A Mother’s Spirit - Anne Bennett

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Joe up and down. He liked what he saw. Joe was a handsome man, with expressive dark eyes. He stood straight and tall, and looked fully in command of himself, and only his tousled brown hair and his rumpled suit were evidence of his act of bravery. ‘None but my coachman, Tim Walsh, tried to stop the pony,’ Brian went on, ‘and now the poor man is lying comatose on the ground awaiting an ambulance. Everyone else kept out of the way.’

      ‘You can’t blame them, sir,’ Joe said. ‘I would say the pony was too panicked to stop in any way other than the one I tried, and even I wasn’t sure that it would work.’

      Gloria was looking at Joe with a sort of awed expression. ‘What did you do?’ she asked.

      ‘Leaped on the pony’s back, that’s what,’ Brian told his daughter. ‘And in doing so saved your life and risked his own.’

      ‘I … I don’t know what to say,’ Gloria said. ‘Thank you, I suppose, but that doesn’t seem very much really.’

      ‘It isn’t,’ Brian agreed, ‘but here is a better offer.’ He turned to Joe. ‘You have just come off the immigrant ship?’

      ‘Aye, sir.’

      ‘Have you a job?’

      ‘No, but I have a neighbour looking out for me.’

      ‘Well, I own a factory and I sure could use a brave young fellow like yourself. How d’you feel about that?’

      Joe couldn’t believe his luck. In payment for saving this man’s daughter, he was being offered employment. And though the man was still red-faced and breathless from his unaccustomed exertion, he looked to be honest and straightforward.

      ‘I feel grand about it, sir,’ Joe said.

      ‘Are you looking for that sort of work?’

      ‘I am looking for any kind of work that pays a wage, sir,’ Joe said. ‘But I have to tell you that I have never done work in any sort of factory before.’

      ‘Are you willing to learn?’

      ‘Certainly, sir.’

      ‘That’s all I wanted to hear,’ Brian said. ‘Now I have to find out what is going to happen to my coachman and sort out stabling for the pony, because I will leave him and the carriage here tonight. And I dare say you have to collect your belongings. Let’s say we meet back here in about half an hour and we will go home by taxi.’

      ‘Home, sir?’ Joe repeated.

      ‘Yes, home, Mr Joe Sullivan,’ Brian said, clapping Joe on the back. ‘Where my wife, Norah, will, at the very least, want to shake you by the hand.’

       TWO

      ‘We must go straight home, my dear,’ Brian said, as he helped his daughter into the taxi. ‘It would never do for your mother to get wind of your mishap before I have a chance to tell her. I am afraid we will have to forgo tea at Macy’s.’

      ‘I don’t mind that, Daddy,’ Gloria said plaintively. ‘I ache everywhere, to tell you the truth, there is a pounding pain in my head and everything is wavy before my eyes.’

      Brian felt guilty. He saw that Gloria’s face was as white as lint and that her eyes seemed to stand out in her head and were glazed slightly with pain. By giving in to Gloria’s demands that afternoon, he knew he had put her life in danger. ‘That’s not to be wondered at, my dear, after the way you were thrown about in that carriage,’ he said gently. ‘You are probably suffering from shock too. As soon as we get home, you are going to be tucked up in bed and I am sending for the doctor.’

      The fact that Gloria made no comment about this was not lost on her father. ‘Lean against me, my dear,’ he suggested, ‘and close your eyes. That was a dreadful and frightening thing to happen to you, but we will have you home and comfy in no time at all.’

      Joe was waiting for them, excited at the thought of riding in a taxi, for he had never done that in the whole of his life before, but as he climbed in he noticed the pallid face of the child, Gloria, as she cuddled up to her father and he said, ‘I hope you are not too uncomfortable, miss?’

      Gloria sighed as if the effort of speech was too much for her and it was her father who answered. ‘Battered and bruised and in shock, I think,’ he said. ‘We’ll have the doctor look at her when we are home.’

      ‘Have you heard how the coachman is, sir?’

      ‘No,’ Brian said, ‘only that the poor fellow was unconscious and taken to the hospital, but my factory manager, Bert Clifford, is going to see how he is as soon as he can, and he will send me word. I hope that he will be all right. Tim is a fine man and a good worker, and has been with me for years.’

      Joe, though, doubted that the man could have escaped without serious injury because he had caught the full power of the frantic rearing pony’s hoofs.

      But it wouldn’t help to say that. Anyway, he was soon distracted by his first journey in a taxi through the traffic-filled streets of New York, and he turned his head this way and that, taking in all the sights of the city. He was awed by the sheer size of some of the buildings, so high they did indeed appear to scrape the sky.

      Brian watched his amazement for some time before he asked with a smile, ‘Glad you are here, Joe Sullivan?’

      ‘Oh, yes, sir,’ Joe said. ‘It has long been a dream of mine to come.’

      ‘It wasn’t my choice originally,’ Brian said. ‘It was my father’s. I was twelve years old when we first arrived in America. We came here after the death of my mother.’

      ‘And how did you like America, sir?’

      ‘I liked it well enough when I came to terms with the fact that I would never see my mother again,’ Brian told him. ‘Though America then, or New York at least, was a different place altogether. There were not that many fine buildings, but a great many ruffians, and the city was ruled by the gangs roaming the streets. My father, though he had a factory in the city, would not live there and so he bought a plot of land in an area to the north called Queens and had a house built that he called Stoneleigh. Then it was all countryside, but the city is creeping towards it now. You’ll see it for yourself in a minute.’

      ‘Yes, sir,’ Joe answered. ‘But I am a bit concerned about my sponsor, Patrick Lacey. He will be wondering if I do not call, for he knows I was arriving today.’

      ‘Don’t worry about that,’ Brian said. ‘When we get home, if you give me his address, I will dispatch my man to tell him you are dining with us tonight.’

      ‘Dining, sir?’

      ‘Yes,’ Brian said. ‘It’s the least I can do, and just a small measure of my gratitude to you.’

      ‘But won’t your wife mind my just turning up like this?’

      ‘My boy,’ Brian said confidently, ‘after she hears how you saved Gloria in the way that you did, there is nothing you can do that will annoy my wife, though she might not be as pleased to see me.’

      Before Joe was able to form any sort of reply, the taxi suddenly turned through ornate gates and down a gravel path. Even in the descending dusk, the magnificence of the Brannigan residence could be plainly seen. The only large house that Joe had any experience of at all was the one that his sister Nuala worked in. Even so, he knew that the Brannigan house was in a league of its own. It was built of honey-coloured brick and had more windows and chimneys than Joe had ever seen in his life. He trembled in apprehension at even entering such a place.

      The taxi drew to a stop before the house, the wheels crunching on the gravel, and Joe was alarmed to think that he was going to go up those marble steps and in at the front door as if he was someone of importance.

      Suddenly,

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