A STORY AGAINST WOMEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 170, 19 July 1924, Page 4 (Supplement)

A STORY AGAINST WOMEN.

-Q. " THE LAST OF THE IRISH KINGS." 12 & By DONN BYRNE.. '»' V w

At any Irish racecourse you would have seen him some years ago, and you could not have missed him. There is your assemblage in the small rinjj, as it is called: Owners, sportsmen, officials— immaculately dressed men with glasses slung over their shoulders—gentlewomen with bronzed faces and keen eyes and clothes which hut a week ago were on show in Paris; farmers in gaiters and black coats and bowler hats; bookmakers hoarse with shouting the odds. Green turf, and horses sleek and groomed like prima donnas. A race is over, the jockeys have weighed in, the bets are paid. And now the hoard goes up with the runners of the next race on it. and the names of their riders. A bookie raises his voice defiantly. He will give two to one against the field, he says. He will give four to one, bar one. He will give eight to one, bar two. Around each gambler is a willing crowd offerincr money—small tradesmen: strong farmers peeling off notes from plethoric rolls: Irish peers in shabby tweeds, with faces rerl as bartenders; an occasional clergyman, and Rory O'Connor Mellon. Consider a rather tubby man with a sharp, pointed, red beard which has strands of grey in it. On his head is a not well brushed silk hat. He wears a frock coat of the type known in America as a Prince Albert, and it is not very well brushed either. His collar is of the turned-down fashion, which I have heard somewhere described as a Shakespeare collar. His tic is black. In his left hand he holds a not well rolled umbrella. In his right hand he holds a pair of field glasses. His pocket bulges with the form book. Last Irish King. ''" He had been born some forty-seven years before this in an obscure village in Meath, on the edge of the Irish central plain. Bog land it is all. and under the peat of Allen lie buried the Irish elk and the Irish bear, and the Irish wolf and the wolf dog that hunted him, and the gallant invaders of old time —tho brown Phenicians and the red Danes and black-a-vised Norman men. And around the edges of royal Meath live traditions and customs and families ancient as Allen's bog itself. Some strange preservative arises from the black peat water and hardens them to the consistency of bog oak. But a wind from the west brings the salt Atlantic with it and warps them and dwarfs them and brings them to the state of some mossy ancient hawthorn bush. Where is the White Knight? Where is the Black Knight? What of the end of great Thane O'Neill, who fought Queen Elizabeth and won. Fought her who had vanquished Philip's Armada? Everywhere old kings vanish into a dim aromatic past. But the greatest of all the Irish names remained —O'Melaghlin, Mellon now—the last legal high kings of Ireland, sons of that Malachi who repulsed the red

1 Danes, and wore, Thomas Moore writes i of him — s .... the collar of gold. That he t wun from the proud invader. Beside Malachi, Brian Born was an 3 upstart Irish Napoleon, and Rory O'C'on- ? nor. the last king, was a guerilla chief. The blood of Rory of the Hills was in I 1 Mellon's veins ton. though on the feini- J nine or distaff side, to be technical. ' s a j !>o you can understand O'Connor | . Mellon, last of Malachi's high line, and ' JJ in whose veins ran the blood of Rory of J j the Hills, dressing himself in ceremonial! a black to keep a little dignity, and hot- | ,- ting cautiously, professionally, on the] c racecourse to get a little money. ci He had passed through some small! c i school, and passed unnoted through j .Trinity—who will note even nn heir of j I kings in a university which claims Swift (and Congrevo, Burke and Oliver Goiil--5 smith, and lions of newer frame? And. '• coming out. some political friend obI taincd for him the post of coroner in one I v ' of the districts of Dublin. r P.signed to Destiny. For how many years O'Connor Mellon held the post of coroner in south, east, or west Dublin it would ho hard to a say—these soft grey lives flow up si I quietly. But suddenly, dramatically, _Jhe resigned his position. y I When you suddenly sec a respectable _, coroner in sober clothes resign his positl ' tion, and in the same sober clothes c take to backing horses for a living. -I your Anglo-.Saxou mind would call him i, mad. We more subtle Celts will say i he has resigned himself to Destiny and c the laws of Chance. Not for nothing has racing been called the sport of kings. Where is such majesty? Where such tleetness? n Where such uncertainty? The thrill as c the starter pulls the lever and the ' tapes fly up, and "They're off:'' rings j *-' from a thousand throats. Ah, the jj minute, the bonny minute, with the blood in one's veins humming like | c wireless. How could the strain of Malachi. I the High King and of Rory of the , Hills keep from the excitement of this ' speed and glory? And in spite of Chance, and by dint of forethought, and] hy sheer knowledge of the game, a O'Connor Mellon made two thousand II pounds a year. * He lived modestly, but he lived well. * Near Rathfarnham, in Dublin, he had a comfortable white-washed and wellc thatched cottage that looked toward 1 Three-Kock Mountain. Au old house- * keeper took care of him. There was a small flagged garden with forget-mc--3 nots springing between the stones: ' around him the glory of the circle of s mountains —in winter their white capt " of snow or mist: in summer thei;- brown heads and tinkling heather: the Doder, s at the foot of his garden, rambling c carelessly toward Donnybrook and the f Irish Sea, a happy, singing river, I hurdling grassing weirs. His home life

was very comfortable, but for one thing—he had never hecn married. ' Every natural man marries, and afterwards either likes or doesn't like his wife, but that doesn't matter. Those who don't marry fail because, of timidity or vanity. O'Connor Mellon was of th. timid kind. Mrs. Peggy O'Shaughnessy. So his heart never fluttered, nor did his ideas take a concrete matrimonial direction, until he met Mrs. Peggy O'Shaughnessy. of Xew York. lie met her in the grandstand at the (urragh races, a pert, black-eyed woman of about forty, with a merry smile and a merry manner. She wore a Paris frock, and a black hat, black as 'jcr eyes, with cherries on it, dark red as her small mouth. Everything about her was shipshape and trim, from her well-oarcd-for teeth to iter well-cared-for finger nails. A friend introduced him. asking him to mark sonic winners for her rare card, aud he came only dubiously, slowly, and not at all pleased.< A smile nnd he was stunned; a word" and his head was swimming; a hand on his sleeve and he was gone. The battle with the bookmakers was forgotten, while he explained weights and pace to her, colours, trainers, and owners, and while he went to place her bets, equalling fifty cents or a dollar. Everything he was possessed of lie <_avo her that, afternoon—time, knowledge, hospitality—in a grave, unostentatious way. When he got back to Rathfarnham that night her vision remained with him: the chic clothes, the merry smiling face, the trim figure, and that most suitable age for him, a forty that an enthusiast might take for thirty-two. You would have thought, with the pleasant house he had. and the race meetings lie went to. that lie would have been happy here, happy as an otter in the river, as a bird in a high oak tree. But he had hidden in that sandyred face of his a big ambition. Once to every business man, to every general j officer, to every racing specialist, comes an opportunity that, taken, swings him onward to the heights. A horse rolls homo at a hundred to one. and this is not always chance, but shrewd racing. Preparations for years, and sccrecv. Rory O'Connor's Dreams. [ Sometimes you can even get bettei odds, if the bookmaker if caught napping. And O'Connor Mellon often dreamed of the time when lie would get 1 wind of a job of this sort, come in on I it for a good round sum, and be settled for life. Between himself and the Irish hookies there was enmity. The bookies don't I like punters of O'Connor Motion's type. They know as much as the bookies do, and more. To pay O'Connor Mellon a certain fixed sum every year, and to pay it as certainly as lo pay taxes, was no pleasure at all. Of the Irish bookmakers, the biggest was Patsy Re<jan. If only Mellon could get on the perfect job, he promised himself he i would take the shoes off Patsy Regan, i And if be did! Then he would revive the title of baronet his grandfather dropped because of poverty—Si.- Rory O'Connor Mellon he would bo then, and an owner instead of merely a punter, lie would have his horses at stables in England, and a few horses in Ireland. He had dreams, too. for rebuilding the battered old house in Meath, and tilling the few tired acres, and buying a field here and a held there, until he

had a little estate, not much, but such as a country gentleman of the old school would have. And there were other plans he had. lie wished to travel a little. And he flattered himself he would give a dignified account of the last of the old Irish royal house. All these things were possible, given the racing job, and the racing job would come, he knew, so long as he kept his ears cocked, his eyes open, his mind keen. But now there had come between his eyes and this concrete ambition tbe merry black-eyed smile, the trim figure, and the perfect suitable ape of Mrs. Peggy O'Shaughnessy. An Interesting Visitor. On Fifth Avenue in New York, she had one of those small shops where the smaller the shop the dearer the commodity. There was her Christian name above the door, just "Peggy," and in the window were a woman's frock here, and a woman's hat there, and somewhere a sheaf of wheat, or a bunch of posies*, or some gadget of that kind. Though the hat and frock were perfect, and most extraordinarily expensive, for customers Peggy never lacked. She had pome to America at ihe age of ten, and now nt the age of forty, which an optimist might, take for thirty-two. she was revisiting the land of her birth. She had set. out to make a conquest of O'Connor Mellon, because first, he was so woman-shy, and, second, because he was a. figure about Dublin, a queer romantic figure. There w-as something so grotesque about him and yet so dignified. You might smile at O'Connor Mellon, but you would never laugh. lie, in turn, loved her broe-inoss, her worldincss, her outright American way. She had been to Paris, to the Riviera, to the United Hunts meetings in America. Besides her in knowledge and experience he was a child. She went up, with some of her friends, to have tea in that little cottage in Rathfarnham. and surely never in the annals of Irish royalty were so many pains taken, so little expense spared Dublin had been ransacked for delicacies; friends' cellars for old wines. Strawberries had been wired across to Devonshire for, because she had said the lirst strawberries of the season were a great occasion to her. They were there for her, with cream of the Irish kine. And primroses such as bloom only on the slopes of Three-Rock for her! All that dark, cool house, that mellow furniture, great fireplaces, and small shining windows, came to her heart and throat as lavender comes to the nostrils. The little garden outside, fresh with mountain rain and many flowers, and below it the tinkling Dodder. Rory's Fascinating Title. "I could be very happy here," she said, and she winked a tear away, and then, like the brave, sensible little woman she was, she put sentiment aside. She had given it its deserved tribute. She got down quick to O'Connor Mellon's affairs. She had heard, she said, lie was a baronet. "Yes," he admitted without enthusiasm. "You are Sir Rory O'Connor Mellon ?" "Well, yes." "Why don't, you call yourself that?" He hummed and he hawed. What's the use of being a brj'onet if you haven't enough money to baronet, on? "I'm going to call you Sir Rory." Mrs. Peggy O'Shaughnessy said, "and you're going to call mc Mrs. Peggy. "If you had a wife." she mused, "she would be Eady O'Connor Mellon, wouldn't she?"

"Yes, yes. Well, yes." "A nice name," said Mrs. Peggy O'Shaughnessy. She told him about her own business in New York. But she was quite modest about it. She gave a good deal of the credit to an employee of hers—a Mr. Cecil, no second name, just Mr. Cecil. Mr. Cecil was a chic young man, an English younger son, it was whispered, and absolutely the hairy ape when it came to hat making. O'Connor Mellon wasn't very much interested in him. When she and her friends were gone, he thought over two of her sayings: that she could be happy there, with the peace of Three-Rock coming down on her like a blessing, and that Lady O'Connor Mellon was a nice name. He looked at himself in the glass, critically, appraisingly. Whisperer Murphy. He was passing down Dodder Banks one sunlit May morning when he met the Whisperer Murphy sitting by one of the weirs. The Whisperer was an aged, white-haired man with a bloodshot eye, and a brown derby on the side of his head. He was a horse doctor of an irregular school, never having entered a veterinary college, but he had "the gift" as the Irish say, and many a veterinary surgeon sent for him when in a fix. The peasantry believed he had bargained bis soul away to the devil for power over horses. ".Mr. Mellon," he called, "would you tell tne something?" O'Connor Mellon considered a moment. "] would," he said. "Would you throw back your mind now and tell mc?" "I would," decided O'Connor Mellon. "Did you ever hear of a Derby winner coming out of a fish dealer's shop?" "I did not." said O'Connor Mellon. "Would you think it possible now?" "I would' not." "Did you ever see lightning?" "1 did." 'I've seen a filly that's faster," said Whisperer Murphy. Little by little the story came out. Some English country gentleman had died, and the next of kin was a distant relative who kept a fishmonger's shop at Bristol. The deceased squire had left hardly anything when all was settled. But among the effects was a filly he had bought at Doncaster and made an engagement on behalf of for the Derby. The fishmonger had sold all the effects and kept tbe filly. He had a stable made for her back of the fishmonger's shop, and a pal of his, who kept a saloon and had been an old jockey, in his time, was training her. "There's few as knows about it, and them as knows is laughing, hut she'll win the Derby. She'll walk it." "T can't believe it," said O'Connor Mellon. (To be concluded.) The question arose nt a recent meeting of tiie Wairarapa Rugby Union as to whether a referee could come under the insurance scheme. One referee had injured his foot, and was unable to follow his usual calling, while another had a tne seriously injured through being jumped on by a player. While sympathising with the referees, the union decided that the insurance scheme could not apply to them. Referees in the Manawatu are covered by insurance. A lady in Berlin, known as "Boxing Bertha." recently knocked out two policemen and a railway porter in succession with savage rights to the jaw. If she nor attends a bargain sale she will be quickly taught her place.