THE MISER

He used to sit all day long looking out from behind the dirty little
window of his dirty little shop in Main Street; a man with a smooth oval
pate and bleared, melancholy-looking, unblinking eyes; a hanging lip
with a fag dangling from it and hanging, unshaven chins. It was a face
you’d remember, swollen, ponderous, crimson, with a frame of. jet-black
hair plastered down at either side with bear’s grease; and though the
hair grew grey and the face turned yellow, it seemed to make no
difference: because he never changed his position you didn’t notice the
change that came over him from within, and saw him at the end as you saw
him first, planted there like an oak or rock. He scarcely stirred even
when someone pushed in the old glazed door and stumbled down the steps
from the street. The effort seemed too much for him; the bleary,
bloodshot eyes would travel slowly towards some shelf, the arm would
reach out lifelessly, the coins drop in the till. Then he shrugged
himself and gazed out into the street again. Sometimes he spoke, and it
always gave you a shock for it was as if the statue of O’Connell got
down off the pedestal and enquired in a melancholy bass voice and with
old-fashioned politeness for some member of your family. It was a thing
held greatly in his favour that he never forgot an old neigh-bour.

Sometimes the children tormented him, looking in and making faces at him
through the glass, so that they distracted him from the people passing
by, and then he roared at them without stirring. Sometimes they went too
far and his face swelled and grew purple; he staggered to the door and
bellowed after them in a powerful, resonant voice that echoed to the
other end of the town.  But mostly. he stayed there silent and
undisturbed, and the dirt and disorder around him grew and greased his
hair and clothes, and his face and chin with their Buddha-like gravity
were shiny with spilt gravy. His only luxury was the Woodbine which went
out even between his lips. The cigarettes were on the shelf behind him
and all he had to do was reach out his hand without even turning his
head.

He was the last of a very good family, the Devereuxs, who had once been
big merchants in the town. People remembered his old da driving into
town in his own carriage; indeed, they remembered Tom Devereux himself
as a bit of a masher, smoking a cigar and wearing a new flower in his
buttonhole every day. But then he married beneath him and the match
turned out badly.  There was a daughter but she turned out badly too,
started a child and went away God knows where, and now he had nobody to
look after him only an old sweat called Faxy: a tall, stringy,
ravaged-looking man, toothless and half mad. He had attached himself to
Devereux years before as a batman. He boiled the kettle and brought the
old man a cup of tea in the morning.

“Orders for the day, general?” he’d say, springing to the salute, and
Devereux, after a lot of groaning, would fish out sixpence from under
the pillow.

“And what the hell do you think ’’m going to get for that?” Faxy would
snarl with the smile withering off his puss.

“Oh, indeed,” Devereux would bellow complacently, “you can get a very
nice bit of black pudding for that.”

“And is it black pudding youre going to drink instead of tay?”

“I have no more,” the old man would say, turning purple.

“You haven’t, I hear,” Faxy would growl with a wolfish grin, stepping
from one foot to another. “Come on now. My time is valuable. Baksheesh!
Baksheesh for the sahib’s tiffin!”

“I tell you go away and don’t be annoying me,” Devereux would shout, and
that was all the satisfaction Faxy got.

“But he have it, man, he have it,” he would say, leaning over the
counters, trying to coax credit out of the shopkeepers. “Boxes of it he
have, man, nailed down and flowing over! He have two big trunks of it
under the bed alone.”

That was the report in town as well: everyone knew the Devereuxs always
had the tin and that old Tom hadn’t lightened it much, and at one time
or another every shopkeeper gave him credit, and they all ended by
refusing it, seeing the old man in the window day after day, looking as
if he was immortal.

2.

At long last he did get a stroke and had to take to his bed, upstairs in
a stinking room with the sagging window-frames padded and nailed against
the draughts from Main Street and the flowery wallpaper, layer on layer
of it, hanging in bangles from the walls, while Faxy looked after the
shop and made hay with the Woodbines and whatever else came handy. Not
that there was much, only paraffin oil and candles and maybe a few old
things like castor oil on cards that the commercials left on
spec. Whenever a customer went out, bang, bang, bang, the old man
thumped on the floor for Faxy.

“Who was that went out, Faxy?” he’d groan. “I didn’ t recognise the
voice.”

“That was the Sheehan girl from the lane.”

“Did you ask her how her father was?”

“I did not, indeed, ask her how her father was. I have something else to
think about.”

“You ought to have asked her,” the old man grumbled.  “What was it she
wanted ?”

“A couple of candles,” hissed Faxy. “Tuppence-worth!  Is there anything
else you’d like to know?”

“Twas not tuppence-worth, Donnell. Don’t try and deceive me. I heard
every word of it. I distinctly heard her asking for something else as
well.”

“A pity the stroke affected your hearing,” snarled Faxy.

“Don’t you try and deceive me,” boomed Devereux. “I have it all checked,
Donnell, every ha’porth. Mind what I’m saying.”

Then one morning while Faxy was smoking a fag and looking at the racing
on yesterday’s paper, the door opened and in came Father Ring. Father
Ring was a plausible little Kerryman with a sand-coloured puss and a
shock of red hair. He was always very deprecating, with an excuse-me
air, and he came in sideways, on tip-toe, with a shocked expression—it
is only Kerrymen who can do things like that.

“My poor man,” he whispered, leaning across the counter to Faxy, “I’m
sorry for your trouble. Himself isn’t well on you.”

“If he isn’t,” snarled Faxy, looking as much like the Stag at Bay as
made no difference, “he’s well looked after.”

“I know that, Faxy,” said the priest, nodding. “I know that well, but
still ’twould be no harm if I had a few words with him. A man like that
might go in a flash.  _. . Tell me, Faxy,” he whispered with his hand
across his lips and his head on one side, “are his affairs in order, do
you know?”

“How the hell would I know,” said Faxy, “when the old devil won’t even
talk about them?”

“That’s bad, Faxy,” said Father Ring gravely. “That’s very bad. That’s a
great risk you’re running, isn’t it, a man like you that must have a lot
of wages coming to him? If anything happened him you might be thrown out
on the street without a ha’penny. Whisper here to me,” he went on,
drawing Faxy closer and whispering into his ear the way no one but a
Kerryman can do it, without once taking his eyes off the man’s face, “if
you want to make sure of your rights, see he has his affairs +n
order. Leave it to me and I’ll do what I can.” And he nodded and winked
and away with him up the stairs, leaving Faxy gaping after him.

He opened the door a couple of inches and bowed his — head and smiled in
with his best excuse-me, God-help-me expression. The smile was the
hardest thing he ever had to do because the smell was something
shocking.  Then he tiptoed in respectfully with his hand held out.

“My poor man,” he whispered. “My poor fellow!  How are you at all? I
needn’t ask.”

“Poorly, father, poorly,” rumbled Devereux, rolling his lazy bloodshot
eyes at him.

“I can see that. I can see you are. Isn’t there anything I can do for
you?” Father Ring tiptoed back to the door and gave a glance out the
landing. “I’m surprised that man of yours didn’t send for me,” he said
reproachfully.  “You don’t look very comfortable. Wouldn’t you be better
off in hospital P”

“I won’t tell you a word of a lie, father,” Devereux said candidly, “I
couldn’t afford it.”

“No, to be sure, to be sure, ’tis expensive, ’tis, tis,” the priest
agreed. “And you have no one to look after you?”

“I have not, father, I’m sorry to say,” boomed Devereux.

“Oh, my, my, my! At the end of your days! You couldn’t get in touch with
the daughter?”

“No, father, I could not.”

“T’m sorry for that. A great disappointment, the same Julia.”

“Joan, father,” said the old man.

“Joan, I mean. To be sure, to be sure, Joan. A great disappointment!”

“She was, father.”

And then when Devereux had told his little story, Father Ring whispered,
bending forward with his hairy hands joined:

“Tell me, wouldn’t it be a good thing if you had a couple of nuns?”

“A couple of what, father?” Devereux asked, gaping.

“A couple of nuns. From the hospital. They’d look after you properly.”

“Ah, father,” the old man said indignantly, as if the priest was after
accusing him of something nasty, “sure I have no money for nuns.”

“Well, now,” said Father Ring, pursing his lips, “you could leave that
to me. Myself and the nuns are old friends. Sure, that man, that
What’s-his-name—that fellow you have downstairs—sure that poor
unfortunate could do nothing for you!”

“Only break my heart, father,” Devereux sighed gustily. “I won’t tell
you a word of a lie. He have me robbed.”

“Well, leave it tome,” said Father Ring with a wink.

Downstairs he whispered into Faxy’s ear with his hand shading his mouth
and his two eyes following someone down the street:

“I’d say nothing just at present, Faxy. I’ll get a couple of nuns to
look after him.”

3.

It wasn’t till next morning that Faxy caught the full significance of
that. Two nuns arrived from the hospital.  One was old and tough and
Faxy instantly christened her “the sergeant-major.” The second was young
and good-looking.

“Come now,” said the sergeant-major to Faxy. “Put on this apron and give
that floor a good scrubbing.”

“Scrubbing?” bawled Faxy. “Name of Ja——” and just stopped himself in
time. “What’s wrong with that floor?” he snarled. “You could eat your
dinner off that floor.”

“Dear knows, there’s the makings of a dinner there,” said the
sergeant-major, “but ’twouldn’t be very appetising.  I have a bath of
water on for you. And put plenty of Jeyes’ Fluid.”

“I was discharged from the army with rheumatics,” said Faxy, grabbing
his knee. “Light duty is all I’m fit for. I have it on my discharge
papers. And who’s going to look after the shop?”

No use. Down he had to go on his knees, like any old washerwoman, with a
coarse apron round his waist, and scrub every inch of the floor with
carbolic soap and what he called Jeyses’ Fluid. The sergeant-major was
at his heels, telling him to change the water and wash out the brush and
cracking jokes about his rheumatics till she had him lepping. Then,
under the eyes of the whole street, he had to get out on the
window-ledge and wash the window and strip away the comforting felt that
had kept out generations of draughts; and after that he had to scrape
the walls while the young nun went after him with a spray, killing the
bugs, she said, as if a couple of bugs ever did anyone any harm. Faxy
was muttering rebelliously to himself about people that never saw
anything only plank their ass in a feather bed, while poor soldiers
slept out on gravestones with corpses piled on top of them and never
complained. From his Way of the Cross he glared at Devereux, only asking
for one word of an order to down tools, but the old man only looked away
at the farther wall with bleared and frightened eyes. He seemed to
imagine that all he had to do was lie doggo to make the sergeant-major
think he was dead.

But then his own turn came, and Faxy, on his face and hands on the
landing, looked up through the chink in the door and saw them strip old
Devereux naked to God and the world and wash him all down the belly.
“Sweet Christ preserve us!” he muttered. It looked to him like the end
of the world. Then they turned the old man round and washed him all down
the back. He never uttered a groan or a moan, only “Yes, sister,” and
“No, sister,” and relaxed like a Christian martyr in the flames; looking
away at the floor or ceiling so that he wouldn’t embarrass them seeing
them see what they had no right to see. He contained himself till he
couldn’t contain himself any longer, and then burst into a loud groan
for Faxy and the bucket, but Faxy realised with horror that even this
little bit of decency was being denied him and he was being made to sit
up in bed with the young one supporting him under the armpits while the
sergeant-major planted him on top of some new yoke she was after
ordering up from Cashman’s.

It was too much for Faxy. He moaned and tore his hair and cursed his
God. He didn’t wait to see the old man’s hair cut and his mattress and
bed-clothes that he had lain in so comfortably all the long years taken
out to be burned, but prowled from shop to street and street to shop,
looking up at the window and listening at the foot of the stairs,
smoking Woodbine after Woodbine and telling his story to all that
passed. “We didn’t know how happy we were,” he snarled. “We had a king’s
life with no one to boss us and now we’re like paupers in the workhouse,
without a thing we can call our own.”

He was even afraid to go into his own kitchen, for fear the
sergeant-major would fall on him and strip him as well. The woman had no
notion of modesty. She might even say he was dirty. A woman that would
say what she said about the bedroom floor would say anything.  It was
only when her back was turned that he crept up the stairs on tiptoe and
silently pushed in the door. The change from that morning was
terrible. It went to Faxy’s heart. The windows were open above and
below, there was a draught that would skin a brass monkey and a vaseful
of flowers on a little table by the bed. The old man was lying like a
corpse, clean and comfortable but in a state of complete collapse. It
was only after a few moments that he opened his weary bloodshot eyes and
gazed at Faxy with a distant, broken-hearted air. Faxy stared down at
him, like a great gaunt bird of prey, clutching his ragged old shirt
back from his chest with his claws and shaking his skeleton head.

“Jasus,” he whispered in agony, “’tis like a second crucifixion.”

“Gimme a fag, Faxy,” pleaded Devereux in a dying voice.

“Ask your old jenny asses for one,”hissed Faxy, malevolently.


4.

Devereux was just beginning to recover from the shock when Father Ring
called again.

“My poor man,” he said, shaking Devereux’s hand, “how are you today?
You’re looking better. They’re great women, aren’t they? Tell me, are
they feeding you properly?”

“Very nice, father,” Devereux said feebly in a tone of astonishment, as
if he thought after the way they behaved to him that they might feed him
through a pipe, “very nice indeed. I had a nice little bit of chicken
and a couple of poppies and a bit of cabbage.”

“You couldn’t have nicer,” said Father Ring, smacking his lips. |

“I had, indeed,” Devereux boomed, lifting his arm and looking at the
clean hairy skin inside the clean shirt-band as if he wondered who it
belonged to. “And I had rice pudding,” he added, “and a cup of tea
after.”

“Ah, man, they’ll have you trotting round like a circus pony before
you’re done,” said Father Ring.

“Pm afraid it came too late, father,’ sighed Devereux, as if the same
thought had crossed his own mind and been rejected.

“Well, well,” the priest said earnestly, “if ’tis God’s holy will, we
must be resigned. I say we must be resigned.  It comes to us all, sooner
or later, and what need we care if our conscience is clear and our—oh,
by the way, ’pon my soul, I nearly forgot—I suppose your own affairs are
in order?”

“What’s that, father?” whispered Devereux with a timid, trapped air,
raising his head a fraction of an inch off the pillow.

“Your affairs, I say? Are they in order? I mean, have you your will
made?”

“I won’t tell you a word of a lie, father,” mumbled the old man
bashfully, “I have not.”

“Well, now, listen to me,” Father Ring said persuasively, pulling his
chair closer to the bed, “wouldn’t it be better for you? Sure, God
between us and all harm, it might happen to anyone. It might happen to
myself and I’m a younger man than you.”

“Wouldn’t I want an attorney, father?” asked Devereux.

“Ah, what attorney?” exclaimed Father Ring. “Aren’t I better than any
attorney? As it happens,” he said, scowling and fumbling in his pockets,
“I have some writing paper along with me. I hope I didn’t leave my specs
behind. I did, as sure as you’re there, I did! What sort of old head
have I at all? No, I declare to my goodness, I didn’t, for once. Ah,
sure, man alive,” he said, looking at Devereux over the specs, “I have
to do this every month of nay life. "Tis astonishing, the people that
leave it to the last minute. ... I may as well get it down as I’m
here. I can write the rigmarole in after.  What’ll we say to begin with?
You’d like to leave a couple of pounds for Masses, I suppose?”

“God knows I would, father,” Devereux said devoutly.

“Well, what’ll we say? Ten? Twenty?”

“I suppose so, father,” Devereux said vaguely.

“Well, now, make it whatever you like,” said Father Ring, pointing the
fountain-pen at him like a dart and giving him a long look through the
spectacles, a sort of professional look, quite different from the one he
gave over or round them. “But remember, Masses are the only investment
you can draw on in the next world. The only friends you can be sure
won’t forget you. Think again before you say the last word on Masses iy

“How much would you say, father?” asked Devereux, hypnotised by the
gleam of his spectacles like a rabbit by the headlights of a car.

“Well, that’s for you to say. You might like to make it a hundred or
even more.”

“We’ll say a hundred,” said Devereux.

“Good man! Good man! I like a man that knows his own mind. And what’ll
we do about the—” he nodded in the direction of the door, “the holy
ladies?  ’Twould be expected.”

“Would the same thing be enough, father?”

“To tell you the truth I think it would,” said Father Ring, bobbing his
head and giving an unprofessional dart over the back of his specs. “I’ll
go farther, Mr. Devereux.  I think ’twould be generous. Women are all
lick alike.  A fool and his money—you know the old proverb?”

“I do, father.”

“And as we’re on to charities, what about the monks?”

Devereux gave him an appealing glance. Father Ring rose, pursing his
lips and putting his hands behind his back. He stood at the window and
looked down the street with his head on his chest and his eyes strained
over the specs.

“Look at that scut, Foley, sneaking into Hennessey’s pub,” he said as if
he was talking to himself. “That fellow will be the death of his poor
wife. ... I think so, Mr. Devereux,” he added in a loud voice, turning
on his heel and raising his head. “I think so. Religious orders!
’Tisn’t, God knows, for me to be criticising them, but they’d surprise
you. Surprise you! The jealousy between them over a couple of hundred
pounds!  Those poor monks would be fretting over a slight like that for
years to come.”

“°Twouldn’t be wishing to me, father,” said old Devereux, shaking his
head regretfully.

“’Twouldn’t, man ’twouldn’t, ’twouldn’t,” said the priest as if he was
astonished at the old man’s perspicacity.  “You’re right, Mr. Devereux,
’twould not indeed be wishing to you,” implying by his tone that if the
bad wishes of the monks didn’t actually follow the old man into the
other world they’d make very heavy weather for any prayers that
did. “Now, coming nearer home,” he whispered with a nervous glance over
his shoulder, “what about that man of yours? They’ll be expecting you to
provide for him.”

“He robbed me, father,” Devereux said sullenly, his heavy face settling
into the expression of an obstinate child.

“Ah, let me alone, let me alone!” said Father Ring, waving the paper in
his face with exasperation. “I know all about it. That British Army!
’Tis the ruination of thousands.”

“The couple of Woodbines I’d have,” the old man went on, turning his
bleary eyes on the priest while his deep voice throbbed like a ’cello
with the dint of self-pity, “he used to steal them on me. Often and
often—I wouldn’t tell you a word of a lie, father—I went down to the
shop of a morning and I wouldn’t have a smoke.  Not a smoke!”

“Oh, my, my!” said Father Ring, clucking and nodding.

“The packets of Lux,” said Devereux solemnly, raising his right hand in
affirmation, “as true as the Almighty God is looking down on me this
instant, father, he’d take them out and sell them from door to door, a
half-dozen for the price of a medium! And I sitting here without a
Woodbine!”

“Well, well,” said the priest. “But still, Mr. Devereux, you know you’re
after forgiving him all that.”

“Forgiving him is one thing,” said the old man stubbornly, “but leaving
him a legacy is another thing entirely.  Oh, no, father.”

“But as a sign you forgive him!” the priest said coaxingly. “A what’ll I
call it—a token? Some little thing!”

“Not a ha’penny, father,” said Devereux in a voice of doom, shaking his
shaven head as if it was the bell that tolled for Faxy’s funeral. “Not
one solitary ha’penny.”

“Well, now, Mr. Devereux, fifty pounds,” Father Ring
pleaded. “’Twouldn’t break you and ’twould mean a lot to that poor
wretch.”

“Ah, what fifty pounds?” snarled Faxy, and there he was in on top of
them, a great gaunt skeleton of a man with mad staring eyes and his
fists clenched. “Is it mad ye are, the pair of ye? Fifty pounds?”

Old Devereux began to struggle frantically up in the bed, throwing off
the bed-clothes with his swollen old hands and gasping for the breath
that would enable him to say what he thought of Faxy.

“You robber,” he croaked, “if I done you justice, I’d have you up in the
body of the gaol.”

“Come now, come, come, come, Mr. Devereux,” cried Father Ring in alarm,
putting down his papers and trying to get the old man to lie
back. “Compose yourself.”

“T won’t give him a ha’penny,” roared Devereux in a voice that could be
heard at the other side of the street.  “Not one ha’penny. Leave him
support himself out of all he stole from the till.”

“And a hell of a lot there ever was to steal,” hissed Faxy, with his
gaunt head down, grinning back at him like a demented skeleton.

“Not a ha’penny,” repeated the old man frantically, pummelling his knees
with his fists and blowing himself up like a balloon till he turned all
colours.

“Two hundred and fifty pounds,” snarled Faxy between his toothless gums,
pointing with his finger on the palm of his hand as if he had it all
written down there.  “That’s what I’m owed. I have it all down in black
and white. Back wages. The War Office won’t see me wronged.”

“You robber!” shouted Devereux, panting.

“Sister!” cried Father Ring, going to the door and throwing it wide
open. “Sister Whatever-your-name-is, send for the police. Tell them I
want this fellow locked up.”

“Leave that wan out of it,” cried Faxy, growing pale and dragging him
back from the door. Faxy wasn’t afraid of the police, but the
sergeant-major of the nuns put the fear of God in him. “We want no
nuns. Play fair and fight your own corner like a man. Fair play is all I
ask. God knows, I done for him what no one else would do.”

“Mr. Devereux,” said Father Ring earnestly, “he’s right. The man is
right. He’s entitled to something.  He could upset the will.”

“Jasus knows, father,” said Faxy, sitting down on the edge of the bed
and beginning to sob like a child while he brushed the tears away with
the back of his hairy hand, “that’s not what I want. I deserved better
after all my years. No one knows the sufferings I seen.”

“Black puddings and ould sausages,” croaked the old man. “Not one decent
bite of food crossed my lips, father, all the long years he’s with
me. Not till the blessed nuns came did I get one proper bite to eat.”

“Because they can get the credit,” snarled Faxy, drying his tears and
shaking his fist at his employer. “If you handed me out the money
instead of locking it up in your box you could have bacon and cabbage
every day of your life. I was a batman to better men than you, but you
were too near, you ould bugger you, and now ’tis going on you whether
you like it or not, on medicines and Jeyses’ Fluid and
chamber-pots. That’s all you have out of it at the end of your days.”

“Be quiet now, be quiet,” said Father Ring. “You’ll get something. I’ll
take it on myself to put him down for another hundred, Mr. Devereux. Is
that right?”

“A hundred strokes of the cat-and-nine-tails,” grumbled the dying
man. “But I won’t go again’ you, father.  ... That it may choke you,” he
added charitably to Faxy.

“And now, Mr. D., I won’t keep you much longer.  There’s just Julia.”

“Joan, father,” said Devereux. |

“Joan, I mean. To be sure, Joan. Or the little——you know who I’m talking
of? Was it a little boy? ’Pon my soul, my memory is gone.”

“Nothing, father,” the old man said firmly, settling himself into his
pillows.

“What’s that?” shouted Faxy, scandalised. “Your own daughter?”

“Now, now, Mr. Devereux,” said Father Ring. “Whatever little
disagreement ye had, or whatever upset she caused you, this is no time
to remember it.”

“Not a ha’penny,” said Devereux moodily. “I’ll be good to them that were
good to me. I leave the rest of my money to the Church.”

“Christ look down on the poor,” cried Faxy, raising his long arms to
Heaven. “Stick and stone instead of flesh and bone.”

“Will you be quiet?” Father Ring said testily. “Now, Mr. Devereux, I
understand your feelings, but ’tisn’t right. Do you know what they’d say
about that? That there was undue influence. You might have the whole
will upset on you for the sake of —what’ll I say? A hundred?  Two
hundred? A trifle would put it in order.”

“This is my will, father, not yours,” said old Devereux with monumental
firmness. “I’m after telling you my wishes and Faxy here is a
witness. Every penny of my money is to go to the Church, barring a few
pounds to keep the family vault in order. The Devereuxs are an old
family, father,” he added with great calm and pride.  “They were a great
family in their day and I’d like their grave to be kept in order when
I’m gone.”

That night the substance of the will was the talk of the town. Many
blamed old Devereux for being hard and unnatural, though more blamed
Father Ring for being always so grasping. Faxy got credit on the
strength of it and came home fighting drunk, shouting that the priest
had cheated him and that he was the lawful heir; but the nuns locked him
out, so he slept in the straw in Kearney’s yard, waking up in the middle
of the night and howling like a dog. By that time he thought himself
alone in the world. But the old man had no notion of dying. He began to
improve under the care of the nuns.  He had a little handbell on the
table by his bed, and whenever he felt bored he rang for the old nun to
keep him company. He took a great liking to the sergeant- major, and he
rang whenever he remembered any more he could tell her about the history
of the Devereuxs.  When he got tired of that, he took hold of her hand
and got her to read him chapters from the Imitation of Christ or the
Lives of the Saints.

“That’s beautiful reading, sister,” he said, stroking her hand.

“Oh, sure, there’s nothing nicer,” said the nun.

“Beautiful reading,” said Devereux. “I missed a lot in my life, sister.”

“Ah, we all missed a lot,” she said, “but God will make it up to us, we
hope. Sunshine in this life, shadow in the next.”

“I’d like a bit of sunshine too, sister,” he said. “Ye’re very good to
me and I didn’t forget ye in my will.”

He talked the devil of a lot about his will and even said he was
thinking of changing it in favour of the nuns.  The trouble was he
couldn’t ask Father Ring to do that, and he never liked solicitors from
the time they started sending him letters. He got real lively at times.

“I suppose you’ll be renewing that bottle for me, sister?” he said.

“I’m sending down to the chemist’s for it now,” she replied.

“I wonder would you get something else for me as well?” he asked.

“To be sure I will. What is it?”

“Well,” he boomed earnestly, “I’d like a little drop of hair-oil, if you
please. My hair doesn’t lie down well without it. The scented kind is
the kind I like.”

She got him the hair-oil and did his hair for him while he looked at her
fondly and commented on her hands. Beautiful gentle hands, he said she
had. Then he asked for the mirror. He was very shocked by what he saw
and tears came to his eyes.

“Now,” she said briskly, “there’s a handsome man for you!”

“I was very handsome once, sister,” he said mournfully.  “The handsomest
man in this town I was supposed to be. People used to stop and look
after me in the street.  Dandy Devereux they used to call me.”

Then he asked for the scissors to clip his moustache.

He made a most beautiful and edifying death with the two nuns kneeling
beside him, saying the prayers for the dying, and when they washed him
and laid him out, the sergeant-major went down to the kitchen and had a
good cry all to herself.

“’Tis a hard old life,” she said. “We’re left with them long enough to
get fond of them, and then they get better and you never see them again,
or else the Lord takes them.  If ’twas only an old dog you’d be sorry
for him, and he was a fine gentlemanly old man, God rest him.”

Then, having tidied away her pots and pans and gone in for a last look
at old Devereux, the man who used to stroke her hands and praise them
the way no one did since she was a girl, she washed her eyes and went
back to her convent.

After Requiem High Mass next day Devereux went to join the rest of his
family under the ruined walls of the abbey they had founded in the
fifteenth century, and by the time Father Ring got home from the funeral
Faxy had already started prying. The great iron-bound chests were in the
centre of the floor and Faxy had borrowed a chest of tools. They opened
them between them, but there was nothing inside them only old screws,
bolts, washers, bits of broken vases, cogwheels of clocks and an
enormous selection of pipe bowls and stems. Father Ring was so
incredulous that he put on his spectacles to examine them better. By
that time he was prepared to believe they were pieces of eight in
disguise.

“I made a mistake,” he said, sitting back on the ground beside the
chest. “I should have asked him where he had it.”

They stayed on till midnight, searching. Next day they had two men in
from Jerry MacMahon’s, the, builder’s. Every floor was ripped up, every
chimney searched, every hollow bit of wall burst in. Faxy was first
everywhere with a bit of lighted candle in his hand, and Father Ring
followed, stroking his chin. A crowd had gathered in the street outside
and he stood in the window and surveyed them moodily over his glasses.
Murphy the undertaker came up the stairs.

“Did ye find it yet, father?” he asked anxiously.  Murphy was owed
thirty quid, so he had cause for anxiety.  “Pm afraid, Eddy,” said
Father Ring, looking at him round his glasses, “we were had. We were
had, Eddy, boy, the lot of us. ’Tis a great disappointment. A great
disappointment, but ’pon my soul he was a remarkable man.”

Then he took his shabby old soft hat and went home.