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We were not allowed to converse for any length of time, for the precarious state of my health rendered every precaution necessary that could ensure tranquillity. Mr. Kirwin came in and insisted that my strength should not be exhausted by too much exertion. But the appearance of my father was to me like that of my good angel, and I gradually recovered my health.
At one time I considered whether I should not declare myself guilty and suffer the penalty of the law, less innocent than poor Justine had been. Such were my thoughts when the door of my apartment was opened and Mr. Kirwin entered.
George Kirwin, gaunt, taciturn, and hard-working, had grown out of the dreamy, story-loving boy who had been one of the Slaves of the Magic Tree and into a shy old bachelor who wept over "East Lynne" whenever it came to the town opera house, and asked for a lay-off only when Modjeska appeared in Topeka, or when there was grand opera at Kansas City.
In preparing the historical edition we had to confer with "Aunt" Martha Merrifield so often that George Kirwin, the foreman, who was kept trotting to her with proof-slips and copy for her to revise, remarked, as he was making up the last form of the troublesome edition, that, if the recording angel ever had a fire in his office, he could make up the record for our town from "Aunt" Martha's scrapbook.
And George Kirwin explained to us when he came down to work that afternoon, that maybe the bad part of Joe Nevison's soul had shrivelled away during his sickness, instead of waiting for death. George told us that what made him sad was that a soul in which there was so much that might have been good had been stunted by life and was entering eternity with so little to show for its earthly journey.
Kirwin regarded me with a troubled countenance. He could not help regarding my exclamation as a presumption of my guilt and said in rather a severe tone, "I should have thought, young man, that the presence of your father would have been welcome instead of inspiring such violent repugnance." "My father!" cried I, while every feature and every muscle was relaxed from anguish to pleasure.
Once, when the paper contained an account of one of Red Martin's police court escapades, George Kirwin recalled that, when we offered a prize during the Christmas season of 1880, for the best essay by a child under twelve, it was Ethelwylde Swaney who won the prize with an essay on the Weakness of Vanity; and she married Eli Martin when she and the whole town knew what he was.
George Kirwin maintained that Red Martin will enter the next world with the soul that died when his body began to live in wickedness; that there must have been some imperishable good in him as a boy, and that Heaven, or whatever we decide to call the next world, must be full of men and women like Red Martin some more respectable than he whose hell will be the unmasking of their real selves in the world where we "shall know as we are known."
The family of the O'Dwyer's was long lived, and Betty and Mary had a sister far older than themselves, Margaret Kirwin, "Granny Kirwin," as she was called, and she lived in the cottage by the lake with her nephew, Alec O'Dwyer. She was over eighty, it was said that she was nearly ninety, but her age was not known exactly.
Roche, that she felt that something had happened to her aunt. "Mr. Roche," she said, "you must let me go away; I cannot dance any more to-night. I am sure that something has happened to my aunt, the old woman, Margaret Kirwin, who lives with us in the Lodge. It was she who lent me this gown. This was her wedding-gown, and for sixty-five years it has never been out of her possession.
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