The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 24 November 1921, Page 3

The Storyteller

(By William O'Bbien.)

WHEN WE WERE BOYS

I- •, ■_. CHAPTER XXXI.-(Continued.) • ■■; . At this moment, however, ho was not trusting to the inhabitants of the cemetery for company.- In the richer than Rembrandt glow/of/a3. red-hearted ; fire of turf and pine-logs, a number of -young men sat together, around two travellersiwhoiiad r just arrived, and who in : personal appearance were:; ''."distant from one another as the two shores of the Atlantic Ocean. One, who went by the name of Mr. Mahbn'/ was /devoured with all his eyes by Ken Rohan, for:there:sat■:the poet and principal contributor to the suppressed revolutionary organ. Ken looked at him with a face like a verse of Mr. Browning's "Ah! did you once see Shelley plain?" He might,"indeed, have sat for the portrait of a poet, and to a. painter of the seventeenth century rather than of the nineteenth. His costume when he entered was an old and still older-fashioned cloth cloak which fell over his .broad shoulders in picturpsoue folds, arid a soft: felt hat under whose, broad .shade you saw nothing but two'luminous eyes burning in the midst of a gloom of hair.. When the Tyrolese hat slid off, all you noticed 1 still was the thick -fall of intensely black hair streaked . with grey which rolled down in a stately •broad cascade almost to the shoulders, and the large lustrous eyes which looked out of their dusky mist of ,hair glowingly, and yet not as'; if they : ; were fixed Upon any particular • thing. (The grey-streaked black locks have since been shorn by a convict's scissors, and while the icy fangs of six winters were '-.fixing arid unfixing themselves on the : bleak Portland quarries, that, far-away dreamy look of Mr. Mahon's was' brought back to a blinding world of granite-dressing under the spell of a turnkey's oath and cutlass.) The features were white and delicate, as of a man who' either thought too much, or ate too little, or ; both: thin, ; almost, transparent , nose, withj nostrils that were apt to quiver as reeds do in the wind; lips that seemed to quiver,' also in their narrow region of color within the circumambient waves of grey-black beard and moustache; a white.dome of.forehead, looking tapering and not very broad, perhaps owing to the : masses'of shadowy hair that encroached : uponf.it: —altogether. a simple, pathetic, beautiful face,' such as you could imagine lying extended on /a crucifix and,, smiling. So, at least, Ken Rohan in his enthusiasm; thought—for, woe is me! how cruelly our gods . sometimes disappoint us in the flesh! —our 'patriot has h consumptive cough, our beauty a, temper, our poet a hump, our saint takes snuff, even our general wears r spec- : tacles!—v here before him was the man whose poems had given Ken Rohan his first glimpse of uncreated light, and he was the best poem of the lot himself. Less youthful and cooler-headed observers would perhaps make a

more contracted estimate of Mr. Mahon's poems, as well as of his'personal attractions; but it was impossible to know his history of lifelong, passionate clinging to a losing cause without pity for the hapless land and wonder for the strange romantic chances which brought this gentle dreamy creature to be one of the chiefs of a-desperate revolutionary enterprise./Judge v then, our young friend's ecstasy, when he found that Mr. Manon* had admired his own first wild-bird singing in the proscribed journal; and that his great bright eyes glowed still more, brightly when he: heard ...that Ken's was the pen which was" glittering and lightening in the" new secret revolutionary sheet. Jack Harold's ; mission • to : Dublin had s borne immediate fruit, and several",number's;'. of the new journal had already been spirited away to Cork in the porter-casks, sending the strangest electric 'current along the. young nerve-centres of the country, and bringing, back an even stranger interacting spiritual thrill to the young gentleman who worked the battery. Mr. (Mahon.patted; his head, smiling with ever so sweet .a pathos; and the young fellow bent down ..his head ; in ■■ a'. state of '-sacred- happiness : ; which ;- reminded a him singularly of his Confirmation.*Day when the consecrating chrism touched his forehead. '■.■'-. '.-■■*

J. Mr. Mahon's oompanion did not /at, all share ! Ken ; XRohan's unalloyed enthusiasm on the subject of the "poet 1 The General, .'as he was in respectful whispers called,'was /a somewhat low-sized, compactly-built, middle-aged man, with a strong bronzed face, a quiet manner, and a 'decisive' grey < eye—the man of, action in every dine of his clean- : shaven face, and in every stiff, upright hair that risisted to the last the embaldening process which was spreading from the crown of his ; scalp. Unlike the poet's dreamy .vagueness of look as was the dart of his quick eye, his ;; soft, low voice and high-bred /repose of manner offered no less striking a contrast to the hearty boisterous tones and fantastic dialect of Captain Mike. It was West Point against the Ninth Massachusetts Volunteers—the cultured,,skilled, scientific soldier, and the reckless, rollicking son of the people, who made for the Rappahannock with no other education than a brave heart, and a certain knack 'with his rifle. The one mysterious communion cup which united them all was an indescribable feeling of thumping at the heart and tightness in the throat at mention of the name of Ireland; and the sensation was no less masterful, though he was better able : to conceal it, in the cool, almost; cynical-looking General, who had never before this morning laid his eyes on the Irish hills, but had heard at his father g knee forty years, ago the story of his flight from lipperary as leader of one of the rustic tithe battles in • which the troops had been repulsed with slaughter His .first arrival on the Irish shores was of an uncommon character For ( a whole day and a whole night, a stout schooner had been lying off Galley Head, hovering in the track of the American liners, its little row-boat ready in the water, and the men on board eagerly .scanning every dark object that broke upon the Western horizon They were waiting by arrangement for the overdue Guio'n steamer, and Mr. Mahon in his soft hat and flowing cloak was m nominal command of the crew, though there was the strongest reason to think that his thoughts and his gaze were all the time floating millions of miles in the air Shortly after daybreak the look-out man distinguished the riStt : mon :, ied 1 f r nels ' and the sch °°- r *» 4 row boat V ' WlUle tWp ° f he men il ™P ed into the row-boat. Ten minutes afterwards ,the monster steamship.came up ploughing and puffing. The men in the row-b n •where the stern was passing them. As they at the they * •where the stern was passing them. As they did so tiiev > saw a man jump over the railing on the poop/ and '4 I 5 C^o a, th nStant S StGady himS6lf ' take "treme« SI, n T "I" 3 ' T ld St>e a few bxmted figures rush to the railings; but the steamer was already flyinfar from the spot where the body of the man ? over "d • had been engulphed. The boat-men had a few^Sle^ white waters, their own boat tossing like a cockle-shell he aw 7 d T 5? f°*W »» *** Peddles. Th& to their i " ,6Ct emCTge at SOmc little distance, and? to their joy saw it was the head and shoulders of a man" s-mnnnghistily..Twenty strokes V^^7,^W rst'o tiX d f 6 J^?' inthe boat ' the <***& S had til J, r - "" adveilt " re - 4s the Govern- • ment had taken to, swooping upon all Irish-Americans iV, ners at (Jueenstown, this -risky mode of lanSW had hem, ££™ ::": lhe »*« ■&%& he Gene % had,?' °Z Il™ Ptti "" ° '>'•*' • »»» no general had seconded Ins own nerve and strength U • ; swimmer by, an ingenions s,vi m ,„i,, K anparat,, n4il\ from waking dreams 1,0 i,«,i- t i">i" • : " * ror in n, and.; » franSer character ' ; " "' '"*?; seeping ** f > ~; "It did not seem: to matter mueh " said f*£.'a ' '. B afterwards to Captain Mike-"tl,in„. 1 WP e General,; the hotter without hrm I *k* g SeemC< ' to «° bn *£ « S a sharp Sp^^ U *, 1 "! S ? is **&** There . Mr. : -J£?:^ j*sHs& with .Revolver only loaded with sea-water,'l 806ssP -l £

f*. .-■■■ ': And, y. besides, -it - would have -been more satisfactory; and. more • just to shoot those who sent hinj. -I don’t like it, MacCarthy. I tell you .candidly I don’t like it.' . - Seems more ornamental in : a Poet's Corner , than at the angle of a trench, I do con-cede, ‘ General.. But Mahon is a noble, piece of statuary all The same — do immortal i credit ; to the artist as a ’"National Statoo of a Lost Cause.” ! - ~ - - * ,

Our business here is not to lose causes but to win them, ’ remarked the General, decisively, , biting the end off a cigar. -Nor was he much better satisfied to see how many irresponsible booking.,youths were assembled in the Tower to receive him, as leading personages in the district. “They are fine lads, enough,” he said to Captain" Mike; They will do capitally after a week or two.in the field. But surely you don’t. expect me to tell my business to all these youngsters. I didn’t undertake to come to Ireland to address monster meetings.” As a matter of fact, he devoted himself to acquiring information rather than imparting it ; cross-examining the young men keenly as to the state of things in their several-charges, and confining ms explanations of his own apparition to a general intimation that he had come as the harbinger of an American expedition and of an immediate insurrection. Nor were any further particulars demanded, or even desired. Your true Celt never cares to spoil a good mystery by sniffling about for details. * The signal for action was enough to set their young .hearts chirping more contentedly than if the whole campaign had been figured out to them in maps and' statistics. It was not a Celtic generation that lost faith in the Pillar of Fire that went before the hosts of Israel. .

The sooner they go now the better; and let.us *et to business," whispered the General, as soon as he had yarned as much and said as little as he thought judicious. ■ He was a little uneasy at seeing : a : hot supper and -some long-necked bottles: introduced: into their deliberations * Captain Mike looked at him half-respectfully f half- * reproachfully "General," said, -you may clean out \ this island of the Britishers, and you will-in genu-ine Sedgwick's-New Yorker style-in a word, bully; but I'm derned if you re e;oin',for to c-ject Editor Murrin before he s finished his grog. Don't you be too rough; of the bovs, • General you needn't rar'.. It's in their blood-and- 3 darn d if ,t ain't in mine, too. Mat. Murrin, send on the s decanter! A piece of the breast of that goose for the General Ken, my lad-not forgetting the concealment." . And the General's own grdVe, close-knit face began • o smooth out under the spell of the riant gaiety ■ which breaks from Irish hearts /at the approach of danger, as trains of arks fly from tliQ|flintstone with every clash '.at. steel. The boys seemed to be : already clustered around their first camp-fire the night before their first battle; and boys with the. heady vapors of young enthusiasm in - their brain-,were not likely. to remember that. the most ■ important part of a battle consists in the surgical opera- % tions and, the undress burying-work, and the mourninggowns and: streaming eyes and desolate hearts that make 'i the rear-guard. The plates clashed and the wine glugpinged, and the glasses rang, and the pine-logs sparkled. - and the laughter and the wit outsparkled all.- Don't tell ■ me that Irish humor departed just shoes for Irish feet were coming! In/a f iught-niailjtrain coming home from the A Mallow Election,/ I I have seen friends Healy ; and • Sexton burst into coruscates of wit which lit up the whole one hundred and forty miles, of metals, like a fairy torchlight procession.- I have seen/the/ dinav Reporter*' Room of the" Frcemamls.Journal flashing and flashing again with a war 3 of wits that would have made the old rafters of the Mitre $ Tavern split for • joy-wit kindlier, and perhaps not much : less keen, than if the tossing' -curls'of the dear old Chief ' who presided had been the scratehwig of the grim Doctor V himself. ; But who shall repeat the dainty aerial music " of such hours? .Who S hall bring back the" foam that man- ' tled for due- evanescent moment -upon last year's champagne? Nothing in nature,^e>knou, is destroyed. Is it too great a stretch of optimism tp. believe that, like . the ' subtle essence of Attic souls themselves, the bouquet .of their wit and the very foam of their champagne only pass into a higher-state-are, : so to "say, stored up in celestial Sighl? eternal consumption' on a 'never-ending Attic -Don't: understand'meCas. meaning that the youngsters' "

planted on stools, logs, or improvised stone seats around Captain Mike's board pelted one another with witticisms which'would have' passed muster with a College of Wits, or [: which ■ would havo kept : the incomparable Mr. Boswell up half the night posting his journal, if he had happened to be concealed under, the table; but understand •in the. fullest possible sense that they were as merry a crew as ever showered the bright grapeshot of the brain in the face; of Death and rioted with the-best blood chambered in their bosoms as a preliminary to spilling it in the vanguard of a glorious field. Who was to tell .them to-night that' the flashing, field they 'dreamed., of was to contract into a burglar's. cell, and that the only uniform they; would ever see'''bedeck"the" Irish Rebel Army would be the Convict's Grey. J . _, '. < . - - . V;f' ■':;-"■. . v '% '■■ (To be continued.) ... '■'■lf-'' . •--. '"" ■ ■ "' '' .- - -<hX>—— % ' ;y '; - .'.'..