Part 22

"Indeed and I'd like that fine, Mr. Riley; but they don't be invitin' women--old women--to any rallies."

"Tis me is giving the rally, and I'll invite whom I please--I mean, if you're not afraid of the rioting when they don't like, maybe, what I'm going to say to them."

"Me afraid? Of what? Sure and they could be liftin' the roof itself from the town hall and a lone woman like myself would be safe among them. But why should you be wanting me there?"

"Why? I'll tell you, Nanna, and you must take it for the true reason until I can give you a better. And who knows it isn't the true reason? I'm that vain, Nanna, that I want some one soul there that isn't against me--some one that, before ever I begin, I know will hear me out. If you're there I know whose heart will be warm to me while I'm speaking. For 'tis terrible discouraging to see nothing but cold faces staring up from the benches and your heart bursting to tell them what's in it."

"Sure and it must be, avic. The cold heart--'tis an awful thing. A bony black cat itself is more company in the house than one of ourselves when the heart is ice. But whisper"--she leaned doubtfully toward him--"d'y' think there'd be hope of you turnin' Dimicrat?"

"I'm afraid I'm fixed where I am. I'm not easily turned, Nanna."

"Oh, yeh! Well, well--in one minute, Timmie avic, I'll be along with you."

And she dusted the hearth and gathered up her cups and saucers, which, as she washed, Tim dried. And presently he was guiding her halting steps down the hill.

At eight o'clock that night Tim was facing his audience, and a fine, large audience it was--not a hand's width in a single bench vacant; from the front row, where sat Buck Malone, almost smiling, to the back wall, where De Soto with some Indians and mailed companions was discovering the Mississippi--from stage to entrance, not a vacant seat. What hopes for a man in a fighting audience like that if he could but win them to him!

Tim was alone on the stage.

"Gentlemen," he began, "the Republican party in New Ireland seems to be very busy to-night. One-half of it has to attend a conference of bank cashiers over in Rocktown; and Rocktown, it appears, is four miles in a buggy over a rough road. That rough road and the buggy are, of course, an incontrovertible argument, gentlemen. And the other half has a rich prospective customer for a couple of town lots--also over in Rocktown. A busy little place that Rocktown must be! I don't wonder you're smiling. I smiled myself when they told me.

"But if they are not here, gentlemen, to accredit me, I am here to speak for myself. And, as you see, there is the table, the chair, the ice-water pitcher, the empty glass, all as"--he smiled down at the boss in the front row--"as Mr. Malone said it would be. 'Twas this very afternoon Mr. Malone spoke of it; and, myself happening to hear him, I would not for a lord lieutenant's income disappoint him. 'Twas my good old mother--God rest her soul!--who used to say--and many's the time she said it: 'Timmie dear, don't never disappoint people if you can help it.' And I never do--especially when it don't cost me anything; for water is the only thing I had to bring into the hall to-night--and water, gentlemen, is cheap."

"Yes, an' talk's cheap, too!"

Tim bowed to the voice and smiled with the laugh that followed.

"God knows it is cheap. If it wasn't 'tisn't the likes o' me could afford to be handing it out to you to-night, and no charge for admission at the door."

"Say, Buck, his ten minutes'll be used up before ever he gets started!" came a voice from midway of the hall.

"True for you, boy. And so I'll be introducing myself. My history is short. Riley is my name, Timothy Joseph Riley--baptized by Father Kiley, in the parish of Ballymallow--and I'm a Republican."

"And there's what we'd like to have you tell us, Misther Riley--how came you to be a Republican?"

"Yes, you blarneyin' turncoat--how came ye?"

A man in the front row stood up to say that last, a rugged-looking man, who looked as if he would like mighty well to jump up on the stage and haul Tim down off it. Toward him Tim stepped, leaning over the edge of the stage so that the belligerent one would not miss a syllable.

"I'll tell how I came to be a Republican. When I landed in this country and before I was fairly out of Castle Garden some thief of a pickpocket or worse stole the few little dollars I had to keep me until I could get a job. I was a seventeen-year-old boy, and that shy I couldn't beg. For two days not a morsel of food went into my mouth. And there I was, jumping sideways with the hunger, when a man comes along and saw me and brought me into a grand restaurant, 'And how'll I ever pay you?' I asks when I'd eaten my fill. He was a butcherman, with a white smock on him. And he laughs and says: 'You can't now; but by and by, when you get a vote, be sure and vote the Republican ticket.' And I says: 'Why the Republican ticket?' And he says: 'Oh, just by way o' variety--just to show that you people don't all go one way.'

"And"--Tim straightened up--"I took his hand, and 'Sir, I will!' I said. He was joking, maybe; but I wasn't. And I did vote the Republican ticket; and I'm still voting the Republican ticket. And I'm saying to you all to-night--the one Republican among five hundred of ye--that I'm not apologizing to any man in this hall or any other hall for it. And I'm saying to you"--in the face of the inquiring man in the front row, in the face of Buck Malone, in the face of the whole hall, Tim clinched his fist--"I'm saying that the man of Irish blood who ever forgets the promise that he's made to the one that befriended him--I say to ye all, and I don't care whether ye like it or not--his blood's been crossed somewhere; he's no Irish in him! No--nor fit to be called a man at all!"

Tim stepped back to pour out a glass of water; a form rose up midway of the hall, and a voice roared out:

"Say, you Riley man, your politics are the divil's own, but you're Irish all right. Go on!"

Tim held the glass toward the speaker.

"And, ma bouchal, 'tis you has the Irish heart in you, too. Here's to you! You stubborn, unconverted, hereditary Democrat, here's to you!" He drained the glass.

"Go on! Tell us more!"

"Yes; go on--talk up!"