The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 8 December 1921, Page 3

The Storyteller

(By William O’Brien.)

WHEN WE WERE BOYS

CHAPTER XXXII.—A LYNCH-PIN OUT OF THE MILL-WHEEL. Mr. Hans Harman stood in the dismal dining-room of Stone Hall, solemnly welcoming the funeral guests: It did not need the dead, heavy, almost solid mist that was descending outside, pressing’ the spirit of man down and down as though all the bright airs of heaven were coagulating into a jelly of despair—it scarcely needed the dull blood-colored blinds down and the undertaker’s men shuffling about presenting bands of crape as if they were so many wreaths of black immortelles laid on the altar of the god Death —it did not at all require those hundred uncomfortable intimations, which we can all feel 1 and never describe, of the presence of a corpse upstairs, to make the dining-room of Stone Hall look its part on an occasion of this kind. It seemed to have been designed by the architect as a place for funeral festivities. Indeed, the gentlemen sipping port wine and nibbling plum-cake there at this moment, scarcely remembered to have’seen it used since the last death in the family; and more than one of them, in a decorous, funereal way, said so to one another between their sips. The fact is, Hans Harman neither cared for wine nor the price of it; and he could find few of his cattleshow neighbors with a passion for Schubert and Bach and long-haired sempiternally-twangling gentlemen of their profession. He himself, singularly enough, seemed designed by nature’s architect also to play an imposing and irreproachable part on a melancholy occasion. His tall, handsome figure, his face which seemed a little too white for most other purposes of social life, the grave melancholy smile in his fine eyes like mourning on a coquettish beauty, the subdued shake of his large white hands —all impressed the beholders with a sense, so to say, of comfortable gloom and propriety, and rendered them insensible of the fact that ho kept standing as usual in the immediate front of the fire absorbing more carbonic comfort than went to all tho rest of the assembled mourners. It can scarcely be necessary to introduce the corpse upstairs name, even if the coffin was not long ago sealed up. Poor Rebecca Harman’s unhappy shadow is one of those that flit across the stage of the great' drama of life with no greater part than “A Gaoler” or A Mariner” in one of Shakespere’s ' playbills. She was much more at ease in her coffin than she had been in the more spacious hearse-bed in which she had been for years, as it were, attending her own funeral. The gentle reader may at once dismiss any horrible suspicion that it would be well for the coroner to disturb the poor lady’s bones and inquire more particularly how she came by her death. There was nothing that the most rigid straining of the laws of England could impeach nothing that the most searching analysis could turn up its nose at. There was not the smallest trace of arsenic in the bitter-flavored homoeopathic doses with which Miss Deborah plied her patient. It was only the flavor of sisterly virtue turned slightly acid. A jury must have found that during those latter months Hans Harman never omitted his dutiful daily visit, never omitted to 'smile a cheerful smile or drop an encouraging word, and that at the last, when he was standing by the hearsebed and Miss Deborah softly said: You are dying now, Rebecca, and I ask you, are you not quite happy, and has not Hans always been an indulgent husband to you!” the person under cross-examination passed out of the world without the least attempt to impugn either of these propositions. The tnith is, poor Rebecca was a trying, discontented, out-of-joint, creature — was one of those dreary loveless careers (so numerous, alas!) of which people say with a sigh, as did an ancient little spinster lady, who was Mrs. Harman’s only confidante in life, and ho by some misunderstanding did not reach the death-bed until there was nothing to be confided unless the funeral arrangements: “Under other circumstances it might have been - so different.”’ - * —;

At all events that poor lonely soul can scarcely have felt lonelier at departing from Stone Hall; and now that her body, was on the point of departing also, Hans Harman not merely feigned grief, but felt it —recalled with real temorse the misunderstandings, incompatibilities, or what not that had caused their married life to be lived at opposite ice-bound poles recalled with real softness the few touches of sentiment that he was able to throw like ever so long faded spring-flowers on the coffin and had almost persuaded himself, among others, that he was a sorrowstricken lonely man, who, buff for his natural bonhomie and, pluck, would break down altogether, when his eye caught sight of Lord Drumshaughlin’s figure in the gloom near the doorway, and the shadow of poor Rebecca retreated respectfully into the background. Lord Drumshaughlin had not seen his agent since the night of Mr. Dargnn’s disaster at the Club; and Hans Harman, whose temper rather than his policy had goaded him into an open rupture with his principal, had been casting about anxiously for some avenue of reconciliation. The sight of Lord Drum* shaughlin sent such a warm thrill through him that he felt himself able to resign his monopoly of the fire and make his way, with a solemn determined enthusiasm, to Lord Drumshaughlin’s hand. “This is kind —it is magnanimous, my lord,” he murmured, enfolding the delicate white hand pretty much as if he were taking the communion-cup. 1 “Not at all—quite deserve it from me, Harman,” mumbled Lord Drumshaughlin, in his grand manner. He really looked such a patrician figure of gracious dignity and grave sympathy that even Hans Harman’s sharp eyes could not have discovered that his lordship had been fidgetting ever since in a confluent fever of gout and in-, capacity to see daylight through his affairs without the assistance of his agent’s keen vision, and that, like himself, he had been praying for some pretext that would enable him to square his 'pride with his interest. “This ——a sad affair.” Makes a man feel a bit solitary on the housetops, I can tell your lordship. You can understand now why I was not in the humor to look you up sooner as to what’s to be done about the Conditional Order; but if it would be convenient to your lordship after -after this” “Shouldn’t have dreamt of mentioning it myself, Harman, upon so in fact, upon such an occasion; but if, as you, say ahem after this” Both men broke off in a manner that might either indicate grief too sacred for expression, or might (and pr°bably 9 did) intimate some shadowy unformed feeling in both minds that the worn body upstairs connected by the comprehensive term “this” was somehow or other standing between these gentlemen and business as well as (a harder thing for a dead body to do) treading upon Lord Drumshaughlin s gouty toes. “This,” however, was in due order and ceremony thrust down the stone-faced stairs, and hurried away through the mud-jelly at as round a *pace as the public convenience demanded to a spot where there was no more hurry, and where there will be no more thrusting out, and the insignificant little old maid shed the only unhired tears that the occasion produced; and Miss Deborah had leisure to examine in the mirror how she would look in mourning; and the man-servant wavered unsteadily in the empty dining-room between an unrivalled opportunity of getting drunk, and the dread knowledge that Mr, Hans Harman’s eye had been counting the bottles and probably measuring the number of glasses unconsumed; and Hans Harman himself performed the last offices with all the more genuine tenderness and gratitude at the thought that Rebecca had at all events been the means of bringing Lord Drumshaughlin back to Stone Hall-so that, altogether, nothing m poor Mrs. Harman’s life was such a success as her funeral. 4. . arranged the business of evicting the people at the Mill, remarked the widower, later in the day, in the - breakfast-room at the Castle. He was anxious to recommence friendly relations by a hint first, that he had been mindful of the wish for a policy of Thorough expressed by his principal, and, secondly, that he still regarded Lord Drumshaughlin as in a -position to do what he liked with his own. Thirdly, and of course, chiefly, he was consumed with a hatred of Ken Rohan, which, „ for a man of Harman’s logical and unemotional mental •'machinery, was most unreasoning; for the only positive

grievances he could recall against young Rohan was that the latter had declined to be served by him, that he had happened to be a silent witness of Miss Westropp’s scathing words the night of the attempted arrest at the Castle, and that he had happened to be a silent witness also of Harry’s terrific threat over Quish’s coffin in the graveyard. For all these reasons he added with unction: “The eviction will take place to-morrow.” “I am not sure thaterthere is any particular hurry,” said Lord Drumshaughlin, feeling irritated that his resolution should be so pitilessly remembered, but fearing to appear to snub his agent’s zeal, and still more fearing to incur his contempt by avowing how brittle had been the tables of his Draconian Code. “The arrangements are all made, my lord,” said the agent, with some alarm. “You remember the determination yon expressed” • “Yes, yes—be it so. By Jove, there’s a more important question I want to ask you, Harman—when am I to be evicted myself?” said Lord Drumshaughlin. All his assumed gaiety and real pluck could not conceal the hungry uncertain questioning of his eye, nor conceal the ravages the last few weeks had made in his face, which had bidden farewell to “make-ups” and dyes for ever. “Pooh, it’s not so bad as that, my lord—yet,” said the agent, who had marked that supplicating look in the inner chambers of Lord Drumshaughlin’s eyes, and with a burst of uncanny inward laughter noted how different from the air of haughty triumph with which he had sailed out of the Club on Admiral Ffrench’s arm. But, remembering former explosions of Ralph Westropp’s pride, he kept his satisfaction entirely for internal consumption. “I presume,” he said, tentatively, watching the effect of his words with a stealthy cat-like glance out of the corners of his downcast lids, “I presume thatahemyour lordship’s views about Dargan remain unchanged? Quito so,” he said, quickly, noticing indications that were not quite supplicatory. “So I took for granted. Well, ray lord, it is as I —money-lenders, always do understand one another—Hugg joins in the petition of sale, and it would be idle for us to resist the order being made absolute. It will be almost a matter of course.” “A matter of course that my estate which I or mine have held for nearly four hundred years should go for a song to some pelting land-jobber —perhaps to Humphrey Dargan ! A matter of course that I should be swindled and beggared because a few gales of interest to a usurer are overdue!” roared Lord Drumshaughlin. The hectic spot which was beginning to glow in the middle of his cheek required no touch of rouge to heighten it. “By no means. Your lordship did not allow mo to finish,” said the agent, with scrupulous deference—the deference of a skilled angler who pays out plenty of line to a gamey fish in whoso gills he feels that his hook is securely fastened. “Dargan and Hugg acting together, the Landed Estates Court has almost no option but to order the examination of title and proceed to a sale. But "e can invoke the Court of Chancery to intervene and forbid the sacrifice -of the property. We can obtain the appointment of a Receiver in Chancery—the incumbrancers could not well object to my being appointed receiver, I being to some small extent —ahem an incumbrancer myself. I would he still your lordship’s agent under the legal fiction of a new titlethe rents would flow in as usual, subject to the formality of an account to the Master in Chancery—the court would never allow a sale to the disadvantage of the estate without my report— and the • ’ result would be that we would be masters of the situation, and would have time enough either to finance a new loan, or to propose a composition with the incumbrancers, and get the petition discharged. You follow me, my lord?” “Perfectly,” said Lord Drumshaughlin, in a subdued . voice. “The upshot of it appears to be that I am no longer to be master here, but some Master in the Four Courts.” “That, my lord, is a jeu de mots— nothing more, believe me,” said Harman. “The upshot is that you play off against Humphrey Dargan’s stamped deed the Lord Chancellor’s Seal.” Lord Drumshaughlin remained silent and composed. All the venomous tophus seemed to have fled his joints in presence of the terrible levin flash out of the sky which seemed to have struck and withered him to root and branch.

Like the stout old oak he was, he presented a more dignified figure under the lightning-stroke than while the miserable parasites were clinging to him with all their family of gnawing fungi. One of the few things he knew, outside the accomplishments of his own butterfly world, was how to die. Hans Harman could have taken much more cheerfully one of his old fiery eruptions than his present calm, pathetic, scarcely reproachful silence. Not that his lordship even remotely suspected the real scope of his agent’s projects. Unluckily for himself, he had so accustomed himself to Hans Harman’s easy guidance in financial matters that the very thought of figures had become to him as offensive as a, chemical analysis of the constituents of his pernicious drug would be to a confirmed opium-eater. All he knew was that he, the lord a princely extent ot country, he who had the portraits of more than twenty ancestors in his dining-room, was invited now to enter villanious-smelling law courts in some dubious bankrupt capacity, and, if ever he was to emerge from that frouzy precinct, would come out a dingy incumbered old wreck, no more like the Ralph Westropp who had once sparkled in the eye of Europe than the decrepid fogey who scrambles for the fire at the Old Man’s Hospital in Kilmainham was like the dashing hussar who had once curvetted and'kissed hands on his way to fight Napoleon. (To be continued.)