Harp on the Willow Read online

Daniel looked at her and then laughed at the almost certain truth of her reply.

  Later that afternoon, Daniel wasn’t the least surprised to see Stephen pull his buggy up in front of the office. Indeed, he would have been more surprised had Stephen not shown up.

  He rose from his knees, where he’d been nailing down a loose board on the porch, and watched as Stephen took the steps like a man half his age.

  “Afternoon, Stephen.” Daniel wiped the dust off his hand before extending it to his friend, who pumped it so hard Daniel thought he might have heard a bone or two snap. “And congratulations.”

  The other’s expression was that of a man not quite recovered from shock but rejuvenated enough to sport a slightly foolish, crooked grin.

  After the bruising handshake, however, he sobered. “Just tell me she’ll be all right, Daniel. That’s all I need to know.”

  “Let’s get out of the heat,” Daniel suggested, starting for the door.

  Inside, Stephen declined to take a chair in the waiting room. “I can’t sit down. Truth is, I’ve been as jittery as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs ever since Esther told me the news.”

  “Understandable,” Daniel said, thinking, not for the first time, how much he liked this man, how greatly he valued his friendship.

  Stephen Holliday was as solid as they came. “Salt of the earth,” some would say. Strong. Honest. Smart. A man with a bedrock of integrity and the heart of a lion. Yet a man who wasn’t ashamed to show his adoration for his wife of more than two decades.

  Daniel had often wondered, somewhat longingly, what it would be like to be married to a woman whose very name could still, after so many years, make your eyes glaze over with love.

  He wouldn’t mind finding out for himself.

  “Esther is going to be just fine, Stephen,” he said firmly. “You and I will see to it.”

  “And the baby?”

  Daniel chose his words carefully, unwilling to dissemble with his friend, but also reluctant to put a damper on his obvious elation. “There’s always a risk for a mother and baby in childbirth, Stephen. And the risk increases when the woman is past the usual childbearing age. But there are certain things Esther can do to minimize the risk, and I’ll make certain she knows every one of them.”

  He paused before adding, “I hope you can both relax and enjoy this time. Esther is a strong, healthy woman, and there is no reason she shouldn’t have a strong, healthy baby.”

  His friend’s ebullient grin returned. “That’s what I needed to hear, Daniel! Sorry for barging in like this, but I just had to have a little reassurance.”

  Daniel nodded. “Well, consider yourself reassured. And may I say that I couldn’t be happier for the both of you.”

  Stephen grabbed his hand in another bone-crushing grip. “Thank you, Daniel! Boy, this is some news, isn’t it? And I just want you to know how much it means to have a good doctor and a good friend to take care of Esther and the baby.”

  “Well, then, you’d best ease up a bit on that handshake, Stephen. When the time comes to deliver your baby, I expect you’re going to want me to have both hands in working order.”

  FIVE

  A VISIT TO OWENDUFFY

  The dwellings of the virtuous poor,

  The homes of poverty,

  Are sacred in the sight of God,

  Though humble they may be.

  ELIZABETH WILLOUGHBY VARIAN

  Late Friday night, Daniel was sitting on the sofa in front of a cold fireplace, reading the Public Sentinel while Sarge dozed at his feet.

  The feature story was an in-depth account of the progress being made on the new schoolhouse. Lest any of the more skeptical citizens of Mount Laurel still needed to be convinced of the need for a new facility, Lawrence Hill, the owner and managing editor of the newspaper, used his weekly editorial to condemn the “outdated, overcrowded, and unsafe” conditions of the present structure.

  Daniel smiled at Lawrence’s final volley:

  Our own Miss Serena Norman, a schoolmistress who would be a credit to even the largest and most cosmopolitan of urban school districts, recently remarked to this editor that “disgraceful” is too mild a word to describe the state of the present building. According to Miss Norman, when the students enter the schoolhouse at the beginning of the new term next month, “they will be entering a structure which is ridiculously inadequate, too small by far, as well as a building of such hasty construction and in such disrepair as to be positively hazardous. I’m certain, however, that the parents and other responsible citizens of our town are eager to do everything they can to remedy this deplorable situation as soon as possible.”

  Daniel could just see Serena, little bitty thing that she was, looking cool and collected with not a single blond curl out of place as she quietly issued what amounted to nothing less than a challenge—or was it a threat?—to the entire town.

  Serena Norman was no less ladylike when she announced a call to arms than when she was pouring lemonade at a church social. Even so, the folks who knew her weren’t likely to make the mistake of underestimating her.

  He put the paper aside and had just started to doze off when a loud banging on the door brought him bolt upright to his stocking feet. Sarge stirred and growled in unmistakable annoyance, hauling himself up with a look of obvious pique. He seemed to care not even a little when Daniel yelped at the pain that went shooting up his leg when he banged into the storage chest in front of the sofa.

  Out of sorts entirely now, he flung open the door to find a thin, dark-haired boy scowling back at him. Cap in hand, the youth was clad in the familiar coveralls and boots of a miner, but then it wasn’t unusual for children as young as eight or nine to go into the mines. This boy looked older—fifteen or sixteen at least.

  “Are you the doc?” The boy’s voice was unexpectedly deep, his tongue thick with an Irish accent.

  “I am,” Daniel said.

  “I need you to come with me, then. It’s me sister. She needs doctorin’ bad.”

  Daniel noted the utter lack of appeal in the boy’s tone. He wasn’t making a request so much as issuing a demand.

  “You’re from Owenduffy.”

  “Aye.” The boy’s eyes glinted with defiance, as if he expected Daniel to close the door in his face.

  “You have your own doctor there. Isn’t that so?”

  The boy twisted his mouth as if he’d tasted something foul. “That soak! He’s nowhere to be found. Passed out somewhere in his cups again, sure.”

  Daniel didn’t doubt the truth of the lad’s remark. It was no secret that Harley Bevins, the company doctor, was a poor excuse for a physician. A hard drinker who had almost destroyed his own health, he was said to be more menace than healer to his patients.

  Unfortunately, the coal company officials who virtually owned the town of Owenduffy didn’t seem to care.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Flynn. Rory Flynn.”

  “What’s wrong with your sister?”

  “Bevins said last time he looked at her that she has a bad chest. Said there was nothing to do for her anymore.” The look in the boy’s eyes was as sharp as broken glass, but Daniel saw fear mirrored there as well.

  “She’s took worse ever since,” he went on. “She’s on fire with the fever, and she fights for most every breath. I couldn’t think what to do except to come here.” He paused. “She’s only nine years.”

  Something wrenched inside Daniel. It was a hard thing for him to turn someone away, especially a child. But he wasn’t supposed to be practicing medicine in Owenduffy, not even in an emergency. Everything over there was run by the coal company, and he doubted they would welcome his interference with their own doctor’s practice.

  “Will you be coming or not?”

  Daniel looked at the boy standing on his porch and saw that the gruffness of his tone had nothing to do with the worry in his eyes.

  “You might just as well know I’ve got no money,” R
ory Flynn added in the same rough voice.

  Still Daniel hesitated. “It’s not the money.”

  He studied the narrow face, the faint shadow of a youthful beard, the look of contempt that didn’t quite conceal the youth’s desperation.

  Finally, he sighed, saying, “Let me get my shoes.”

  The boy crushed his cap onto his head, making no attempt to mask his impatience.

  Meanwhile, Daniel managed to ignore what he knew was a purely irrational urge to apologize for the delay.

  Although Daniel had never been in Owenduffy in a professional capacity, this wasn’t his first visit to the mining town. Not long after his arrival in Mount Laurel, he had driven into the mining town to make the acquaintance of the company doctor. As it happened, Bevins had been gone, so they didn’t meet. Another time Daniel passed through simply to familiarize himself not only with Owenduffy but with the surrounding countryside.

  The miners’ houses were at the entrance to the town, two long rows of ramshackle shanties separated by a rutted dirt road. Unpainted and in various states of disrepair, the houses looked to have been backed up against the side of a hill, without foundations, balanced on somewhat treacherous-looking support posts. Each had an empty space underneath where children could be seen playing amid the rubble and trash. In back, animals, including chickens and goats, roamed free around the outhouse.

  From the little Daniel had learned about coal company towns, it seemed the owner of a mine seldom lived anywhere near the town. More commonly he would make his home in the city, often out of state. That wasn’t the case here, however. The presence of the mine owner, Allen Slade, loomed over Owenduffy like an ominous shadow.

  Slade’s sprawling mansion on the hillside west of town had been built to his design years before Daniel arrived in the area. It resembled nothing so much as a British castle and was almost obscenely out of place in its proximity to the hovels it overlooked. Daniel wondered if the inappropriateness of the house and its location wasn’t Slade’s way of trying to safely distance himself from the workers who padded his pockets.

  Although the area wasn’t quite as squalid as one of the shantytowns Daniel had seen in New York City, it still bore the look of a place where folks faced a daily battle simply to survive. Seated on the buggy’s bench beside Daniel, Rory Flynn pointed to a house nearly at the end of the row. “This is our place.”

  After stepping down, Daniel left Sarge on the porch with a stern order to stay before following the Flynn youth indoors. He had never been inside one of the coal town homes before tonight. The Flynn house was little more than a shack, small and dingy, barren of any adornment. The front door opened directly onto a sitting room and combination eating area, furnished with only one worn, overstuffed chair and two wooden ones, as well as a rickety, scarred table. In the center of the room an aged iron stove squatted like an ugly troll. To the right were two rooms that appeared to be bedrooms, their shabby curtains pulled aside. Daniel caught a glimpse of a tiny kitchen toward the back of the house.

  Like the exterior, the inside walls were bare of paint. He noted in passing, though, that the cramped quarters were clean and uncluttered, and he saw that someone had placed a glass jar filled with wildflowers in the middle of the table, a brave attempt to bring a touch of beauty to an otherwise grim existence.

  The Flynn youth showed him to the bedroom just off the kitchen, where a little girl lay listlessly on a sagging iron bed. She was covered by a thin quilt, and although the night was warm and close, she was shivering.

  The child watched Daniel’s approach with the burning eyes of fever. Before he reached her, she coughed, a harsh, labored sound that let him know the girl was in trouble.

  Her older brother hung back, but he spoke to her in a tone far gentler than Daniel had heard him use thus far. “This is the doctor from over the river, Molly Maureen. Dr. Kavanagh. He’s come to make you better.”

  Daniel cast a look over his shoulder, irritated by the boy’s assumption. From the looks of the little girl in the bed, it would be best not to make any overly optimistic promises. But when he bent over the child, he could only smile, for little Molly Maureen Flynn was smiling at him.

  And what a smile it was.

  In spite of her thin, pinched features, she was a lovely little thing, with a heart-shaped face and a fluffy cloud of dark hair. Rory had said she was nine years, but in truth she didn’t look to be that old. The small hands clutching the quilt were those of a mere wisp of a child. Her form scarcely gave rise to the bed quilt that covered her.

  An angry crimson flush blotched her face, and when Daniel put a hand to her forehead, the heat from her skin seemed to sear his. She coughed again, a hard, incessant, barking sound. With an expression that was almost apologetic, she grasped the quilt ever more tightly.

  “Can you give her something for the cough?” asked Rory, behind him.

  Not answering, Daniel sat down beside the child on the bed and waited until the coughing spasm subsided. Gently then, he took her hands in his and was appalled at the hot, paper-dry feeling of her skin. He knew at once the little girl was nearly dehydrated.

  “Does your chest hurt, Molly?” he said.

  She nodded shyly.

  “Well, we’ll have to do something about that,” Daniel told her as he opened his case and retrieved his stethoscope.

  The child’s eyes grew large, and he hastened to reassure her. “I’m just going to listen to your lungs with this, Molly. I’ll bet you didn’t know your lungs made noises, did you?”

  Again she gave a shake of her head. Daniel waited until she smiled at him again before helping her to sit upright. “Well, they do, and this thing here—it’s called a stethoscope—lets me hear those noises. Now it won’t hurt a bit, I promise you. But it likely will feel a little cold.”

  He examined the girl as quickly as he could, for she was weak to the point of trembling. It was just as he’d feared. Bronchitis, and a nasty case of it.

  Molly Maureen Flynn was a very sick little girl.

  Her brother had come to stand on the opposite side of the bed and now took his sister’s hand in his.

  “Has she had a bad cold in the past few weeks?” Daniel asked him, fumbling about in his medical case for some chloride of ammonia.

  The boy nodded. “Aye, we both did. I got over mine in a couple of days or so, but Molly Maureen, she can’t seem to shake it off.”

  Daniel glanced around. “Where are your parents?”

  “Dead,” the boy said flatly.

  Daniel looked at him. “Both of them?”

  “Aye. Mum died on the way across, and our da died in the cave-in last March.”

  Several men had been injured in that cave-in, and Daniel remembered that three had died.

  “So…the two of you live here alone? You take care of your sister by yourself?”

  The boy’s eyes glinted with a spark of defiance. “We do just fine, Molly and me.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Daniel said evenly. He hesitated, then asked, “You work in the mines?”

  When the other nodded, he went on. “And who takes care of Molly during the day?”

  “She takes care of herself for the most part, when she’s not in school. But the Murphys look after her when I’m not here, especially since she’s been sick.”

  His tone was defensive, even hard-edged, but Daniel didn’t miss the slight trembling of his lower lip. The boy had more than he could handle, that was clear, and he knew it. No doubt he felt frustrated that he couldn’t do more for his little sister.

  “The Murphys? Is that Elly Murphy’s family?”

  Rory Flynn gave him a suspicious look. “How is it you’d be knowing Elly?”

  “I don’t know her,” Daniel said. “But a friend of mine does. It’s good of her and her family to help. Get me a spoon and a cup of water, would you? I’ve got some medicine here for Molly.”

  The boy left the room, and while he was gone Daniel used the small table beside the bed to mix
the tinctures he wanted, talking to Molly as he worked.

  He stayed another half hour, administering the ammonia and applying a mustard poultice to the girl’s chest. He managed to coax a bit of barley water down her, but the effort tired her so quickly and she choked so fiercely that he feared she hadn’t taken in enough to be of any real benefit.

  Before he left, he gave strict instructions to young Rory. The boy would do his best, Daniel knew, but the fact that he left the house each day before dawn and didn’t return until dusk left him precious little time to tend to his sister.

  “You talk with the Murphys. It sounds as if they’d be willing to help, and Molly needs someone with her while you’re away. Your sister mustn’t be left alone, do you understand? She’s very ill and very weak, and someone needs to see that she eats and gets her medicine.”

  He could tell Rory was taking his every word to heart, and somehow he knew this youth with the hard mouth and the eyes that were far too old for his years would do his best to follow the instructions he was given.

  “Elly will stay with her if her mum will lend her for a spell,” the boy said. “She’d probably be glad for some peace from the little ones. There’s a houseful at the Murphys.”

  “Elly sounds like a good girl.”

  “All the Murphys are good people. Though Dom—Elly’s da—can be a hard man entirely, his heart is in the right place.”

  Daniel nodded slowly. “Well, then, I’ll look in on the two of you when I can. And, Rory—”

  The other looked at him as if surprised to hear his name used.

  “It’s probably best if you keep quiet about my coming here tonight. The company might not like it.”

  The boy’s face went dark. “The company don’t like anything that’s of help to us. They want us kept as their dogs, don’t you know?”

  Daniel didn’t know, though he’d heard enough over the years to suspect Rory was right.

  “Remember now, make sure she gets plenty of fluids. That’s as important as the medicine I left with you.”

  “I’ll see to it.”

  And he would, Daniel was certain.