The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 29 December 1921, Page 3

The Storyteller

(By William O’Bbien.)

WHEN WE WERE BOYS

CHAPTER XXXII (Continued.) Exactly Miss Westropp, the landlord’s daughter—not Mabel, Katie’s friend. Yes, yes, dear—it’s selfish of me to say so, and it’s not true either,” and the two girls' exchanged the kiss of peace in true girl fashion; “and I’ll tell you what ’tis all about, and it is not much of a plot after all. You must know that papa is not a hard, cruel man at all—he is the.dearest old pappy in the world—at least, I know he is to me. But he does not know things. He is away so long, and figures so worry his poor head, and he has so much to trouble him—indeed, indeed he has.” Y es, dear, said Katie, with a sigh. In all departments of truth she could hold her own. “But isn’t it so much the better? Which of us would be good, if there was not something to suffer? “You little humbug, I do believe you would be good among a legion of evil spirits, and you would be more than a match for them too.”

Don t! please, Miss Mabel,” said Katie, scarlet with the feeling that she had done something to attract notice to herself. “But about your story?” Well, I found papa ii| one of his good moments this afternoon, and I explained matters a little to him about the Mill, and about the whole of you, and he despatched a messenger straight to Mr. Hans Harman for the writ that was to be executed to-morrow, —here it is,” she whispered softly, grasping the official blue document in her hand, this time as though it was a caged wild animal which mght escape, Katie was a person so little learned in the law that she looked as if she did not yet quite understand. - “Well, of course, I flew here with the expectation of giving you all a greater surprise than the Sheriff, but a pleasanter one, and I .find that I am late, and that I am useless, and that there is nothing to be done except this’ — she tipped the writ quietly into the fire,,and stood in front of the blaze, until she saw the last shred of Myles Rohan’s debt to Lord Drumshhughlin vanish up the chimney, Katie stood stupefied for a moment. “Oh, Mabel,” she cried then, “I must tell! You have done a thing that will give him more joy than if you had filled the room with gold.”

So that upon the whole, though he never told the secret, one may suspect that Myles Rohan, paralysed and voiceless, and with nothing but a wistful smile to give the key to the depths of his dumb soul, was a happier man on his bed of pain than thousands without bodily ailment who tossed under eiderdown counterpanes in golden palaces that night. Danny Delea was in the Glen at the first peep of dawn, and he lifted the sluice-gates-once more, as if the current that he sent gushing through the mill-race were blood transferred into exhausted veins, and he set the old mill-wheel a-rolling with the wondering reverence of a man assisting at a resurrection of the dead. And he humbly took credit to himself for his prescience, • seeing that, if the Fleet had not arrived y something equally wonderful - had. - / ‘ „ " CHAPTER XXXIII.— “TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP, THE ' _ , BOYS ARE MARCHING!” : A tapping at his window aroused Ken Rohan from sleep. It had been ’ the eighth night since the General’s appearance at the Tower, and it .was not difficult, you may be sure, to awaken our young friend from dreams of which the v scenery was battlefields and the accompanying music cannon shots. . A dark figure loomed up against the faint i pearly light/ .. Ho - recognised Con Lehane, >■ and instantly y threw up the window. It' was a November .dawn of a splendor - that sometimes in this jmild .. clime seems to ibe kept in celestial stock all the year round :the sun . just breaking his golden wav;through bars of violet cloud, like a . young r' exiled prince coming to ! his throne; and * all his

: skyey dominiohs in<the east strown in his honor with" prim- . skyey dominions in< the east strown in his honor with prim- ; rose light, whose morning purity was not yet stained with : the garish shameless excess of golden flattery, which attends suns and monarchs in the noonday of their reigns. Con, \ though his tossed hair and mud-splashed clothes were those of a man who had spent the night afoot/ nevertheless looked quite a gay herald of the. morning, and his face shone like the sun as he whispered: \ *- l “She’s come!” - A great throb of joy, such as men only feel at a few rare moments in —some at reading a prosy paragraph in the Gazette , some on hearing the first trembling confession of a maideii’s passed through young Rohan’s body and soul. If “she” was, indeed, the Banshee of whom Myles Rohan once said his son was enamoured, assuredly being in love with a Banshee has its ecstasies for young hearts just as real as though the heaving white bosom, and sad, sad eyes of the Irish Rosaleen had a kingdom instead of a gallows to reward her lovers withal. He darted at the note which Con Lehane extracted (of all places in the world) from the muzzle of his revolver and extended ;to him. The note read as follows: “’They are in Cooiloch Bay. Pass the word for to-night at ten in Coomhola Glen. Yourself I want to join us on board as soon after nightfall as possible. Con will direct you where and how. All will be in Readiness for landing, and we will be upon them in Bantry by daybreak. You . know the pass-word: Mike.” “And so they’ve really come, Con? And you’ve seen them?” “As large as life, and that’s large enough—every man of them as big and as tanned as the Captain.” “It’s grand!” cried Ken Rohan, in a burst of joy. He could scarcely realise that he was not dreaming. That the fleet, or at least theyfirst flagship of the fleet, of Ireland’s deliverers from across the ocean should be actually at a. few miles away— as he had dreamed of it and counted on it —seemed as much too good to be true as that other scarcely wilder dream of O’Donnell’s magic Horse asleep under Royal Aileach those three hundred years back, suddenly starting to life with their armour braced, and their horses ready-saddled, at the long-awaited signal of Ireland’s deliverance. “It’s simply grand!” , “Grand is no name for it There is no name for : its name is Bullets!” said Con, in a voice of deep content. “I must be trudging.” V v “But the Captain tells me you are to be my guide,” “I have arranged it all. There will be a pony waiting v for you at five o’clock under the trees at the bridge of Trafrask. Patsy Driscoll will have the lugger lying under the pier at Ballycrovane, and will put you on board. I am on my way to Bantry with despatches for the General, and to give the sojers the word. Dawley will be at your service to warn the Glens.” “I do not like Dawley,” said Ken, with a frown, almost to himself. “I don’t know how it is.” “Dawley is a noisy little bantam cock; but he’s Subcentre. We cannot pass him over. That’s Democracy, Master Ken,” said the brawny stonemason, with a twinkle of drollery in his honest grey eye, as he recalled little Dawley’s previous insistence on the Rights of Man. « “I wish Democracy would give us a few more comrades like you, Con, and a few less like Democracy .. would be a more comfortable religion'. Good-bye; when we meet again it will\be for hotter work.” “Glory!” says Con Lehane, hugging the proffered - hand, and vanishing. . mFurther sleep was out of the . question. The young man threw on -his clothes, in a state of high exhilaration. ■; Happening to glance at himself in the glass, an - odd % thought struck him. Where was the gay uniform that had formed so conspicuous a feature of his dreams of the hour of action?. Such are the points in which young idealists % first recognise the chill of disenchantment. Here was a • young fellow/ casting his life against all the gold and steel .of England’s strength, and counting the odds not at all, or / counting them only to feel a more seductive thrill of danger, ‘ but disappointed and depressed s because death '-.was not to be fronted in the precise tight-fitting tunic and gay braids which had flashed over hH imaginary fields of :• fame. Not that it was all' a mere tailoring question between y a youthful gallant and his looking-glass. Harold’s light

prophecy, ' that'- the only uniform the "Irish Republic would ever afford _ its army - would v be one of convict’s-grey, hovered coldly round him, and set him pondering gloomily, remorsefully, upon themes that the trumpet’s shrillest note never quite silences, even _in youth’s whirling heyday—thoughts of ■ opportunities neglected, , obligations evaded,* affection unrequited, a vain and headlong past, a future lit by wild flashes only less perilous than the darksome background. He found his eyes drawn towards the window, where the night-light still sickily X inflaming the closed blind told where his father was lying and his mother watching; and a sob of penitence shook him at thought of how>he had already lacerated these loving hearts, and of the more cruel wound that now awaited .them. It was not until a light hand was laid on his shoulder, and a whisper, “I am so glad you are up,” reached his ear, that he turned, and saw Katie, looking very white. • “Why, sis, what’s this? What’s up?” “You are in danger,” she said, the words coming from her lips firmly, but with a hollow ring, as from one standing on a scaffold. “There is not a moment to be lost. At nine o’clock you are to be arrested.” •" - “And pray, how did you find out all this, you little wizard?” * “It is •no joke. It is certain. My informant is one who knows. She risked a good deal this morning to come to warn you.” “She! Then it’s a lady! You little frightened sphinx, don’t be putting those romantic conundrums to me; tell me, who is it?” )

“That is her secret.” Katie did not feel herself free to mention that she also had had her visitor tapping at her chamber window at the dawn, and she was somehow glad that she had been bound not to tell Ken that when the hood of her visitor’s peasant cloak was tremblingly thrown back, the face underneath was the face of Lily Dargan, the blush-rosy cheeks all whited over, the nightdews clinging to her hair, and her large blue eyes for once filled with a very decided expression of terror. It was the only feat of daring of her life. She had heard her husband completing with the Head Constable the arrangements for young Rohan’s arrest; and all the night through (Mr. Flibbert having arranged to sleep at the barracks in Drumshaughlin in order to be early on the spot) she walked up and down her lonesome room at The Roses, her little heart beating against its bars in the throes oh a fearful determination, her thoughts flitting all in a tremble "from spring-colored hours in -the Hleri, long ago, to that fearful night in the Convent garden, and thereto half-felt, half-rejected memories of words and looks on- a certain recent summer’s day at the Lady’s Seat, and of certain still more recent hours of aching dreariness. Then she shook those half-formed fancies from her, as though they were serpents trying to sting her, and strove to persuade herself that it was Mrs.' Rohan’s bursting heart'; and Katie’s straining eyes, as they gazed on the vacant chair at the fireside, that she was thinking of; and then those old words and looks came whispering and peeping back, and the poor child, unable any longer to cope with herself or with the world, flung herself on her knees as the most wretched of sinners and the most guilty of womankind. Of the guilt we may have our doubts, but of the

womankind there can be none, for, of course, she rose from -.her knees to throw on the peasant’s cloak, and to slip out at the hall-door, amidst the terrors of a burglar with an unmuzzled bulldog at his heels, and to fly over the hills to Katie’s bedroom at the mill, in the dark shuddering hours before dawn, all the way glancing to right and left out of her terrified eyes, as if the mountain peaks were about to fall on her, and as if the- sun 5 stealthily creeping up behind Cobdhuv were ■ a detective officer about to turn on the glare of his lantern upon her guitly track. i) For .some reason or other, Katie Rohan was hardly , more grateful to Mr. Flibbert’s wife for her warning than for laying upon her the obligation not to let Ken know where it~came from. “That’s her secret,” she said, decisively. “I think I know!” he cried, his blood seeming to change to a celestial fire and the earth to fly from under his feet as he mounted to the, very mining skies for startled joy. Young persons will, no doubt, conclude that his thoughts -reverted ■ to the ange aux grands yeux hleus : of his College days as his Guardian Angel— some

lingering - ray of the old ; love gave; Him* a glimpse of - the slender shrinking figure stumbling’ over ; the . wild hills in the darkness to save him. But, as a matter of fact, when the image of the Sub-Inspector’s wife occurred to him; it was to be instantly dismissed with impatience. He could think of "but ' one figure, one pair of angel-blue ‘ eyes, one deliverer from whom the warning would be worth having. •It : was another fairy-gift -of the bright creature who had put. the writ for possession of the Mill into the office tire. Lord Prumshaughlin, as Lord Lieutenant of the county, had doubtless been made aware of the Government’s plans, and she had charmed him out of his secret as she had charmed him out of his writ. “Yes, it’s she! There can be only one ‘she’ in the world,” he soliloquised, “millions of miles up among the songs of the morning stars.” “Do you think so?” said Katie, not knowing well what to make of his raptures. “Come, that does : not matter. What is to be done? Where are you to fly to?” “Don’t trouble about that. It is all settled. I will not have to fly far nor to remain away long, sis.” “Not remain away long! What can you mean?” “That, sis, is my secret,” he said, laughingly. - “You know best, Ken. Whatever you do will be right and brave,” she said, her white lips still as firm as those of true women always are in cases of real emergency. “Only do make haste. Your breakfast will be ready in five minutes.” x(To be continued.) . „