The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 26 August 1920, Page 3

The Storyteller

(By William O'Brien.)

WHEN WE WERE BOYS

CHAPTER lII.—BAPTISING THE BLACKS. While our new pupil was wandering at ] random about the grounds in the fall of that grey January evening, in dismal loneliness, an arm was slipped through his, and the spruce young gentleman who had spent his playhour in declaiming .the works of St. Alphonsus Liguori to Father Mulpetre sang out: "Hallo! so the old fox has pulled you, too, into this infernal hole?" "Who is the old fox?" asked Ken Rohan, simply, "and where is the infernal hole?"'

"You're awfully green," said his jaunty young friend. "A fox is a fox though his reverence is dressed up in a soutane and wears the degree of D.D. as his tail; as to the hole— you don't recognise St. Fergal's by the description, you soon will. I'm off next half." "Oh!" - "Yes, pa is sending me to Trinity—allowance of a hundred guineas—think of that! —dress clothes and four changes, and all the fellows young noblemen, or swells of the first water." "All, Lionel?" The boy was maliciously thinking of Master Lionel's pa— gombeen-man. "These clerical schools ain't the ticket," rattled out his companion, never heeding the interruption. "A parcel of damned young bog-trotters, and elderly bog-trotters in soutanes set over • 'em with birches to flog 'em to their prayers. It is done cheap and the fellows like —they are reared up to their stirabout and litanies." Ken Rohan opened his eyes wide. "There aren't three clean pairs of gloves in the whole college. And the accent! —well, they might teach a fellow either Irish or English, and do the thing above-board. But, no! they must go and muddle the two together, like jam and trotter oil, and turn you out upon the world with such a confusion of tongues, that I verily believe if you found yourself in the Strand, the policeman could not understand what language you spoke when you asked the way to Temple Bar." "Thank you," said Ken Rohan, with a smile. He had never before listened to such a torrent of daring profanity, it sounded like a passage out of Voltaire or Mrs. Radcliffe; but having secretly dipped into the works of these philosophers, and being of a somewhat sturdy turn of mind, he was not greatly perturbed by the conceits of the smart weakling, and watched them as he might the antics of a vivacious young monkey. I do not at all say that he had any prerogative to be thus contemptuous; indeed, Lionel Dargan, although he was Ken's senior only by a few days— respective mammas having, among many other rivalries in life, timed the birthdays of their various darlings neck-and-neck—had many years odds of him in knowledge of the world of men, if not, also, of the world of books.

“It’s all very well for you fellows that want to be priests,” pursued Master Dargan— “you don’t you, Ken?”

"So my mother says." . "Very well; they will cram you with Christian Classics and catechism right enough; but is a chap like me, that hasn't your blessed ambition, to go into 'life and know his prayers, the whole prayer-book, and nothing but his prayers?" "I am afraid The Meditations of St. Alphonsus Liguori are still running in your mind," said our malicious Ken. "Ay, a good.plan the old fox took to make me curse them said the other, hissing out the words in a way which, for a little boy, was very naughty.

"Then why did you go peeping over that little beggar's shoulder and peaching asked Ken, a little hotly. - -t •".-«*.'• ~ - "; -__ ; « "Why? Because peaching is the best policy according to the teaching of Father . Mulpetre, and I always use the best weapons that "are convenient to me. Do you think it wouldn't be more agreeable to my feelings to hurl an ink-bottle at Father Mulpetre's yellow eyes? But I'm no fighting man, you know; I hate fighting men. They are all bullies and boors. So I find I succeed better by minding my prayers and my lessons and being Father Mulpetre's pet; and whatever succeeds is good enough for me. There now, you won't peach." "You are a philosopher. I don't understand you. How is Lily?" The philosopher, who had been tossing his head about with considerable self-satisfaction, suddenly looked into his companion's face with a scowl. "My sister is.all right, thank you," he answered curtly. "Hallo! there's the Angelus bell." "Isn't .that her convent at the other side of our boundary-wall yonder?" "What the devil is that to you? Here's Father Mulpetre"; and Master Lionel, taking off his cap while the bell tolled, was murmuring his evening . prayer when Father Mulpetre surprised him in that pious occupation.

. How much of boyish home-sickness, I wonder, comes from a wounded heart, and how much from a mere sense of vacancy some little want that is no longer satisfied, some face missed at the accustomed hour, some toys broken and the new ones not yet arrived ! Ken Rohan had as honest a heart as beat under any little blue-and-white counterpane in that long dormitory, yet it must be allowed that in the life, bustle, and movelty of his first day from home he had . taken an almost criminal delight, and that it was not until all these were shut off with the gaslight, leaving nothing but emptiness and strangeness around him, that he found out how bitter a thing is that first plunge from the glowing fireside which has lighted up our childish hearts into the chilly outer world, whose winds howl in the chimney-top, and whose mysterious voices whisper at the casement out of the darkness. Then, indeed, when he was cuddled up in his blankets, luxuriating in the warmth of an extra pair, which his mother, to his disgust, had insisted upon stowing away at the bottom of his trunk, and which the young rascal now discovered to be a by no means superfluous item of luggage (the Doctor’s calorifere notwithstanding) 7—then, you may' be sure, the four little oaken partition-walls of his cell dilated into the likeness, of his own special snuggery at Greenane, its snowy little cot with the strawberry-flowered curtains, its print of feassoforrato’s Madonna looking down on his slumbers with those eyes of almost unearthly unspeakable love and beauty ; his books, sketches, and fishing-tackle tumbled about; old Snipe dreaming placidly away with his nose on the hearthrug ; a rose-tree peeping in at the window ; the apple-blossoms of the little orchard waving underneath (for, to the feverish dreamer, it is always summer). He could hear the bid mill-wheel mumbling its eternal rounds, like an ancient litany; hear the thrush singing blithely out of the neighboring S \ ©ar the caiteis shouts as the flour-bags bumped merrily down the shoot from the lofts; hear his father’s lusty orders and great hearty laugh. Here comes Miss Katie, of the timid blue-grey eyes, and the sunny Hang and the warbling voice, bright as an escaped sunbeam ; and whose should be that sweet, pale ever so little delicate face which bends over his bedside ■now, the tenderest, noblest, best in the world her soul welling up to her eyes with such a yearning, wSch b;° V nf ho f’ indeed? Is there 80 desolate a wretch in all the deserts of existence as not to guess n<Sk a h nd J l6 M , hIS l arms to clasp his mother’s 2;- rL T d ‘£ 1 a ‘- he had been asleep, and saw mitorv g and w T .?. ll S ht shining into the ; dormitory, and heard nothing except his young neighbor

Deloohery , snoring the snore of . the just — were bitter tears upon his pillow, which were the . less. shameful that Ken J Rohan did not remember crying downright until that day, ever since he heard the men with the heavy boots carrying away his baby sister in her little satined coffin .when he was quite a chit. / Old stuff, these schoolboy dreams!—old as the schoolboys’ selves, who have dreamt and fought their fight, and grown grey, and sickened, and died, generations of them— old as the sun which used to gild their playground, and shines now upon their graves. As if there “was anything new except bacteriology and electricity, and men and women were going to love and rave and struggle to the death about these ! Our sleeper’s dream is over, however, for as he lies tossing with what ever liberty a narrow iron bedstead affords him, thinking of that blessed face, and thinking also, perforce, how sound a sleeper Master Deloohery must be, the ' sound of stealthy footsteps in the dormitory struck his ears, and presently shadows in the moonlight, and now. and again a confused whispering. He listened with some little thumping at the heart. The footsteps came softly nearer and nearer to his own cell. They ceased outside the adjoining little chamber, where Master Augustine was buried in repose. He could hear a muffled whisper, “Here’s another Black,” whereat there appeared to be a moment’s consultation, and somebody, advancing on tiptoe into the cell, returned immediately, passing the watchword, “ All right!” * All the footsteps shuffled noiselessly in. What with curiosity—perhaps, with a certain indefinite sense of terror— was now broad awake. His own breathing seemed loud in his ears. There was a short silence; then a half-suppressed giggle, a quick, peremptory whisper “Chut! you brat, you’re dropping the paintpot!” Upon the instant a tremendous bellow echoed through the dormitory. Ken sprang from his bed by an uncontrollable impulse. His figure blocked up the entrance to the adjoining cell, just as the half, a dozen youngsters within were rushing wildly out against him. They staggered back before the apparition, cowering into a corner. “Father Mulpetre!” passed from trembling lip to lip. “Poltroons, no, it isn’t,” said the same decisive voice that had spoken before. “It is only the little miller.” The moonlight lit the place more brightly than the college gas would have done. Ken’s wondering eyes took it in at a glance. The central figure of the scene was Master Deloohery, half projected out of bed. It must have been Master Deloohery, but, inasmuch as his complexion had turned shiny black, the identification was difficult. As the huge, good-natured creature sat there, rubbing his sleepy —his head looking all the blacker in his white nightdress, his ample mouth wide open with wonder, his teeth shining out of negro darkness, his bewildered senses divided between the midnight spirits gibbering around him, and the unctuous black liquid which was streaming down his —Ken Rohan felt himself struggling sorely between laughter and indignation. “What the deuce is all this for-?” he asked, looking around at the midnight visitors, who had now recovered their composure. “Baptising the Blacks,” was the pert reply of a small imp, who was engaged on the floor ladling up the contents of an overturned paint-pot. It was Master Mulloy, the student of Robinson Crusoe. It must be known that amongst the rebellious lay boarders of St. Fergal’s (who, although in a great minority, had the advantage that town-breeding, enterprise, and impudence give to wicked minorities all the world over) their ecclesiastical fellow-students (I suppose from the color of their cloth) passed by the generic name of the Blacks.” It was the custom of the incorrigible section of those young bloods, upon the first night after the arrival every year of a new batch of candidates for Orders, to visit each of the strangers in his sleep, and daub a broad black sign of the Cross ovex his face, ; from brow to chin and from ear to ear, so that when at daybreak they rushed to roll-call, half

awake ■ and all unconscious '}■ of the decoration, they "confronted Father . Mulpetre in a guise which I was an outrageous mixture of the Christy Minstrel and the Apostle. The Blacks—braw, :i big-limbed, simple-hearted country lads— dreamt of combining to thrash their small tormentors. They were four to one in numbers, thews, and. weight. They might have broken every bone in their small bodies; but they bore it, as big dogs bear the antics of little ones. This, then, was the annual ceremony which was going forward when, as the irreverent artist was engaged giving the last touches to Master Deloohery nose, a fit of his unlucky laughter took Master Mulloy in the stomach. The mug of paint, slipping through his fingers, poured over the face of the sleeper like an eclipse; and the victim, opening his eyes out of a dream of ghosts and goblins to see them, actually grinning and dancing at his bedside by the light of the moon, put forth a great voice as aforesaid. "Do you call that, fun?" demanded Ken a little hotly. "We were waiting for your highness's opinion," said the same authoritative voice, with all the gravity in the world. "A Daniel come to judgment en pleine chemise I" "It is stupid, and it is inhospitable, whatever you say," pursued Ken, feeling a little foolish in spite of his virtue, "and, if I were he, I wouldn't stand it." "You would call your mamma, like a man, or ring Father Mulpetre's alarm-bell, n'est-ee pas?" & "Try." Ken was stung by the cool insolence of his interrogator, and the obsequious cackle of his little myrmidons. "Precisely what we intended. You were the verv next." " J do well to approach fellows asleep." "By no means. We are charmed to meet them awake, when they are insolent." "That is to say, it is insolent to object to a daubed lace for your neighbors' amusement?" "AjiresV

{< And the joke is a really good one?” “As you shall see.” i < . ®° J? ood that, being six to one, you are going to play it off upon me whether I like it or no?” A merveille ! The miller develops a comprehen- “ mos t brilliant. Mull here with the paint"Thenyou’il appreciate the sport yourself better an o, cried Ken; and, with a quick movement, seizing the streaming paint-brush, he dashed it into the handsome face of the White Chief. At the same moment he heard a hurried step behind him, and, petre found himself m the grasp of Father MulAt a rush the whole band of marauders struggled Mnlln° r i dled under the legs of the Prefect. Master Mulloy left a lock of his abundant hair in the disengaged band of the good Father, and that was all there was a moment’s wild pattering of feet through the corridor, and all was still. The dark shadow of lifrht Pe S Soutane Jad even obscured the tell-tale aid of the moon within the little cell. In the hurry and half-darkness the culprits were safe from identification. But Father M ./ r 6 was content to Stain his hold of the ringleader, who still flourished the guilty paint-brush .in his hand. 0d the You! exclaimed the Prefect, as he turned his prisoner into the light and scanned him with those ln r rstt yes ° f h!S: “ » » a pretty commence! himssr„rttrtL h “eH„ S rtha t f COl,ld no * reason offender- I,™, then teelm g thafc he was somehow an tEe most damning part °uvince the Prefect, who had tEe m°st dsminmg part of the evidence under his eves? a. thought occurred to him. He espied Master DelooHe had He knows that I am not to blame, sir.”

'■"'■ "Begar, I know nottin' at all, surr!" spluttered out * the ingenuous Deloohery, popping up his dripping head, its shock of bristling hair on end, its eyes and nose still shrouded in . African gloom—with. such an expression of puzzled, smiling, frightened sheepishness :on his : good-humored face that, for the life of him, Ken Rohan could not choose but burst out laughing in Father Mulpetre's arms. -' " "This is a very sayrious matter. I'd have you to know, young man, that levity in this college is a thing I will not permit' nor to-le-raise," said the Prefect, laying a severe emphasis, like the whirr of a blackthorn, on the final syllable. . And next morning, when after prayers our culprit was affectionately invited by Father Mulpetre to "step this way" into the President's chamber, there was a sort of pious malice under those jagged little eyebrows of his which told Ken Rohan that he had been already tried and condemned. Very terrible, too, looked the President, pacing up and down the cold ante-room in his huge cloak, muttering a Latin Office out of his Breviary, and very unlike the President who had been helping him to game-pie 24 hours ago. It was a weakness, to be sure; but our young friend, in his moment of desolation, somehow missed his father from his side. (To be continued.)