The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 22 September 1921, Page 3

The Storyteller

(By William O’Bbien.)

WHEN WE WERE BOYS

CHAPTER XXVlll.—(Continued.)

This terror once removed, however, Katie discomfort at sight of Harry completely disappeared, and the poor lad began to find himself as much at home in the family circle at the Mill as Snipe curled up on the hearthrug. Having no higher an opinion of himself than he had of Snipe, he was quite content like him to lie dumb' in the firelight and blink his eyes respectfully at his mistress, and lie in wait for the slightest hint to fetch and carry for her; while Katie, for her part, began to entertain towards him very much the same sort of fondness that children commonly feel for a big dog. Mabel, only too happy to see him devouring tea out of Katie's dainty flowered evening-cups, instead of dipping in Moll Carthy's pewter measures, had not the heart to tell poor Harry that the secret of his present contentment was the certainty of his future disappointment. It must be stated, also, that Miss Mabel felt a growing vague necessity for assuring some mysterious accusing spirit within her that it was her interest in Harry's love affair which made her so frequent a figure in the chimney-corner at the Mill; she felt reluctant to cut off so capital a plea of self-justification. She did not dare to ask herself why young Rohan's name so incessantly crossed and recrossed her daily life, without "her ever summoning it up, and- yet without her ever feeling provoked to hear it. But when a young person, who has been listening to Georgey O'Meagher crowning a young man's brows with roses during the day, has sufficient patience left to watch new crowns of roses being plaited for him all the evening by . an idolatrous mother and fanatical sister, the argus-eyed reader will know how to discount the firmness of soul of the haughty patrician who only a few days ago chafed under the scene at Mullagh and railed at lovers as the cutpurses and assassins of human happiness! I offer no opinion myself. I am perfectly sure that Mabel would have torn her flesh with whips if anybody had suggested to her that she was falling in love with Ken Rohan. Such a thought would have been to her simply —inconceivable. But lam sure also that it was not Mrs. Rohan's cream-cakes alone that caused her to spend so many joyous October evenings in the ruddy parlor firelight at the Mill, trolling glees and duets with/Katie, plotting future little raids of benevolence with the President of the Ladies' St. Vincent de Paul Society, and throwing Myles Rohan into ecstasies of perplexity between regard for his fame as an invincible backgammon-player and incapacity to hurt, even on a backgammon-board, an opponent so divinely fair.

“What can have delayed Harry?” asked Miss Westropp for the second or third time on one of those occasions. Harry had been falling into the habit of dropping in at or after tea-time at the Mill to pick up his sister and see her home. It gave him an excuse for coming, and it gave her an excuse for staying. It was growing late now, and Myles Rohan, who was forbidden late hours, had pushed away the backgammon-board and was - looking sleepy. “Ken, put on your hat; and see Miss Westropp safe to the Castle,” said Mrs. Rohan, to whom the order seemed as natural as it would seem' to a London middle-class mother to despatch her son for a cab. Nor. did it seem a very much graver matter to the young people. “All right, mother —Snipe and myself,” said Ken, gaily. “And won’t Master Harry catch it!” said the young lady, half-laughingly, half-assuredly, tying on her hat. • When they got out of the homely warmth of the parlour into the open air not a word passed between them. Not that there was embarrassment on either side. She had .no more apprehension of a renewal of the Mullagh nightingale song than of the sullen wintry sky falling. As for him, he was undoubtedly ill at ease whenever Miss Westropp was in the Mill parlor. She appeared to him to be as beautiful as the sun. When a luminary of the

sun’s ‘size compresses itself into a room twenty-six feet by eighteen, sunworshippers naturally feel it hot and blinding and do not breathe comfortably. But lie had a fanciful notion that, once out in the expansive air, this bright being’s brightness was not so oppressive—that she had more room to shine without overwhelming so he marched along filling himself gratefully with her sunshine, entirely oblivious of the fact that, to the eye of the general public/ it was not sunlight but darkly drifting clouds and deathdealing October "winds that were in possession of the horison. All happy moments are moments of silence. Words are but the strugglings through which they come or the sighs with which they go. This short, silent walk was a moment of beautiful felicity for young Rohan —felicity so reverent, so unearthly, it reminded him (be it without im- - piety said) of his feelings as an altar-boy when changing the flowers or lights about the Blessed Sacrament during the Forty Hours’ Adoration, As they passed the lodge-gate, with the stone catomountains grinning from the pillars overhead, the winds were prowling murderously among the branches of the great elm-tree' avenue, and the killed and wounded autumn leaves were falling around them at every blast. Now and again, the moon managed to tear its way out of the clouds, as if • to detect the night - winds at their s deadly work ; but the moment after it was thrust back behind the hurrying black clouds, as if by a brutal cordon of policemen in their dark great-coats. As they passed a point where the umbrageous shadows of the avenue were thickest, just where it opened into the wide sweep of the lawn and gravel before the Castle steps, Snipe, who had been caracolling nimbly after the shadows raised by the occasional bursts of moonlight, suddenly barked violently, and then fell back with a yell of pain. The two young people started. At the same moment a torn streak of moonlight shot across the avenue, and they saw a dark figure springing over the wire paling from the angry dog. It was the work of an instant. The figure was buried in a dense shrubbery, and all was still. It might have been some optical fancy, only that Snipe’s deep growl was still breaking the silence. “Who—what could it be?” she said in a tremulous whisper, catching him irresolutely by the arm. “I suppose somebody about the Castleperhaps some fellow with an eye upon the pheasants,” he replied, not knowing particularly what he said. “Nobody that will harm you, Miss Westropp, anyway.” “I am such a wretched coward,” she said, letting go his arm and walking steadily forward to the door. “Thank you, Mr. Rohan. Mrs. Keyes will teach me courage until Harry comes,” she said, extending her hand, as he pulled at the housekeeper’s bell. “I wonder has he come?” she added, almost to herself, looking round with a shudder at the mournful night and the dark screen of foliage in which 1 the figure had disappeared; and she somehow slightly drew in her hand. “Bless my soul, Miss, and isn’t Master Harry with , you?” exclaimed the old prim-capped housekeeper, who herself stood in the doorway. “Then he is not —nor Captain MacCarthy?” “The Captain, you know, Miss, has his /latch-key but he hasn’t been in to dinnerhas not been in since morning.” - “Is is there anything to fear? Can anything have happened? Tell me —do!do not be afraid to trust me!” she said, turning to her companion with a white, grave face. “Not that I know, Miss Westropp—certainly not,” he replied; but the news in the morning papers flashed back upon his mind, and no wthat he thought of it, the man who clambered over the fence 1 was dragging something v like a rifle with him. She noticed by the lamplight the spasm of doubt crossing his face, and he saw her own face grow whiter. “I will try if I can’t beat up Harry and the .Captain, or” —a thought suddenly struck him“maybe Mrs. Keyes and yourself will allow me to stay with you till they come — cannot be very long.” “God bless us! my darling child — frightened you look! —as if you had seeen something!” cried the old house- - keeper, drawing the shrinking figure within her arms. i' , “Yes, Mr. Rohan, certainly, you will stay,” she said, de- / cisively. “Something has frightened her.”

“Only a man that the dog barked at in the plantation beyond—some , poacher, I dare say, or somebody making a short cut home through the Park,” said Ken Rohan, following the housekeeper through a shadowy, gaping corridor to the little snuggery Mabel had fitted up for her guests among the vast solitudes of the dreary mansion— one of the little Arab cooking-fires you see nestling among the colossal pink-granite ruins of Memphis. Miss Westropp. would have it that she was now all right; but the housekeeper would insist on dragging her off to her own little room to take off her things and douche her wrists and temples with eau-de-cologne. Ken took a turn or two up and down opposite the glowing hearth, on which a fire of pine-logs and peat was frisking and crackling merrily. Then something seemed to draw him towards the quaint trifoliated window, and he found himself again surveying the spot where the figure had started out of the darkness and as quickly returned to it. The moon had again obtained a momentary ascendency over the rebellious clouds, and was flashing out and back with the warring fortunes of the moment. His eye suddenly rested on the penumbra of a man cast by the moonlight beyond the fringe of the deeper mass of shade made by the trees. The shadow paced up and down measuredly. It stopped, and a second * shadow crept up from the gloom of the avenue, and the two seemed to hold ghostly communion together, after which both shadows shrank back into the mass of gloom. Again the moon got the worst of it in the elemental war, and all was darkness. “I am afraid I have not distinguished myself,” said a voice behind, and turning with a start he saw that Miss Westropp had re-entered the room. “I have made, oh! so many valiant resolutions, and then at the first shadow of dangeroh, that shadow!” she again broke down into a shuddering whisper, and sank into a chair. “I do wish that Harry would come!” “Of course he will come. If you had seen as many shadows as Harry and I have seen together by moonlight lately, one wayfarer more or less after dark would not strike you as very odd,” he replied with a cheery smile. “You have not told mel do Avant you to tell me trulyis there trouble coming? and do you really, really think it is not madness for our poor unarmed peasant lads to think of coping with British regiments and artillery—heavy guns that would smash through this house as easily as if it were cardboard?” she asked, looking him earnestly in the face. ' He started. It was the first time the question had ever presented itself to his own mind so pointedly, “It would be indeed impossible not to answer such a question as that truly,” he said, his head involuntarily bending in homage to the sweet searching face that was fixed upon him. “My answer is that Ido not know, and I have no right to ask. There are soldiers at the head of this moveveterans of the greatest Avar of the century. Captain Mike is but one of thousands —one of tens of thousands who are dispersed through every parish in the , country, or awaiting the .signal to embark on ships that will bring them to this very Bay. The men who carried the Cemetery Heights at Gettysburg may be trusted to know their business. It is theirs to decide what is to be done. We of the rank-and-file have only to wait- till the word is passed and do it. -I have told you all I know, Miss Westropp, except this — upon my honor, I am not aware of any immediate peril pending in this locality.” “My poor Harry!” she said, bursting into tears. How he seemed to envy Harry the danger, the death, that would make such tears flow for him ! How reverently he would kiss the bullet that would entitle him to them! And oh ! to think of kissing those tears away on a field of victory. He sat silent, as though a word would be sacrilegious. ; , i “How you must despise me?” she said, looking up all at once with a sad smile breaking through glassy barriers. “Do you know, I have been schooling myself to this ever so longpersuading myself that, when the time comes, I should surrender Harry to his country like 'a heroineand you see the result, the moment even a shadow seems to cross me!” ' .7 “I fancy,” said Ken Rohan,, “women bear the apprehension of danger worse than men, but meet the reality more-' bravely.” ,

'\ ‘ - I v v - , . “Some women do,” she said with a sigh. “There is that Italian girl in Mrs. Browning’s glorious poem. Do you know I have been reading it over and over again these days to gain courage?— one reads the Bible for courage of another kind. See!” and the book opened where a marker had been inserted at the famous lines —.

Heroic males the country bears — But daughters give up more than sons: Flags wave,. drums beat, and unawares You flash your souls out with the guns, And .take your Heaven' at once. But Ave! —Ave empty heart and home Of life’s life, love! We bear to think You’re gone feel you ; may not come — To hear the door-latch stir and clink, Yet no more you! . . . nor sink. Dear God! when Italy is one, Complete, content from bound to bound, Suppose, for my share, earth’s undone, By one grave in’t!—as one small wound Will kill a man, ’tis found. What then If love’s delight must end, At least we’ll clear its truth from flaws. I love thee, love thee, sweetest friend ! Now take my sweetest without pause, And help the Nation’s cause. And thus of noble Italy We’ll both be worthy ! Let her show The future how Ave made her free, Not sparing life . . . nor Giulio

Nor this . . . this heart-break. Go!

(To be continued.)