Who was he to come asking pardons when, years ago, he had done his best to make life miserable for the quaking schoolboy who was now the stern faced Governor – the Governor who never forgot or forgave, or left a debt unpaid?
II
When the Governor entered the reception room he came in unexpectedly, as Father Maurice was leaning forward with one of Mike’s red hands clasped in his two white ones. Mike was wiping his eyes with his coat sleeve.
The Governor paused in the doorway and coughed. His visitors started in surprise, and then arose.
It was Father Maurice who stated their errand, his seamed face turned upward to the serious eyes of the Governor; and as he proceeded, choosing his quaint Frenchified English carefully, the Governor’s face became grave. He motioned them to their chairs.
He was a gray haired man, and his face was the face of a nobleman. Clear, gray eyes were set deep under his brows, and his mouth was a straight line of uncompromising honesty. He sat with one knee thrown over the other. With one hand he fingered a pen on the desk at his side; the other he ran again and again through the hair that stood in masses on his head. His face was long, and the cheekbones protruded. His nose was power, and his chin was resistance.
He listened silently until Father
Maurice had ended. Then he laid the pen carefully by the inkstand, unfolded his gaunt limbs, and arose.
“No,” he said slowly. “I cannot interfere.”
“But his wife? His mother?” asked the priest.
“He should have considered them before,” said the Governor sadly. “If you prepare a petition, I will consider it, but I cannot offer you any hope. They all come to me with the same plea – the wife and the mother – but they do not take the wife and the mother into account when the blow is struck. It is late to think of them when the prison door is closed. You will pardon me, father, but I am very tired to-night.”
He extended his hand, in token that the interview was at an end, and Mike arose from his chair in the shadow. He stood awkwardly turning his hat while the Governor shook the priest’s hand, and then shuffled forward to be dismissed.
“Good night, sir,” said the Governor. “I did not hear your name – ”
“Murphy,” said the priest quickly – “Michael Murphy. He is the father of the boy.”
The Governor looked the old man over carefully, and the old man’s eyes fell under his keen glances.
“Mike Murphy?” asked the Governor slowly. “Are you the Mike Murphy who used to go to old No. 3 school in Harmontown, forty – no, nearly fifty – years ago? There was a Mike Murphy sat on my bench. Are you the boy they called Red Head?”
The old man tried to answer. His lips formed the words, but his voice did not come. He nodded his head.
“Be seated, gentlemen,” said the Governor, and Father Maurice sat down hopefully. Mike Murphy dropped into a chair with deeper dejection.
“Well, well!” The Governor nodded his head slowly, his gray eyes searching the ruddy face before him. “So you are the Mike Murphy who used to drub me?”
He smiled grimly. His eyes strayed from the old man’s face, and their glance was lost in the air above his head. He smiled again, as he sat with the fingers of his left hand pressing the thin skin into a roll above his cheek bone, for he recalled an incident of his boyhood.
The Governor had once been an arrant little coward. His mother lived in the big white house two blocks above the schoolhouse, on the opposite side of the street. Red Head Mike lived across the alley in a shanty. The Governor’s mother bought milk of Mrs. Murphy, and Red Head brought it every evening.
Red Head was a wonderful boy. He was the first to go barefoot in the spring, picking his way with painful carefulness over the clods in the street. He was the only boy who chewed tobacco. The others chewed licorice or purple thistle tops, but Red Head had the real thing. He even smoked a real pipe without dire consequences, and laughed at the other boys’ mild substitutes of corn silk and “lady cigars”; and the way he swore was a liberal education. All the boys swore more or less, especially when they were behind the barn smoking com silk, but they knew it was not natural It was a puny imitation, but the Red Head article sounded right.