The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 7 April 1921, Page 3

The Storyteller

WHEN WE WERE BOYS # (By William O’Brien.) -■ ■ • • . . :: ; V-. .- CHAPTER XX—(Continued.) “Ma’am, your most obedient,” said the American Captain, with a -bow oddly suggestive at one and the same time of a Versailles salon of the last century and of a contemporary log-hut; for Captain Mike, albeit his heavy black moustache and bomb-shell / talk was the courtliest of- backwoodsmen/ “Ours is about as big a continent as there’s on show but it don’t grow anything of your par-ticular complexion, Miss. This little playground of a country pro-duces uncommon purty playthings, I must, as a candid Amurrican citizen, certify.” “You are very flattering,” said Miss Westropp, smilingly, “and very forgiving,” she added in a gentle tone. “Harry told me something of what happened long ago. Well, you have your revenge. We thought we were disposing of you for ever by driving you across the Atlantic, and you are coming back our master.” “No, ma’am, there’s one species of slavery the Amurrican constitooshun ain’t never abolished and never wants to. Its name is woman. You, and the likes of you, will have your slave plantations all the time, and Mike MacCarthy will be the darnedst quiet nigger that ever hoed corn as long as you hold me whip. But I’m not going for to deny,” said the Captain, “that the people who went in emigrant ships are coming back in Amurrican bottoms and with Amurrican principles. Human natur is going to kick up purty lively in this oppressed country before very long. I guess we’re going to pass this wrinkled old hag of a system of government of yours through our patent Columbian mangle and bring her out as young as- as you, Miss. We’ve got your range already. Every Amurrican letter read in an Irish cabin is the reading of a Declaration of Independence. You’d have to stop the ocean postage before you could stop our invasion and it’s too late now— here!” “I’m beginning to be a little afraid of you invaders,” laughed Mabel, with a little shudder which was not all jocose; “but you won’t be too hard on sinners who -do penance, will you ... • “Miss,” said the American Captain, “the Ninth Massachusetts would feed you with rose leaves. And it ain’t clear to me,” he added, staring- reverentially at her faintly-blushing cheek, “it ain’t clear to me, on the look of you, that that has not been your or’nery diet.” , , , • ..., ; , i “Captain Mike is rather down on his luck,” said the Lord Harry some days afterwards. “Isn’t it funny? The poor beggar has had to pawn his revolver. I caught him at it. He has not got his remittances, and they’re pestering him about his bill at the hotel, and the police are beginning to hover about unpleasantly. Mabel, I wish you would let me bring him to dinner. I rather suspect he has had no .breakfast.” /> . ■ -r/.. “And it was only yesterday I saw in the newspapers that these American filibusters are wallowing in the gold of their unfortunate dupes,” said Miss Westropp, meditatively. - - r <f Oh, you know, there’s plenty of money,” said Harry, fearing that'he had been an unskilful diplomatist. “They no end of guns and money. There may be a fleet ■of them in' the Bay any morning. But it’s, deuced awkward for .a; fellow in the ’meantime to be reminded of his bill arid to- feel hungry.” . i “Why should not Captain MacCarthy have a room here ? said" Miss*/Westrbpp// suddenly. ;' ‘ ‘There’s plenty of .house-room;-r goodness knows; and he’s such fun !■ And wouldn’t “it be poetic justice—isn’t it perhaps a small history of our timethat we, who evicted

him |from his cabin twenty yearsr ago, should instal him in the Castle now ” \ .■"■ ■ ■ - The very things that struck /myself,'/but >1 was afraid to ask. ’ By Jove, Mabel, you are a witch L or -an angel. You are making a new man of me/’ cried Harry, who had,'several-, times lately become dimly unconscious with what floods of radiance this bright spirit was- suffusing his withered life. “Why do you do it, Mab? J;What do you expect from me ? I can never do anything to make you happy— more than a big dog—can I?”' : V “You have done it already, dear,” said Mabel, with a mother’s fond look of pride, .“for you are a new man ! • * , ‘ * No wonder that Miss Deborah Harman, retailing rumors of these doings to the Neville girls, should hint at the gravest fears that affection could suggest as to the mental and moral condition of the Hon. Miss Westropp. . “Frank” Harman, being content with equipping the three Misses Neville with bows and arrows, and getting the young Guardsman ''to ' allow himself to be put up for the Club, and hinting what an adorable place /Lord Clanlaurance’s lawn would make for a garden, party, was not inclined to be too hard upon the Wild Irish Girl whose eyes had attracted the Nevilles to a dull neighborhood • but Miss Deborah, in whose mind the acidity of personal rivalry was now added to .the promptings of apostolic zeal, was less disposed to spare the sisterly rod. “There are really limits to everything, and only that Hans is so provokingly easygoing with women, he would let Lord Drumshaughlin know what people are saying. Mr. Harman, you know, is not in the least afraid to say what he thinks,” she said, proudly. “He would throw up the agency altogether only that the Drumshaughlins are so wretchedly noor, and he is anxious .to keep things together as long as he can. But really it is time for some friend of the family" to 'speak. Mabel is turning the place into a perfect menagerie. One does not know what strange-looking n people one may meet, if one visits there—Fenians or French monkeys, or Americans with bowie-knives. Fancy, the police are actually watching the place!” : “We dine with the Westropps this evening,” said Miss Neville, in some alarm. “I like Mabel ever so much she is so engaging and so uncommon, you know , hut Ido hope there will be nothing uncomfortable.” r You are to be envied, my dear Miss Neville,” said Miss Deborah, sweetly. "“You will, perhaps, be taken down to dinner by Dawley, the tailor.” «- ' ‘i.j CHAPTER XXI.—LOTOS-EATER VERSUS . . IRONMASTER. ' . . > You will bore yourself to death in this infernal •V i. said young Mr. ' Flibbert, flogging his trousers with; his riding switch, as the Guardsman and he stood on the steps of the Club, with minds as vacant as the sleepy square in front of them, which was large enough for the Life Guards Grey themselves to manoeuvre in, and at this contained no sign of life except a » en 0r wo ! clucking tunefully in the lazy sunshine. • , Oh, no,.if I don’t bore other -people to death,” said Neville. “I like the place. Don’t you?” As a matter of fact little Flibbert had never felt happier in his life. Here he was patronising a Life Guardsman as rich as a silver mine on the father’s - side and inheriting the tip-top blood of the WinsS r i^ ghs ; (^ 0 had been following, it back to' the Middle Ages in the Club copy of Debrett.) ; A small audience, just to see with what ease he bore himself, would have completed the Sub-Inspector’s - self-satis- / faction. But it would never do to let the world know this,, He shrugged his shoulders with the air of one for whom a stirring world of wits and bright eyes was languishing, while duty condemned him to listen to yi the morning song of the poultry of Drumshaughlin. v One Irish village is as good as >; another/’ he remarked, resignedly, “and as cursedly bad.” - - GlengJriffi?” Wlly d ° pe ° ple COme 80 lon V a way to see Glengar^?”{KX),^^a, ■ y : ■

|£ .-“They come because they have not got to stay,’’ said Flibbert, laughing gaily at his own paradox, and making a note of it for further circulation. “'The people who are admiring the rocks to-day will be try. ing one another’s temper tomorrow, and will hail the long car as a deliverer the day after,/for taking them away to Kenmare or to Old Harry. Surely you /don’t go in for scenery and that kind of^ thing?” X/ / /: “No, nb,” said Neville, r somewhat nettled to find himself obliged to account for his presence in Glengariff, “but I like to have - beautiful and simple things around me, and I think ; there is plenty here /to interest a fellow if he looks about.” : “Yes,” said little Flibbert, who was apt to let his wit run away with him when he felt himself in the satiric vein. “There is one of our most eminent citizens—old Cambie, the linen-draper, opposite— see the bill for sale under the Bankruptcy Court on the shutters. The old gentleman is in the horrors. That is his little girl going for the doctor. 'Then he is only imitating his betters,” said Neville, with some disgust. “The 'steward told me just now he spent the night holding down some young squire from near Bantry who’s in the horrors, too.” Yes, younp 1 Bloodstone, of Broadlandsthere’s an impression that he and the scullery-maid are married. The Bloodstones are broken,' horse foot, and artillery.” j. “It seems to me everybody in this country is bankrupt or going to, be, except you gentlemen who have the governing of it. You, at all events, ought to see some good in it.” “Oh, of course, it has its amusing side,” laughed the little police officer, mistaking*the young Englishman s disgust for a compliment, which enabled him to forget the tangle of debts which was secretly wound round his own legs and arms, “only for the horrible sameness of the thing. Here’s old Captain Grogan now, toddling across the square at precisely the same hour as he has come for twenty years past, and he will make precisely the same joke that he has made for twenty years, seize the same chair and the same paper, and maundet over the same measure of brandy-and-\tfater till old Captain Grumpus is wheeled in at one o’clock in his bath-chair to resume the same battle over the campaign in China. - You see, it becomes rather slow, sneered Flibbert, who, having found it heaven to get into the Club, was now beginning to find a higher heaven in despising it. “I should think all that was comfortable enough,” said Neville, simply. “I don’t find life very brilliant anywhere. Don’t often find .crowded London rooms every bit as dull as that square “Ah, the Harmans!” cried young Mr. Flibbert, hailing the Harman family trap, with an enthusiasm perhaps heightened by the sense of escape from the appeal to his own experiences of London drawingrooms. “We. are ! going to invoke your sisters’ aid * for a flower-showmay we count upon you?” “I’m of no use at that kind of thing,” said Nev ill®, but if anybody thinks I am, ; I always go upon the principle of not objecting.”-// /..•/. -■/•/.' 'g In , truth, .young! Neville was / beginning to feel amazingly at home amidst his ; new surroundings. )Yhen hp looked out oil the map for Glengariff, it was with no more thought of the place or the people than one who buys a pearl necklace has of the country of the pearldivers. He considered it solely as- a portion of land and water which had the happiness to be in the immediate neighborhood of Miss Westropp. If Lord Clanlaimance’s Castle were as distant as the Sahara Desert, and/ as ugly, he would : have-rented it all the same. His one vague notion of what brought him to Glengariff was that of lying like a big dog at his mistress’s feet, blinking faithfully at her in the sun. He had not imagination enough, or selfishness enough/ to -think what he was to do with himself in the necessary intervals. He would not have repined in the least if he had found himself a thousand miles away from billard balls and betting tapes. '-//What he was " not -in the least prepared for was to find that he had stumbled into the oddest new world, which was as . unlike the

■■■ ■ : " world' seen“from;the r bh^sahtKemum) ! world seen from the Chrysanthemum Club windows as a wild rose was unlike an orchid, and—more surprising stillthat it was interesting:.- him |a I great deal more. Doubtless, -if ; Miss Westropp had not shown that wild ■j [interest; of ~ hers in, the natives, he would have com© ■ and gone without observing particularly whether the People were black, white, or yellow whether they spoke 'Gaelic l or Cherokee; ; but now that his attention was directed to the subject,' he began to find a certain opiate charm in the lazy Spanish melancholy of the : ] place. The men seemed to puff away their sorrows in their tobacco-smoke. It seemed to ; him that the children were more at ease in their rags than the young gentlemen in the bow .window of the Chrysanthemum were' in their high collars. Irish poverty has the picturesque advantage. of having smiles more easily at command than tears. We easily forgive the misery that a small coin or even a kind word from us can dissolve into happy dimples and rude sonnets of liquid gratitude. Charity in this form becomes a heady dissipation. Young Neville indulged in it as lawlessly as, : Father Phil, and became almost as papular. He forgot all about the smokiness ■of the cabins in the rich caressing word of welcome. Even those Irish peasants who have forgotten all else of their 7 own ancient tongue, still go to the old Gaelic fount for ; their language of endearment their mcbgragals and o urn’e'e ns , . ■ which are no more to be done into English than the /Mass; and there is a quaint religious spell of its own ;in this worship in the lost tongue. Then Neville, who, because he was the shyest, was supposed to be the stiffest of mankind in his relations with the softer sex, was immeasurably pleased to find that the peasant girls had an instinctive confidence in his honest blue y eyes. > Their open, fearless faces and merry eyes were as ready to sparkle and laugh under his glance as mountain brooks in the sunshine. Those who have endured the miseries of a shy man will not need to be told That, to such unwieldy creatures no womanly flattery can be so sweet as a look of confidence from an untutored girl. Any man may have flattery who can pay for it, but it is only a good face that an ; innocent girl will look straight at without confusion, though it is, oftener than hot, a plain face. Finally, having been stunned all his life in the domestic circle with % the praises of industry and iron, he found a relief in the dreamy, out-at-elbows, half-happy, half-despairing apathy of life in and about Drumshaughlin;. and having been drilled in a regiment of young men, who all dressed, lived, and thought alike, according to a stern creed which cripples young souls more remorselessly than the Chinese do their children’s toes, it was quite a •i novel, and, after the first start or two, not unpleasant sensation to find himself plunging into wild, free, barbaric latitudes, where young men still talked of dying for a sentiment, and were actually preparing to do it. So far .as I have observed, Englishmen have their doubts about their own national stiffness of tongue . and joints, as they, once in a way, have even 'about the . Christian - Revelation. They have not the least notion of forsaking the one or the other, but they have, a weakness^ for „things as different as possible from their own received beliefs, if only because they are different. Neville did not mean to have his own ’■ clothes cut by Dawley, nor himself to engage in treasonable practices; but outlandish garments and treason were like potheen whisky among the illicit; pleasures of the country, and, right or wrong, the whole life of the place was so much more piquant than two rows of,: perfectly dressed people in carriages going up the Row, to yawn in the faces of other two rows .of ditto ditto coming down, i ; > lpj (To be continued.) pi I