The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 14 July 1921, Page 3

The Storyteller

(By William O’Brien.)

WHEN WE WERE BOYS

CHAPTER XXV.— (Continued.) The flush of passionate rhetoric and the laugh of goodhumored guilt and high spirits were perpetually chasing one another on Ken Rohan’s face. “I suppose that is what you call penitence in the Latin Quarterfirst kneel to your Father-confessor, and then block his biretta,” ho said, blushing and laughing. “Well, I have taken a longwinded way of saying that Religion may be trusted to take care of itself —almost as long-winded as if it were an attack on Christianity. Let us have plenty of air and sunlight and all that will come right, without our shutting ourselves up in that torture-chamber of self-consciousness which our modern enlightenment has invented for itself in place of the medieval rackand which may be just as stifling as the Leads of Venice, and break every bone in one’s body every bit as maddeningly as the Parisian Bed of Leather. Let that pass; but” — and here the hot, eager look again flashed back into power— “our poor old land is not so well able to take care of herself Jack, you don’t mean, you can’t mean, that you are going to make one other deserter from her thin battalions just, too, when young blood is panting for the first rush of the battle!”

“Suppose I demand to be disbanded with your standing enemies of cannibals?”

No, noyou wrong your birth —you wrong your manhood —with quibbleswith treason that! You can’t mean to suggest that desertion of our own poor old stricken and sorrowful mother at home is the first step to drying the tears of mothers in Arabia or Peru; you don’t mean to say that these hills, where our fathers fought that long losing fight for faith and home, where the very air thrills with their stories, where every glen is strewn with their ruined shrines and fortresses and their graveyards; you don’t mean —you daren’t say ! —all this represents to you nothing but so much land surrounded by water, like an island in the South Pacific; you know, you feel as well as I, that all these delicate threads of association, these myriad subtle tendrils of kinship and of common sufferings and common hopes, twine round every joint and power of our being in a sacred nerve-system of their own, to which we owe some of the most aerial music, some of the divinest intimations of human nature, and that a true heart, like a stone cast into a pond, has to begin at the centre of duty, home, and love, and as sure as it begins there will go on in expanding circles from its own hearth, over its own town, its own country, its own human kind, until its influence at the last widens into the ocean of Eternal Love. Psha! of course, you have been only teasing me with one of your confounded paradoxes, and I see “Numero Deux” this moment forming on your irreverent lips.”

“Ken, I feel like one of those medieval rakes who, when disablement ruined, were always despatched to fight for the Holy Sepulchre. Hearing you talk is like going out to the Crusades. But it’s no use. It’s all very well for you strong hulking unshakable Tancredsapropos, Ken,” he demanded with a start, “where have you been hiding those broad shoulders of yours and that biceps? I never remarked before what a very monster you grow ! —you will never sheath sword till you burst in over the walls of Jerusalem among the Saracens; but for nous autres, we feather-headed Rinaldosbah! I’d go a thousand miles to hear the “Ecco il fonte del riso ” of the Sirens, and I should be only enormously obliged to that witch of a woman — what’s her name?—to show me the way.”

The other, as if a thought struck him, suddenly faced his friend and stared at him. “Come,” he said, “it was not to tell me things of that sort that you came here. Tell me frankly; why did you open your heart to me as you have done to-day?” f

. “Jo n’en sais rien! Because I felt the necessity for confessing, as a gipsy might for stealing.” Again the light tone all in an instant grew tremulous, and his face succumbed as under the talons of a bird of prey to the deform-

ing work ofovrinkles and livid hues. “Ah, yes!—it was because I felt as if it were going to be the last reputable act of my life. Becauseyou may well think the irreligion of La Mere Medecine has its comic side! —because I have some presentimentsome witch’s shibboleth cry—haunting devil-knows-what within me —that seems to say we will never meet again, we two, quite like this.”

He looked so broken that Ken Rohan felt strong enough to take him in his arms like a sick child. “Tush!” he cried; “Let me kick over that witch’s cauldron right away Listen to me for ten seconds, and see if I don’t confute that bit of prophecy and send your midnight hags to their broomsticks. My dear boy, I suffered just like you under the torturing-irons of the same three cruel devils —disappointed love, hungry energies, and empty pockets. 1 roamed the blasted heaths like you, with just such another mess of hell-broth seething in my heart. Did you ever notice with what agonies and fevers an angry pustule gathers, and how, at one small prick of the lancet, out flics the fever like an exorcised devil, and the healthy blood bounds through your veins again for joy? Jack, old man, my devil’s gone the simplest of all possible pricks—• and so shall we send your’s shrieking after him. Read that letter.”

He took out of its envelope in his breast-pocket a letter stamped with the florid green crest and daring motto, “To Arms!” of the revolutionary organ in Dublin, and set Jack deciphering the following note in the weird hermetic characters which are as sacred to critics as the symbols of their prescriptions are to doctors:

Confidential.

“Office of the X : Y Z St.

“Dublin, October 4, 186 —.

“Dear Sir, —Your ballad has made a stir. It evinces qualities so uncommon that I am tempted to write in the hope of stimulating you to other and systematic work in the same direction. For one reason or another, our movement has sadly lacked literary inspiration. The base Parliamentary agitators have made men sick of the- very names of eloquence and poetry, and have set them busy forging pikeheads and looking up rifles instead. Besides, ours is so rudely democratic an uprising, that the cultured class shrink from soiling their silks and velvets in such rough company, and our stormy young democrats, in revenge, rage against mere intellectual graces as foppery and carpetwar. Iso strongly feel that no movement of national proportions can subsist long upon no better intellectual pabulum than the passwords and gabble of secret lodges, than I have time and again revolved plans for lighting a more generous flame in the youth of the country, and giving our movement an outward and visible form, which would appeal to the pride of our race and the respect of nations. If you can see your way to rendering me regular assistance to that end, in whatever literary form you may cast your thoughts, and whether here in Dublin or through the post, I hope to be able to suggest financial arrangements which will lie satis-, factory and if you should chance to know of any others whose literary gifts would be likely to further my views, I shall take it as an additional favor if you will kindly place me in communication with them. I have directed our cashier to remit for the ballad, and beg you to believe me

“Yours very faithfully,

“Our disease is the same —suppresed fever; the remedy is action—action, with a dash of inspiration in it; and there goes the tucket of drums!” said Ken Rohan, while the other toiled through the editor’s gnarled pen-work. “It’s the very thing for you as well as me. You can turn off these things as fast as a smith can make sparks fly. You can wrap our struggle in glittering robes of wit and fancy enough to dazzle Bagdad. * Sir, we shall scatter brightness like a pair of sun-gods, and make an unsuspecting world gape, too, I warrant you. We shall touch an electric button here, and millions of our kin, from pole to pole, will answer with the sweetest music of their hearts. We will have a little Grassmere of our own —why not “The - Glen Poets,” as well as “The Lake Poets”? Who knows? Fellows may talk of our lying day-dreaming here to-day in the heather, as they tell of poor Davis and Dillon under their oak-tree that day in the Phoenix Park. And, then, I can tell you that cashier is by no means the shabbiest person in the partnership—by Jove, sir didn’t my grumb-

ling old dad look, queer when I shied a cheque for four pounds at his head, the old Goth!”

Jack Harold had mastered the contents of the letter. He folded itj irresolutely, and for the moment sat listening to his friend’s boyish chatter with a mournful smile. “My poor Ken!” he said at last, returning the letter. “Then you have not seen the Stop Press edition of the Cork papers ?”

Ken looked at him. “No,” he said, tightening the muscles of his mouth involuntarily.

“That journal of yours was suppressed last night, and the types carted away to Dublin Castle. The editor is in Richmond jail, charged with treason-felony.”

Ken Rohan said nothing. There was a singing in his ears, as if some heavy body were squeezing the lobes of his brain down flat. When his thought-mechanism began to work again, tin? first idea it importuned him with was — terror of his father’s triumphant horror, lest the cheque should have been presented and dishonored. This happy irrelevancy broke the force of the blow, as a bullet will sometimes glance off a button or a coin over the heart, and leave only a hot smart, when it might have left a deathwound. He sprang to his feet.

“By Jove!” he cried, “I musn’t give the governor that crow. I will have to lay hold of that cheque, by hook or crook. Come!”

< “Willingly, if you will only tell me whither,” said the other, bewildered and haggard. “To the devil, if one could get there without so many disgusting formalities. I wonder what better could two fellows like you and me do than walk into old Dargan’s back parlour, clap him our revolvers to the head, and help ourselves to his gold and notes. What else is that little policeman doing? What else has the old harpy himself been doing all his life? Patsy Driscoll’s lugger would put us across to France in a din d’oeil,” he added, with a harsh, bantering laugh.

‘The Glen school of poetry is getting on — Glen singers in a new sphere of imagination as Gaol-Birds,” laughed Ken Rohan, who, soothly, was too much rapt in his own thoughts to pay the smallest attention to his friend’s banter, and answered him by a process of what the physiologists call unconscious cerebration.

“En tout cas, gaol-birds,” said the other, doggedly. “The arrests in Dublin are en masse. There is to be a Special Commission.”

“It looks like business,” exclaimed Ken, with sudden animation. “Depend upon it, the Government would not have struck only that we’re on the eve of stirring days. It was perhaps a race who should strike first, and now comes the striking back.” \

'“Our hearts are mighty, our skins are whole, and burnt sack will be the Jssue, njy friendit is always the conclusion of “Freedom’s Battle” in your Ireland. We hack the Queen’s English most puissantly— others as well as I.”

“That’s ridiculous, and it’s unjust,” cried Ken, hotly. “You don’t seriously dream that all this fermentation of a racethese young peasant armies that spring! up every moonlight —the militia regiments—ay, even the regulars that we hear yelling our chorusesthe American flotilla —the war-worn Captain Mike MacCarthys that are swarming over in every American steamer All this is going to vanish as softly as a mountain mist, merely because the Government has made a descent on a newspaper office and laid the editor by the heels?”

“No —not if the rest of your calculations are as wsubstantial as that .Elysium which you have planted for the Glen Poets with the munificence of a Bon Dieu.”

“By George, was there ever such an earthquake-shock for our poor paradise of pleasure! Well, sir, we’ve only got to turn out like Adam and make the best of it. Or rather, why should we give upGnir paradise at all without' a tussle for it ? No doubt the flowers will get a bit bruised if we’ve got to plough our Elysian Fields with cavalrycharges and cannon-wheels but it is not at our age that fellows object to a burst of rifle-music in their heaven by way of psalmody. The case is just this. If this swoop in Dublin means immediate action —why, then, we’re saved the trouble of thinking—it’s 1 Up, and away, my merry, merry men! Roderick vich Alpine Dhu, ho, iero!” If the time is not yet ripe, and if the movement . has still to be kept in high heart— then, it’s a louder call than ever to use our pens while the swords are fashioning. But come

along, 'and I’ll tell you what I mean. Why, what the deuce is the matter with you, Jack?” The elder youth stood surveying him in a mood of curious melancholy. He looked around as if making a mental sketch of the curves and shadows of the mountain glens and the indentations of the great Bay. “Dame!” he cried, shrugging his shoulders, “Monsignor McGrudder would feel himself disablement flattered if he knew how I am haunted. Wouldn’t it be curious if Give me your hand, Ken. Aliens

“Still under the charm of the Weird Sisters!” laughed Ken, receiving his volatile friend’s unaccustomed embrace with wonder, but overmastered by his own clamorous thought. “We’ll scarcely be in time to collar that infernal cheque. By the way, why shouldn’t the governor have his laugh?” he suddenly fell communing with himself. “Poor old dad hasn’t had too many jolly moments lately. The triumph of his prophecies about poetry and rebellion will perhaps save him from realising other aspects of the news. Why, of course he shall have his crow! I’m not the first great poet whose drafts on a perverse public have been delayed in payment. And it’s only delayed. Won’t I have the last of the laugh against the governor by-and-by, that’s all, when my cheque takes rank as a Treasury Bill, as soon as the Irish Republic gets into working order ! Come, and I’ll tell you all my plans. Let’s be off and find the Captain.”

Par hasard, you will find him in tho county gaol.” Then mo will find him there!” laughed Ken, and he dashed down the mountain, taking boulders and quagmires steeplechase-fashion, in a, way that caused Snipe’s black muzzle and short tail to prick up at sight of a paradise of rats while he bounded after him. (To be continued.)