The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 12 January 1922, Page 3

The Storyteller

(By William O’Brien.)

WHEN WE WERE BOYS

CHAPTER XXXll.— (Continued.) Ken was in a dream again. He could not feel the rock under him. The sketch was on the leaf upturned to him. In stooping for it, he could not help seeing it. That one glance had photographed every line of it in his soul for ever — was a scarcely half-finished sketch of the scene in the legend. The figure of Eily had not been pencilled in; it was represented only by a few vague curves; but that of her lover was distinctly visible rising out of the cloudy spray underneath the rock. The spirit-like lineaments were delicately drawn; but he could not help seeing that the features bore a resemblance which he could not even think of without fancying himself in a delirium. “I would give all the world for another look at that sketch,” he said, without knowing what he was saying— almost without knowing that he was saying anything. Again a proud light flashed from her eyes that made him sick with his audacity. She noted his contrite aspect, and, as if to thank him for it, said with a smile: “It is the first time anybody has ever set a price upon my idle scrawls. They generally end by going over the brink, like Eily.” He started, as if somebody had made a thrust to put himself over. “No,” she said, still smiling, “this one I will keep—at least till I finish — if it is ever to be finished.” It seemed to him as if the mountain was going around — as if the sun was dancing before his eyes. Every struggle of his to seem collected was a woful failure. “I am glad that little story interested you,” he said, not daring to say anything less commonplace. “Yes, and yet Eily was so wrong!there are so many better things to be done in the world than rushing over a precipice into a lover’s arms — many more unselfish things.” She stood facing the ghostly steaming abyss of spray as if she was arguing earnestly against some spirit she saw in it. “What is this cruel Love that robs the world for the benefit of one? Why should not the love of one human soul be rather a reason for loving all the rest as well?” I suppose because life is not long enough to love one soul sufficiently, when people really love,” he said, scarcely knowing whether he was addressed at all — “because, the human heart is not capable of containing half the bliss of one such love.” . ; “Ah!” she said, with a smile, “I was not thinking of the two who love, but of the millions who have nobody to love or to be loved by. But that is one of the subjects on which they tell me I am a bore. Will you think it very shocking if I tell you that I hate the very name of Love?” This, with a little stamp of the foot, which was all the more emphatic that she had just mentioned the name at least four times with a softness that, to young Rohan’s ear, sounded like a note from a Canticle of the Seraphim, “What is this?” she asked abruptly, pointing downwards over the Bay, “I did not know that the Fleet was in the Bay. Why, they are only just arriving!” His eyes followed hers over the waters of Berehaven. There were five or six great war-ships planted, like horrible sores, on the bosom of the great Bay, usually as undisturbed as a lake among the virgin forests of a red Indian reserve. They* had barely arrived, and "were still spouting black steam from their funnels, like monsters out of breath. One or two had actually dropped their anchors; the others were drifting slowly to their appointed ground; tiny despatch-boats were shooting in and out among them. England’s strength had hitherto been to him a vague bookish abstraction —a tradition of indeed later date than the labyrinth of Minotaur, "but of not much more dreadful bearing on his actual life. His estimate of the forces to

be counted with had been formed largely from little Mr. Flibbert’s slender shanks,, and from the infantry detach* ■ ment at Bantry, who outbawled Captain Mike himself at a rebel chorus. The war-ships, for the first time, terrible as the tremendous shadow of Destiny'in a Greek tragedy, “ ' overpowered him with the thought— what was a parcel of unarmed Irish peasant lads to do against these iron fortresses, with their mouths of fire —nay, against a power of which these were the mere scouts and outposts? That was only the anxiety of a moment —the keen, resolute eyes of the General, and the bronzed faces of a hundred thousand Irish veterans behind him, blotted out all other visions. But there was a suggestion of betrayal about the ■ arrival of the ironclads in the Bay on this particular day of the Rising which went to his heart like cold lead, and oppressed him with the thought of the American ship in the roadstead at the other side of the promontory, only an hour’s steam away, within the very jaws of these iron monsters. It might be too late at nightfall; the strangers must be warned at once. “Good-day, Miss Westropp,”’ he said, raising his hat. “Good-bye She gave a startled look into his face, and instantly read the meaning of the three upright furrows between the eyebrows and the set muscles of the mouth. “Something is wrong,” she said, very calmly, in an almost caressing voice. “Tell —trust me. I will not faint at all. You know I am your fellow-conspirator, and I have a right to know — a right, I mean, ” she added, with downcast eye, “for Harry’s sake.” Ho paused a moment. “Yes,” he said, “it is better you should hear from me. And it is not your courage I am afraid of testing. I remember the verses about the Italian girl and her soldier of Liberty. Well—marching orders have come for Giulio, that is all,” he whispered, with a tender gaiety, looking down upon her, as if he were not quite sure, nevertheless, that a supporting arm might- not be necessary . She trembled violently, and became very white. She looked away towards the water to steady herself, and the pp great warships danced in her sight, as if they were demons preparing to spring upon her, breathing fire from their dark nostrils. She turned to young Rohan, and through her mist of tears she seemed to see only his spirit rising out of the deadly white vapour of the waterfall, as in her drawing. She even fancied she felt herself drawn under some compulsive spell to the brink of the fatal rock. But if Mabel Westropp’s heart had the softness of a timid child’s, the native pride that cuirassed it was of a temper fit for a heroine in one of Tasso’s combats. “Ah!” was all she said, or rather sighed though she found the air choking her, and the dizzy thunder at the bottom of the cataract 7,7 \ might have been rumbling within her own small head. For a moment only she lost self-control when her eyes caught sight again of the black unwieldly men-of-war, and as she murmured, shudderingly, “Those horrid guns!” all her woman’s terrors seemed to vibrate in the words. Was it her courage or her weakness that most transported him? Transported he was, at all events, beyond anything that I could possibly get a grown public to credit of anybody, except a Professor of Provencal hyperbole, or the young rustic Celt of nineteen whom we are dealing with — so enamoured that he would have worshipped her for the word to cast himself into 4 the vaporous abyss for her sake —so\infatuated that he could imagine the officers of the Royal Squadron—if they could have seen and heard her — spiking “those horrid guns” for fear of hurting her. “Yes,” he said, for want of something he desired to say, “they look formidable, don’t they? And they are. But that jo only one side of the picture. There are other men and other guns in Cooiloch Bay at this moment with a different mission.” , She shuddered again. Then she said suddenly; “Did you know that Harry was to leave for London in the a morning to take up an appointment at the Cape?” "v" “Indeed!” “Yes. The Chief Secretary has kindly procured him a command in a Colonial mounted regiment. He had all his arrangements made. He went down to the Mill last night—as I thought to tell you, and bid you good-bye. I

liavo not spoken with him since. Poor boy, how this changes .matters for him! To-morrow he would have been off!” The anxious furrows came back over , young Rohan’s brows. “Let him go,” lie said with earnestness. “Make him go!” “Just as the men in Cooiloch Bay you have just spoken of are coming! This is your tribute of compassion for a woman. It is not your advice to a man. Oh, no,” she said, proudly, “Harry will not choose" a moment like this for deserting, depend upon it.. And now I have one favor to ask of you : if he is to go, let it be with you. Why should I not say that I like to think of you and him and pray for you and him together?” , She extended her hand with the frankest sweet tenderness, and looked into his eyes without a tear in her own. Without in the least knowing what he did —knowing only that heaven was glowing around —he knelt, and kissed the proffered little hand. He felt it tremble in his grasp, but it was not until he had a second time and a third time touched it with his burning lips that it was withdrawn. “I did not mean that. But you are a privileged person to-dayyou are in danger,” she said, smiling sadly, as if to disguise the agitated color with which her cheek was rosed over. “Oh dear, what a sad country this is! I suppose it is nearly three hundred years now since the night this place became Eily’s Rock?” “Yes, but after all what a glorious old fight it is! These ships below are beginning to-day just where they began the day they opened fire on the Castle of Dunboy.” “Perhaps to end ” “Not with a plunge from Eily’s Rock, assuredly,” he said gaily. “And if it end as Fergus ended, — why, Fergus is about the most enviable fellow in all Irish history, except,” —an uncontrollable impulse wrung it from him “except myself, if, if . Oh, Miss Wcstropp, can you understand how a man would face danger with a joyous heart and a charmed life, if he could only carry in his bosom your slightest tokenyour least whisper of hdpe.” “I have given you my brother,” she said in a low voice, with downcast eyes. And so they parted. She was spared the agony of devoting Harry to destruction, however —he had devoted himself. Mrs. Keyes put into her trembling hands, when she reached the Castle that afternoon, an ill-spelled pencil writing in a schoolboy ■scrawl, which she deciphered as follows: — “I have scene Katie. You no the rest. lam going to joyne Ken. Don’t be fritened, Mab, you mussent cry. You were the onely one in the wurld that gave me fayre play—Quish and you. Goodby. Harry.” When he went to the Mill, the previous evening, to bid farewell on his departure for South Africa, Harry happened to. meet Katie Rohan feeding her favorite old green-plumed Russian duck outside the portico, and thereupon in his simple, straightforward way, said; “Katie —it’s no harm my calling you Katie, is it, for this once? l am going away. Is there any chance?” Then, seeing the poor child totter against the portico in terror; “I know I frighten you. Why do you hate me, Katie? I love you more than I could tell if I had all my life to tell you. I would live for you or die a thousand deaths for you. Try me.” “Oh, hush,” she said, trembling violently all over, and crimson with confusion. “Somebody will hear you. I don’t hate you at all. I like you ever, ever so much —I think you are ever, ever so good, and I am sure you will find somebody good and beautiful that will love you, and love you tenderly. But I — Mr. Westropp, I thought your sister had told you —it is dreadful — it is sin for me to stand here and speak to you on such a subject. I should die if you ever mention it again.” - She flew into the house, like a pet fawn that had suddenly seen a kennel of clogs unloosed at her. He turned away towards the solitude of the Glen without entering the house. “I suppose,” he said to himself, as he plunged into the deepening shadows, “a fellow can get killed in South Africa as well as anywhere else, but — is such a long way off,” And when, after wandering aimlessly about the mountains all the night, he met Con Lehane on his mission to.Bantry after daybreak, and heard the announcement of the Rising, he hailed it as a special message from Heaven for his convenience. When

Ken Rohan reached Patsy Driscoll’s yawl that evening, k, Harry was' already there to welcome him. In the meantime there hung over Drumshaughlin and the surrounding glens that mysterious silence which, among men, as an inanimate nature, is so often the presage of a storm. A Rising is (I may not yet quite say, used to be) a sort of Silver Jubilee in every generous Irish life. Young men look forward to their own Rising, and old men look back upon theirs; and the whole population, non-combatant as well as combatant, feel some such tender interest in the event as the whole public, even those least addicted to matrimony, feel in a Breach of Promise of Marriage case. It did not require any official premonition to tell a sleuthhound of Head-Constable Muldudden’s experience that there was something ominous in the very stillness of the people. If the foibles of the great may be faithfully c0n- .... fessed, Head-Constable Muldudden’s zeal had been much stimulated, and his spirits much raised, by the breakdown of Mr. Flibbert’s Napoleonic strategic arrangements for the capture of Ken Rohan. His eagle eye early darted upon certain whispering conferences at street corners, and certain ponies making for the mountains in different directions, and certain peculiarly fiery appearances about the eyes and nose of Dawley, and a certain filtering procession of young men passing into the chapel throughout the day, and into Father Phil’s confession-box and out again with happy lighting faces from all of which, and many other symptoms, Mul-D., as he was playfully called in the dayroom, concluded, with swelling bosom and snuff taken in handfuls, that the Government’s information was correct, and that the opportunity of his, Mul-D.’s, life had arrived. (To be continued.)