The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 22 December 1921, Page 3

The Storyteller

(By William O'Brien.)

WHEN WE WERE BOYS

CHAPTER XXXll.—(Continued.) The saddest man at the Mill was Danny Delea. He chafed rebelliously against the notion of surrendering the Mill without a blow. For the first time in his life, he did not return blow for blow when Myles Rohan that morning said to him with a mournful smile: "What about that Fenian fleet of yours, Danny, that was to have come and freed us all?" Danny looked at him, and there was something in the miller's fare that froze the retort upon his lips. "Thrue for you, sir, begor they're not up to the time," he replied, celebrating the miller's little joke with the best laugh he could muster. Then with a touch of the old incorrigible Adam: "But who knows. It's not too late yet." He hovered about all day uneasily, as if-he had still some haunting feeling that the fleet might be signalled in the Bay in time to avert the eviction. But evening came, and no fleet, and Danny stopped the mill-wheel with.the sensation of a man plunging a dagger into an old friend's heart; and then he walked up the glen by the old mill-race for the last time, and he let down the sluice-gates, and it seemed to him the blood in his own veins ceased to flow at the same moment with the mill-stream. They had left the miller's own little office undisturbed as long as possible, and were glad to see him take refuge there from the sights and sounds attending the disruption of his old home.,. They had carefully trimmed the fire, and brightened the place more than usual, so as to reinove up to the last moment from Myles, Rohan's mind every suggestion of his little snuggery being so soon to be broken up; and Myles had sat all day fumbling over his books and arranging his papers in a more cheerful mood than they had seen in him for many a day. The hour came at last, however, for smuggling him away to his new quarters. Mrs. Rohan entered the office. He was finishing the last lines of a large straggling communication on a sheet of foolscap, and leaned back admiring the performance with much apparent satisfaction. "Time to be off, Kate, eh?" he cried cheerily, as she entered. "It is, Myles darling. Father Phil insists on having us down to tea." "Father Phil would insist on having us up to heaven, and- not only us, but every living creature on the earth beside us," said the miller, adding,- with a laugh that nearly forced the tears out of Mrs. Rohan's eyelids, "I don't believe he'd even shut out Hans Harman! Do'you know what I've been at, old woman?" he continued, holding up the sheet of foolscap with an author's fondness; "guess what I've done there!" ''Something as foolish and as lovable as usual, I'm sure, Myles." _ "It's, Katie's little fortune for the convent," he whispered triumphantly. "I've made that sure against all storms, anyway. Kate, draling, 'twill be better for you and for tho children when I'm dead." "Don't! oh, don't! You know I can bear anything but your saying that," she cried, breaking down in a passion of sobs on his shoulder.

“Mamma, you’re an old fool. I tell you it will—bcttei foi the children and better for you. The insurance for fifteen hundred on my life is at the bank, but there’s only 250/. against it. You’ll spend many a happy and prosperous day yet at the Mill, old woman—Ha, who’s that? Como in,” he cried, and seeing a telegraph messenger enter, the miller darted upon his message with the eagerness of a bird of prey. “It’s all right, Kate, old woman ! The Sheriff needn’t call! They’ve sold the cargo —a glorious bargain—and this is a message from Waffles and Greany that I may draw against them for three hundred.” “God and His holy angels be praised!” she exclaimed, sinking on her knees. Then, noticing that, as though the

excitement had been too much for him, Myles was staggering back with his hand to his forehead, she sprang to his side with a cry of terror: "Myles, darling!what is it? j —speak to me! 0 my God!" He did not speak to her. She laid him back in his easy "chair, and the dreadful symptoms she knew so well came back— that horrible, twitching of the mouth, as if. a strong man were struggling for the power of speech against some demoniac pincers that were dragging it from between his jaws that awful, awful look of the poor purposeless eye that feels a world in ruins toppling down about that convulsive clutch of the hand, with the paper securing Katie's little fortune still grasped between the fingers, like the flag of a brave soldier going down with his face to the foe. The Sheriff need not call. The sudden rush of joy had come too late to do aught but devastate the already overwrought and overswollen blood-vessels of the brain. • Myles Rohan's second stroke had come; and again, in that / same office, the bed had to be improvised; and again the old doctor, standing over the stricken, speechless body, watch in hand, as if appointing the number of minutes there were to live, shook his vacuous old head with the wisdom of one who had just negotiated with Death as long a respite of execution as possible, and announced what un- . certificated agonised hearts had divined before him—that there would probably not be a third stroke. Shortly after the roll of the doctor's gig had died down, with a joyous cry there appeared in the doorway a sylphid figure breathless and rosy with excitement, and, at' sight of the group around the bed, started back white with horror. Katie Rohan turned for a moment, and putting her /—arm round Mabel Westropp's waist, kissed her white cheek silently, and in a moment was wrapt in her patient again. This creature, helpless as a baby, and shyer than a fawn in the great world, moved in a sick room with the strength of a goddess— incessu patuit Dea^- and oh! so much more blessed a goddess than she whose team of swans brushed the Paphian air with her wanton perfumes! Ken Rohan thought Miss Westropp looked like fainting, and without a word placed a chair for her; but she waved it off with _ a hand in which he saw she held a document, and silently J joined the angel guardian figures by the bedside. For a Lwhile the patient's harsh breathing was the only break in stillness. Without any authority from the old doctor, W Myles Rohan became astonishingly better, the awful stranglW in S contest abated, and Mrs. Rohan thought she could discern some ray of tranquil consciousness with more purposeful concentration of the eyes. "Thank God and His Blessed Mother!" she cried, sinking to her knees to murmur a prayer, which, to the indomitable faith of an Irish, mother, was of more efficacious service to the poor sufferer than the old doctor's prophylactics. The pendulum of the little clock on the mantel-piece tolled out the seconds with the apparent thunder of a great bell, but somehow the strokes seemed less and less like those of a death-bell, and gre\r less and less noticeable at all—which is always a good sign in such cases. Myles was manifestly recovering consciousness. But the watchers stood there all the time in the same attitude, fascinated, strained, silent. Possibly a couple of hours—to Mrs. Rohan and Katie' they seemed a couple of eternities—had passed in this way, when the working of wheels over the gravel outside was heard, and a great jolly voice that sounded like a peal of joy-bells. The door was thrown open, and the same scene was enacted as at Miss Westropp's coming—first,, a merry - burst of geniality, then a movement of horror, and the jollity all struck of a heap. This time it was the Very Rev. Dr. O'Harte's massive figure that sustained the'shock, and sustained it infinitely worse than the fragile red-and- : white-rosy being who sustained the former one. All men are more or less cowards in presence of distress; and Dr N~- O Harte, who would have died at the stake stoutly himself, or have faced a hell-fire of bullets still more gaily, was £.: the veriest baby by the bedside of a suffering friend—- , a very Sybarite's shrinking from graves, and worms, and. .. epitaphs at close quarters. Katie Rohan could have at ] r . this moment ordered him about like a child. p - "Oh, Doctor, look! He knows you!" exclaimed Mrs. p§; Rohan in an ecstacy of delight. The sick man's retina had, ./ indeed, caught some .vague impression of the great burly _: figure: or perhaps the peal-of-joy-bells voice had somehow ,:,';•:;or other rung a responsive peal within that insurrectionary

city of poor Myles' brain. There was clearly a look of pleased intelligence in the eye, and the fact acted as a marvellous restorative to Dr. O'Harte's spirits, and indeed diffused a glow of confidence and delight all round. It no longer seemed to bo a sacrilege to speak above one's breath. "Oh then, oh then," said the Doctor, after he had laid his broad palm healingly on the hot corded brow, "was there ever such luck? I missed the midday train from Clonard by the twinkling of an eye, or all this would not have occurred." "Would not have occurred, Doctor?" said Mrs. Rohan, with surprise. "What could have prevented it?" "This," producing a heavy little white bag—"this bag of dirty sovereigns would have prevented it; worse luck that any of God's creatures should be depending upon the wretched, soulless dross to save him from death and misery." "Sir," said Ken, with something swelling in-his troat, "you cannot, mean " "I mean nothing whatever, except that I'm not such a monster as to see the dogs rending my old friend limb by limb, when a little bag of sovereigns flung into Hans Harman's jaws would save him." He didn't mention that his own savings for the next summer's holiday went into the little bag, and that he had to invoke a friend's name at the bank to add the final hundred sovereigns. "But, bother it for a story, I should miss the train for the first time in my life, and arrive in time to find that Hans Har- N man has been too much for us." "God bless you, Doctor!—no, the sight of you there by his side has been better to Myles than your weight in sovereigns!" Mrs. Rohan said, taking his hand, without increasing his disappointment by letting him know that he had been anticipated also by the telegram of Messrs. Waffles and Greany. "Why, look! he not only knows you—he hears you!" "Then he'll hear a bit of news that'll please him better than even to hear that we've hunted tho Sheriff. Myles, old man —I'm a Bishop, or as good as a Bishop! Ha! I knew I'd warm the cockles of your heart!" cried the Doctor, as he saw the light of intelligence not merely flicker, but fairly sparkle out amidst the smothering features.

"You don't say it, Doctor, —or —what am Ito call you, sir?" said Mrs. Rohan, reverently. "Anything you like, so-long as you call me old friend," was the hearty reply. "Yes, the poor old*Bishop could stand it no longer." "Dead?" "No, no —only old, and nearly blind, and wholly deaf. He's the sweetest and simplest old gentleman that ever lived. He takes me for an aristocratic Whig, and thinks I'm the deepest fellow in the ministry, because I keep his accounts square and rattle up the builders for him; and so, he has applied for an Assistant Bishop, with right of succession, naming me, and there's news from the Propaganda this morning that my name is approved of and . the Brief on its way. So look alive, old man —good people are scarce —we're not going to let old friends die in this diocese without a Special licence from the Assistant Bishop. Father Phil may order a new hat and learn to cut up "a turkey as soon as he likes, for the first old parish priest full of years and honors that takes his honors and himself off to heaven, we'll run Father Phil in, if it takes wild horses to drag him. And lookee, sirrah," he said, turningto Ken, and chucking him in the old hearty way under the chin, "don't you go telling" in this new organ of the devil that I hear you're setting fire to the country with—don't you go telling the public that you've heard the new Assistant Bishop sing "Who fears to speak of '98," and that his expelling Jack Harold from St. Fergal's was all rank hypocrisy. You see, Ken," he added more confidentially, " 'twas Jack's expulsion that finished my reputation, and clinched the affair of the Bishopric; and, though I'll have to try still whether I can't preach the madness out of your brain, you might go further and fare worse. - How would you have liked Monsignor McGrudder for a Bishop P Ah! Myles, you old sinner, I observe that you enjoy the villainy of us ecclesiastics more than you'd enjoy a dose of divinity or a dose of physic! Well, well, old friend, I forgive you everything except spoiling my fine plot to-day.". And in truth Myles looked so bright at the moment, it looked

as if he might spoil the plot of the other Doctor as well. "If he only knew how my little plot has been spoiled!" sighed Miss Westropp, as Katie and she stood whispering apart. "I had everything so beautifully arranged to play the good fairy, and here I arrive, first to find that I'm too. late, and then to find that, even if I were not, a stronger good fairy, and better fairy, has cut me out." "What can you mean? and what is that paper you have never once dropped from your hand? You will tell me, won't you?" "Oh dear, I had forgotten," she cried, looking at the document as one looks at a love-letter that has lost its spell; "what chance has it now against tho Doctor's *ng of sovereigns? Perhaps it would be- resented as a grace coming from an enemy." "Oh, Miss Westropp!" exclaimed Katie, completing her speech by taking the other's hand fondly, and kissini r it before its owner could know the use it was to be put to. (To be continued.) . <*<->