The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 15 September 1921, Page 3

The Storyteller

(By William O'Brien.)

WHEN WE WERE BOYS

CHAPTER XXVlll.—(Continued.)

Miss Westropp was unquestionably responsible for throwing Georgey Meagher and the young Guardsman a good deal together; and could not altogether shut her eyes to the result of rides, croquet-matches, and parlor games (Georgey, like the inexperienced, buoyant-hearted country girl she was, once actually proposed bandaging Reggy Neville for blind-man's-buff) in which the great, shy, faithful soldier found himself warming and sparkling in the'sunbeams of the young Irish girl's ruisselant wit and artless ways. Miss Westropp was not sure that Reggy Neville was not falling in love with Georgey O'Meagher. She was not even sure that she regretted it. Neville himself was almost the only person who did not suspect his danger. He was a, poor hand at psychic analysis; but if he were asked off-hand why he found Glengariff so pleasant he would probably have thought of Harry's otter-hunting as readily as of Georgey O'Meagher's croquet-mallet. Pleasant he unmistakably found it. "What on earth is this the fellows are saying of you, old Reggy?" wrote his friend, Horace Westropp, from Birdcage Walk. "The very least I hear of you is that you have turned Rebel Chief, and are drilling and arming your outlaws by the thousand in the fastnesses of Glengariff. In solemn earnest, dear old man, there are all sorts of stories about the disaffection of the troops of Bantry, and it seems some of the soldiers in their cups have actually named you as designated to head the mutiny. Pray, don't laugh. Also, pray don't send me a second to arrange a duel in your bloodthirsty name. Of course it is all some ridiculous blunder; but I assure you solemnly there has been some portentous communication from the Horse Guards, and you mustn't be thunderstruck if you receive a missive one of these mornings from old Thirlwall cancelling your leave. It would be the best joke of the century, only you are such a muddling old goodnatured Don Quixote, one can never be quite sure there may not be some grain of truth in it. For Heaven's sake run across and join me at the Liverpool Cup, and you and I will dress the whole thing into a practical joke that will drive old Thirlwall out of the service."

Reggy did not run over for the Liverpool Cup. He took the affair in deadly earnest, and by the next post addressed to Lord Thirlwall, who was commanding the Life Guards Grey, a communication as stiff as that grumpy veteran's rheumatic knee-joints: to wit: "My Lord, — T am informed that some insulting nonsense as to the object of my visit here has been whispered to you, and that, so far from kicking the person who brought you the report, your lordship is actually about to address a serious communication to me upon the subject. If the report is groundless I have to entreat your lordship's forgiveness. If my information is accurate, I may, perhaps, save you and myself any further annoyance upon the subject by begging you to accept my resignation of a commission in a corps whose commander is capable of such an affront to the honor of one of his officers. I have the honor," etc.

■'- Nor was the young Guardsman's temper mollified by what happened between Mr. Hans. Harman and himself in the hunting field a morning or two after. "Will you allow one of the aborigines and an old fellow to make a suggestion to the unsuspecting stranger, Captain Neville?" said the agent, while the dogs were fumbling about the gorse of the cover.

"Willingly; only I warn you I'm the most mulish of men."

"It is," said Harman, speaking more seriously than usual, "that you will not increase the difficulties of men in our own rank in Ireland by giving to our enemieslow and dangerous enemies—the countenance' of a name like yours."

"Oh! I thought you were going to ask me not to give a black bean against your friend Mr. Dargan," said Neville, brusquely.

"Well, we're not running Dargan on the score of his ancestry, of course; but Dargan is a loyal man—Dargan is not under the observation of the police," said the agent in low, significant tones.

- "If half they say of him be true, I'd think more of the police if he was."

"Eh?" stammered the agent, growing pale with anger or with doubt or with both.

"I'm not going to discuss Mr. Dargan's virtues," said the Guardsman, haughtily. "But you force me to tell you this much, Mr. Harman—that, so far as experience goes, I am prouder of my own friends in Drumshaughlin than I should be of yours."

There was something about this blunt, downright young Englishman which cowed Hans Harman grievously. "That's right; pitch into us," he said, with an affectation of good-humoured banter. "We're doing England's business, and meet the usual fate of men on foreign service—criticised and thrown over at home. But it is not for the sake of us poor devils of loyalists alone I spoke to you—it was for your own sake, too, as well. You, I dare say, have not heard how these people abuse your confidencehow were, you to know that there is serious disaffection in the Bantry barracks— drunken soldiers have been

actually making free with your name?"

"So this is where the stories that reached the Horse .Guards came from!" was the thought that flashed on Neville's angry brain. He looked straight into the agent's eyes, as he said deliberately: "If you can find me anybody making free with my name who is not disposed to shelter himself behind drunken soldiers, I will be thankful to you if you will let me know his address; and, in the meantime, Mr. Harman, being a mere Englishman, I intend to treat all the rest of your reports about Ireland as of equal authority with this," and he jerked his horse's head aside with a gesture'of open disgust and contempt. Horace Westropp and the Horse Guards and Mr. Hans Harman had, in fact, all unconsciously conspired to complete the charm which Reggy's residence in the Glen had been weaving around him by such divers aids as grouse moors, otter streams, bright eyes, and the indefinable sense of expanding beyond his own stifling shell. His sisters, it must be admitted, by no means shared his fanaticism. They were growing dreadfully tired of Clanlaurance Castle. They might have made the round of

a dozen of the best houses in Britain, while they were incarcerated in this dreary, draughty old barrack of a castle, oscillating uncomfortably between Mabel's little society and a little society in which they were forced to hear Mabel venomously spoken of, and not very much more enamoured of Frank Harman's bows and arrows than of the American Captain's gift of fortune-telling and outlandish metaphors. They were thoroughly good girls— blooming and natural as if they had not all the effulgence of seven centuries of Winspurleighs to turn their heads on one side of the house, and all Joshua Neville's forges roaring in full blast around them on the other. It was no fault of theirs if they were bred to tastes which did not find satisfaction among the simple scenes and strange people around them. It was only what all girls in all ages would have done in the like circumstances, if they frequently put their heads together at bed-time to moan over an affectionate little note from Lady Asphodel pressing them to be of the party in Primroseshire— they devoutedly recited the litany of all the pleasant people that were staying at Aunt Asphodel's—(l dare say I have mentioned that the Marchioness was a younger sister of Lady Margery)—and if they timidly questioned one another why, if Reggy wanted Mabel, he did not ask her, and get done with it? Besides their preoccupation about losing the party at the Meads, the girls were also vaguely conscious of apprehensions which they rather looked than spoke on a subject into which Georgey O'Meagher's bright black eyes and saucy curls largely entered. The Neville girls were as kind to Georgey as they were to everybody else; but it is perhaps needless to say that the innocent rompish ways of the Irish rustic

beauty did not impress Aunt Asphodel's nieces with the same unmingled delight wherewith they too plainly impressed their brother. The elder girl, especially, noticed so many indescribable nothings that, in urging upon papa the desirability of making a movement towards England

before the Primroseshire party should break up, she thought it her duty delicately to shadow forth her apprehensions of a possible O'Meagher quartering on the Winspurleigh shield. *

"Nonesense, my dear child!" exclaimed Joshua Neville, who, if he knew anything, claimed to know men and women. "That's an uncommonly pretty litte girl; but the notion of a man with eyes in his head thinking of anybody else in the presence of Mabel!—l say you have no right to think your brother a born idiot, child." And he selfishly stifled discussion as to flitting into Primroseshire, by intimating that Aunt Asphodel always made his head ache, whereas he had never once felt his temples throb in the bracing air of Glengariff. Papa's health and happiness were the last words with Joshua Neville's daughters. Ida and her sisters, like the dear girls that they were, dismissed Primroseshire .with a sigh (and possibly with a little cry), and set themselves resolutely to like Lord Clanlaurance's rookery. Wicked, wicked Joshua Neville! and all too-confiding Ida! Ido verily believe that what the ironmaster was thinking of above all else was his own delicious readings from the German poets, and his own conviction, rapturously whispered to himself a hundred times a day in the inmost, inmost shrine of his simple, rugged hidden heart; that he would be the happiest ironmaster who ever lit a furnace if he had Mabel Westropp for his daughter-in-law, i

And this young lady was all the time an observer how Reggy Neville was beginning to lie in wait for the comings and goings of Miss Georgey, and never once frowned—if she did not actually smile. She found herself degenerating into a shameless match-maker also in the matter of poor Harry's unspoken love. With Harry unrequited love at the Mill meant prolonged visits to Moll Carthy's. Whisky was the only mistress to whom he could declare'his passion without the terror of making a speech or getting laughed at, Mabel saw with misery that poor little Katie Rohan's too evident terror of his attentions was driving him more and more to the feet of his more compliant goddess. She courted little Katie so assiduously for Harry's sake that she ended by doating on her for her own sake; for, once the timid shrinking from a great lady evaporated under Mabel's soft sunshiny smiles, Katie put forth all the pure sweetness of her nature as confidingly as a violet in a safe woodland nook, and the elder girl wound her arms round her with the fondness of a mother thrilling under the artless caresses of a winsome baby. Katie was a curious study to her. In household matters she left Mabel a thousand miles behind. In the making of a lemon-pudding, or in prescribing for a sore throat, or managing the pillows of a sick bed, she was as practical as a certificated nurse, and as confident of her own strength as a navvy. But of the great world beyond the Mill at Greenane, she knew no more than the robin-redbreast knows of the atmosphere of the sun. All she was aware of was that Myles Rohan was the wisest of men, her mother the noblest of women, and Ken the bravest of heroes; and, for the rest, the great universe an enlarged chapel with the gold-fretted firmament for, a roof, and the everlasting angels for a choir; with wicked spirits, also, doubtless hovering somewhere in exterior darkness, but kept in subjection by Mother Rosalie's prayers, and fleeing in terror under the all-subduing eye of Father Phil. If it ever occurred to her to think what could be her own part among the rolling world, it was doubtless in the spirit in which the' mouse of the fable might have dreamed the night the lion did it the honor of allowing the creature to nibble his high and mighty chains away. Miss Westropp, looking down from the heights of her own wide experience of half a London season and (in very truth) much anxious thought and reading of her own, watched this miracle of simplicity with the protecting tenderness with which a Guardian Angel overshadows a child on its knees at evening prayer. In the beautiful book of Tobias, the Guardian Angel helps the young Tobias to a wife; but when the Guardian Angel commenced to hint never so dimly of Harry as a husband, Katie's little soul shrank and trembled with pain as though it was one of the wicked spirits that had evaded Father Phil's vigilance and was whispering to her.

"Oh, don't! don't I never—never again!" she cried in an agony of tears, and Mabel, who was scarcely less fright-

ened than Katie herself, took her in her arms, and, though she did not in the least comprehend, assured her never, never, never!—"l thought you knew," she murmured, when at last a reassured smile began to dawn through her blinding tears.—" Knew, dear ?"- exclaimed Mabel, in bewilder-

ment.—"l mean that lam going to be a nun," she said, in a joyous whisper, such as might ripple from .the lips of a West-End beauty confiding to her sister the first news that the young Duke had proposed and been accepted. Then, as if eager to atone for her passing association of Mabel with the spirits of darkness, she murmured: "You won't tell if I show you something, will you?" to which the answer was of the sort which enables young ladies to dispense with speeches in schoolgirl conferences. They were in Katie's own little snowy room with the tender blue forget-me-not papering. She unlocked her work-box, and, after taking out a movable crimson nest of compartments for thimbles, needles, and what not, produced a packet of letters tied with white satin ribbon from the cavity underneath, and proceeded to unfold the love-letters which had been passing between Mother Rosalie and her little pupil ever since Katie had quitted the convent at Clonard. Such a seraphic smile as Katie kissed them with! and how those fading puce pages from poor old Mother Rosalie's cramped knuckles glowed and shone with a light of affection such as never yet beamed on a court of justice out of the correspondence in a breach of promise case! and how Mabel Westropp longed to take off her shoes while treading in that pure virginal shrine where the old nun trembling on the threshold of heaven, and the child who seemed to have but lately left it, whispered to one another the beautiful secrets of their souls. One thing was clear to Mabel. It was all over with unlucky Harry. This child was engaged in a love-match in which the mere thought of poor Harry was grotesque and blasphemousa love-match as inexorable and as enduring as eternity.

"You understand now!" said Katie, watching with flushing cheek the effect of Mother Rosalie's artless heaventhoughts.

"Yes, dear," said Miss Westropp, almost in a whisper, with a deep sigh, re-tying the packet with the white satin

string; and by an impulse she could not control, she took Katie's hand in her own, and bent down and kissed it, in token that the subject of poor Harry's ill-starred love was over between them for ever.

(To be continued.)