had withered and turned brittle, crumbling to dust and destroying all his feelings, his hopes…and his tears.

  Evan Whittaker took one look at Daniel’s face as the funeral service neared its end and knew a mighty conflict was raging inside that young heart.

  His own heart ached for the boy, and for Nora and the other two children. The loss and the grief represented in this room would not be quickly assuaged. They had endured too much—and lost too much—for life to be easy ever again.

  Yet they survived. And while their survival alone attested to God’s power and His mercy, He had accomplished much, much more for them all than mere survival. He had been gracious beyond anything they could have hoped for, providing them shelter and sustenance and the support of friends such as the Farmingtons, Michael Burke, Pastor Dalton. These friends were God’s own messengers sent to ease their arrival in this new land.

  Evan’s gaze went to Nora, seated directly in front of him. Her diminutive form looked woeful and lost between her tall son Daniel on the one side and the brawny Michael Burke on the other. She wore a black crepe armband over the sleeve of a black dress—one of Sara Farmington’s dresses. As Evan watched, she stroked the thin crepe over and over in a distracted, nervous gesture of despair. Sergeant Burke laid a protective hand on her arm, frowning down at her as if he feared she might faint at any moment.

  Evan shared Burke’s concern for Nora. Yet he had also come to realize that she was not the timid, helpless unfortunate he once thought her to be. More and more he saw her taking charge of her surroundings. Both Sara Farmington and Ginger, the housekeeper, frequently praised Nora’s quiet efficiency as she kept things running smoothly and in good order about the house. The Farmingtons also claimed her to be an excellent helper in the mission work at the church.

  Evan sensed a kind of drive in Nora these days, a resolve to be adequate for whatever task was at hand. No question about it, she was a far stronger and more confident woman than he would have believed her to be—and obviously growing stronger all the time.

  Glancing at Michael Burke, he felt a moment’s resentment that the broad-shouldered police sergeant seemed totally oblivious to Nora’s new strength. Instead, he seemed intent on handling her as if she were some sort of delicate figurine, a china miniature that would shatter to pieces if he did not carry her around on a silk pillow.

  For an instant Evan wondered nastily if the Irish policeman thought to convince Nora to marry him by convincing her of her need for him. Just as quickly, he pushed the thought away. He was being unfair. Burke was a good man—a sterling fellow, to be sure—and obviously he only meant to do right by Nora.

  The man doted on her, that much was clear. As for Nora’s attitude toward the sergeant, Evan found it somewhat puzzling. At one moment she would gaze at Burke with what appeared to be genuine affection; the next instant, she would seem almost evasive in his presence.

  Suppressing a sigh, Evan dragged his eyes away from the back of Nora’s bowed head. He simply must not think about her in such an…intimate way, must not speculate on her relationship with Michael Burke. He and Nora were friends, good friends, and he would not have that spoiled by a hopeless, foolish longing that she would surely find outrageous. If she were ever to suspect how deeply he cared for her, her trust would be rent, their friendship ruined forever.

  Evan could not bring himself to even imagine such an existence. He had resigned himself long ago to a life without Nora’s love. But he could not envision a life without her presence.

  Katie was buried in a small Catholic graveyard. A soft summer rain began to fall as they came away from the graveside service. Nora counted it as welcome; a cloudless sky was not a good omen for a funeral.

  Immediately she chastised herself for paying heed to superstition. She was a Christian, not a pagan, and shouldn’t be mindful of the old tales.

  But that was easier said than done, for wasn’t she Irish? Michael claimed that the Irish, in any land, were never quite free of their ancient dark fears and echoes of doom. Glancing at him as he helped her into the Farmingtons’ carriage, Nora thought somewhat testily that Michael was one Irishman who seemed resolved to rid himself of every trace of the ancient ways.

  Her thoughts roamed without direction as the carriage bumped over the dirt road leading back to town. He had become quite the American, Michael had. It was this very thing that at times seemed to be the main source of contention between him and his son.

  Odd, how Tierney, who had been born and raised in America, wanted nothing more than to live out his Irish heritage to the fullest, while Michael, an Irishman through and through, seemed indifferent toward his roots. Nora sometimes thought that if the two of them, father and son, could bend just a bit toward each other, their relationship would be greatly improved. But Michael was a stubborn man, and Tierney equally hardheaded. There was no telling if they would ever accept each other’s differences.

  “Nora? Are you all right, lass?” Seated close beside her in the carriage, Michael took her hand and looked at her with a grave expression.

  She nodded. “I’m weary, is all. I expect we are all worn to a frazzle. I don’t understand why Daniel John insisted on walking back from the graveyard, or why Evan thought he must accompany him. Sure, and they will both catch cold, especially Evan. He is not a bit strong yet.”

  “You fuss over that Britisher as if he were family,” Michael muttered.

  At Nora’s sharp look he colored. “I’m sorry,” he said grudgingly. “I know he’s been the good friend to you, but you’ve enough to worry about without fretting over him.”

  “Aye, he has been a good friend to me, Michael—to us all,” Nora answered, barely controlling her impatience. He did seem bent on resenting Evan Whittaker, and for the life of her, she could not understand why.

  “Where would we all be now, I’d like to know,” she said pointedly, “had that Britisher not risked his very life for us.”

  Michael remained silent, which only quickened Nora’s exasperation. If he were so intent on being more American than Irish, he should also give over the old Irish hatred of all things English!

  “Nora?”

  She gave him a hard look.

  “Perhaps you’d like me to stay with you this afternoon?”

  Hesitating, Nora realized that what she wanted most was to be alone. “No, thank you, Michael,” she said. “I have much to do. Things are in a shambles, with all the confusion of the pas
t few days.”

  “They won’t be expecting you to work about the house today,” he persisted. “Sure, and you must realize by now that you’re much more than just a servant to the Farmingtons. Sara counts you as a friend. She’ll understand if you need some time.”

  Nora gave a quick nod. “Aye, Sara has been more than kind to me. As has her father. But I need to be busy, Michael, don’t you see? It helps me. I cannot bring myself to sit and brood on Katie.” She paused and looked away. “’Tis not that I don’t mourn the lass, for, sure, I do,” she went on to explain. “Katie was as dear to me as blood-kin. But now her suffering is done, and she’s at home with our Lord.”

  Sadness gripped Nora, a sorrow multiplied by the memory of all the brutal deaths she’d seen in recent months. Life had to go on, certainly, but her life—and Daniel John’s—would never be the same again. Katie, dear Katie, was dead and buried, and Nora was left with an empty numbness, a bone-deep weariness. Mourning would come later, perhaps—or perhaps not. She could not help but wonder if she had spent all her grief, burying the last of her feelings with those she had loved so dearly in life.

  Michael had not seen it—the hollow-eyed Hunger, the fever, the despair, the hopelessness. Perhaps he would never understand. And she hadn’t the energy to explain it all to him. Instead, she simply said, “The time for grieving is past, Michael. I need to get back to work.”

  Michael looked at her intently. “It’s just that I want to help, Nora.”

  Immediately she regretted her sharpness with him. “Oh, I know you do, Michael!” she said quickly, squeezing his hand. “You’re a grand friend, and what I’d ever do without you, I don’t know!”

  Inexplicably, his expression darkened, and he turned away, leaving Nora to wonder what she had said to put him off.

  Neither Evan nor Daniel spoke most of the way back to the Farmingtons’. As they walked along in silence, Evan savored the warm droplets of rain that had begun to fall, lifting his hand to touch the moisture on his face. The day had been sultry and oppressively close; even this brief respite was welcome.

  Concerned for Daniel, who was obviously agonizing, Evan moved to break the silence between them. “D-Daniel—I know Katie was very… special to you. P-Perhaps it would help,” he suggested cautiously, “if we t-talked about…what’s happened?”

  The boy merely shook his head, making no reply as they walked on.

  Groping for just the right words, Evan stopped and put his hand to Daniel’s arm. When the boy turned and faced him, the misery in his eyes tore at Evan’s heart.

  “D-Daniel,” he ventured again, dropping his hand, “D-Daniel, there is something I would say to you.”

  The boy stood without moving, his pain-filled gaze polite but distant. At almost fourteen, he already topped Evan by two or three inches. Distressed by the depth of suffering that emanated from the youth, Evan hesitated, glancing around at their surroundings.

  There was a quiet along this lonely road, so near and yet so removed from the noise of the city. With the rain gently stirring the trees and the sounds of New York subdued to a murmur, Evan felt a comforting kind of peace enfold both him and the boy.

  “You have had m-much more than your share of sorrow, D-Daniel,” he said at last. “And I wonder if, right at this moment, it doesn’t seem as if there m-may never again be anything else in your life but sorrow.”

  Evan stopped, feeling a knot of despair clench at his own chest as he searched the boy’s wounded eyes. Yet he felt the need to reach beyond Daniel’s pain, his thin mask of composure. “I sense, too, son, that you are feeling somewhat…g-guilty…because there was n-nothing you could do to save your friend.”

  Daniel blinked and seemed to stiffen.

  Sensing he had struck a chord at last, Evan went on. “Daniel, you’ve had a t-terrible loss, and you m-must grieve. It’s all right to grieve, son,” he said softly. “There is no shame in grief. But in the m-midst of your grief, you m-must also accept the fact that there was nothing you c-could have done for Katie. Nothing,” Evan repeated.

  An old, raw agony rose in the boy’s eyes, and Evan winced at the pain staring out at him.

  “She always counted on me,” Daniel choked out. “She thought—she thought I could fix anything, make everything all right—”

  Again Evan took the boy’s arm. “Yes, I know. And with g-good reason, I’m sure. You were a wonderful friend to her, D-Daniel. Your m-mother has told me all about you and Katie.”

  The boy blinked, then turned his face away. “We would have married… someday,” he said quietly. “We had already promised each other.”

  Evan released his grip on the boy’s arm but continued to watch him, his mind reaching for wisdom, for some word that would help. He again felt the youth’s pain, heard the ache in his voice.

  “Daniel,” he said hoarsely, “you are very young. Too young, perhaps, to h-hope for heaven—and yet I sense that is exactly what you m-must do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Touching him lightly on the shoulder, Evan managed a faint smile. “Heaven seems…so far away when you’re young. Almost…a-a dream. But as young as you are, D-Daniel, you must hold the hope of heaven in your soul, to guard against d-despair and disillusionment.”

  Daniel’s frown deepened. “I don’t understand. I want to,” he added, “but I don’t.”

  Even glazed with sadness, the boy’s eyes were true and noble. For an instant, Evan caught a glimpse of the godly man Daniel Kavanagh would grow to be, and he thought it would be a fine thing indeed to watch him age and mature.

  “God has given you a-a pilgrim soul, D-Daniel,” he said softly, momentarily tightening his grip on the boy’s shoulder. “Today you feel yourself to be an exile, a stranger in this n-new land. Someday, p-perhaps, you will return to visit Ireland, and when you d-do, I fear you will be all the more aware of your state of exile. Even Ireland will n-no longer be home to you, n-not really.”

  God had given him the words he sought, and Evan went on with conviction. “Oh, Daniel, I p-pray that you—and I, as well—will grow to love this new land, this America! Yet I know in my heart that n-neither America nor your Ireland—nor m-my England—will ever really b-be home for us. We are p-pilgrims, you and I, Daniel. All of us are pilgrims, leaving our c-countries, crossing the ocean, journeying from one c-continent to another, as we m-make our way to our real home in heaven.

  “Now, can you see m-more clearly how it is with Katie, son? She is at home—in her real home. Your Katie’s exile is finally ended. She is at home with her Savior. No d-doubt she has already m-moved into her very own mansion—one of the mansions the Lord promised to prepare especially for her.

  “And one d-day, Daniel, you—and I—we will go home, too. Although it m-may not seem so, at your age, son, the time passes far more quickly than we can imagine. This life—why, it’s n-nothing but a fleeting whisper, compared to eternity. So hold your hope of heaven, son…and k-keep a pilgrim soul. Katie has gone home. But you and I—we, too, are on our way.”

  Silence hung between them for a moment. Then, with a tortured sob, Daniel took a step toward Evan. A tear spilled over from one eye, then another, until an entire trail of tears ran unheeded down the boy’s cheeks.

  With his one arm, Evan drew the boy against him, feeling the thin shoulders give a shudder, then begin to heave.

  “That’s it, son,” he soothed, his own eyes burning with unshed tears as he held the boy close. “You go right ahead and c-cry. Weep for your Katie now, but only for a time. One d-day soon the two of you will laugh and rejoice again together.”

  No longer able to contain his own tears, Evan wept with Daniel Kavanagh for all that had been lost…and all that would be gained, in God’s time.

  5

  A Plan and a Prayer

  Fell are thy tall trees that erst branched so boldly,

  Hushed thy sweet singers that once warbled free;

  O the bleak fortune that now clasps thee coldly,

&nb
sp; When, Isle of Ruin, shall it pass from thee?

  JOHN SWANWICK DRENNAN (1809–1893)

  Dublin

  October

  William Smith O’Brien’s arrival at Nelson Hall was the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal month for Morgan Fitzgerald. He welcomed his old friend into his grandfather’s spacious library with an enthusiasm he felt for few others.

  As always, the handsome, elegantly attired O’Brien looked as if he might have stepped straight off the pages of Burke’s Landed Gentry. In his mid-forties, the leader of the Young Ireland movement was still lithe and incredibly youthful in appearance.

  Smith O’Brien was a Protestant landlord who had sat in Parliament for more than fifteen years, pleading Ireland’s cause. Second son of the wealthy Sir Edward O’Brien, he claimed descent from the high kings—in particular, Brian Boru, supreme Monarch of Ireland in the early eleventh century. Educated in England at Harrow and Trinity, O’Brien was a gentleman, an aristocrat, and a patriot.

  Although many of O’Brien’s critics thought him cold and arrogant, Morgan Fitzgerald knew better. Oh, the man was somewhat vain, he supposed, and his mannerisms might be a bit stiff-necked at times. But to Morgan’s way of thinking, these were minor flaws in a man so fiercely devoted to his family, his friends, and his country. While it could be argued that his personality inspired more respect than affection, his friendship for Morgan, from the beginning, had been warm, undemanding, and constant.

  One thing could be said for the Young Ireland leader: he had the courage to stand for his convictions. Only last year, his refusal to serve on a committee to which he’d been appointed had earned him a month’s imprisonment in a cellar beneath the clock tower of Westminster—and the dubious distinction of being the first MP to be imprisoned by the House of Commons in over two hundred years. The man’s loyalty was beyond reproach; he was unswervingly committed to Ireland’s good and the country’s ultimate freedom from British rule.