The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 10 March 1921, Page 3

The Storyteller

(By Wiluam O’Brien.)

WHEN WE WERE BOYS

CHAPTER XlX.—(Continued.) "I— hope you are not afraid of me," stammered Ken, feeling, if the truth must be told stupid to distraction. He felt a guilty shock, in the presence of his love, to remember how little love had been in his thoughts of late. I tremble for the opinion young ladies of sixteen and thereabouts will hold of him; but the fact is, Lily's fairy form and blameless blue eyes had got a good deal jostled out of sight, like a baby in a crowd, by the burly figures of Captain Mike MacCarthy and' Monsignor McGrudder. It is a way with those young Hotspurs. When they 'take to "dreams of iron wars" their bonny Kates have often enough to put up with the rude hint that "this is no world to tilt with lips in." Kate, however, has a knack of recovering her empire. Our Hotspur was at her feet already—l don't mean in the literal sense thoroughly ashamed of himself for ever having forgotten the potency of his lady's fan. This is, perhaps, a high-flown way of. putting his halting observation. "I hope you are not afraid of me, Lily." "No, indeed, Ken. Why should I be?" she said, looking at him with those clear blue eyes, which shone with the simplicity of two violets on a dewy bank. To which his ungrateful response was a desperate stare, and an almost inaudible passionate cry: "You have eyes out of heaven He sat down beside her at the usual unnegotiable distance at which love's engineers open their parallels, and captured one little outpost hand with the most delicate blue tracery wandering over its soft snow. A pretty pair of creatures enough they looked amidst the picture-scenery to the music' of the waterfalls— with the mild lightnings in her large blue eyes, he flushed with the passion which would have made a much more ill-cut profile than his look luminousas promising a pair of pretty ones as ever softened the Arcadian hills with their melodious sighing. Alas! how the prettiest of these pastoral reeds get out of tune, even in Arcadia!

She drew away her hand determinedly. "Ken, you mustn't! It is wicked I must tell you. You won't be angry with me, will you. . I am not to speak to you any more"—faltering just a little at the last.

Here was an heroic situation for a young gentle- • man who had just been reproaching himself —perhaps with some little sou peon of vain-gloriousness, as men will— having been neglectful of his goddess under the stress of weighty cares of state; and now the goddess tells him with the calmest celestial expression of countenance that, so far from her having languished for his devotion, he must please to give her shrine a wide berth for the future, if he does not want celestial bull-dogs set at him. Is Ken Rohan the only member of the base masculine fraternity whose fidelity is all the more ardent for a snubbing? "You are joking," he said, in the trepidatory tone of one who had just heard that the Last Trumpet was about to sound, and, incredible though it seemed, had it on authority which' he did not dare to doubt. "You don't usually tease a fellow, Lily." "No, indeed, I am quite in earnest. Mamma says you have set yourself against the Church and connected yourself with low people, and that a curse follows' such things, and I don't /know* what else.". Ken burst out .laughing—not a. gay laugh. "And is that all?" he asked, almost rudely. ~ "Well, papa and mamma say it is very terrible and will end badly." >*»>;& :■ ■■■< : "No doubt it ; will not end in. Commission of the Peace,"' cried Ken, stung and daunted in an intolerable way by her tranquillity. ;i "But, good heavens ! Lily, Ido you know what it [is that we are going. to fight for? Why, it will be a whole nation in arms! It will be tt battle, glory, 'freedom! I' am nobody, yet,

but I; am ; young and- have <my j chance, ,: and, when all is over, I will either have died as enviably as ever, the heart of a soldier panted; to die, or; I will begone of the heroes of* a war of independence, and the men who iook askance at us ; and : -curse 10-day will grovel at? our feet and chant Te DeurrisV ' ' • -"'" ; "'■

"I am sure I hope you will be great and happy, Ken " ,

"Happy, and you beat me from you like a dog!" "How can you say such a thing?" said Lily, a tear trembling now in the big blue eye. "I will miss you ever so much. But papa.and mamma are positive that we mustn't meet any more, and, you know, I could not do what would be wrong." ,; £ "Say that you think of, me as they do, and I am done. You always tell the truth, Lily. Tell me that there is somebody else that you are 'fonder of, and I. will go and find Georgey for you." She blushed violently. "Well, Ken, I must say mamma mentioned that she had other views for me >>

"Thank you, Lily; you are a brave girl. I hope you will be as happy as a queen," said Ken, not very bravely. "But I don't think there is anybody that I will ever care for as much as I did for you, Ken," she said, artlessly. "I mean that we were always such sweethearts, you know, and you were always so brave and tender to me. lam sure I wish these dreadful things would not be always happening when nobody wants them."

_ Her last words were smothered with a kiss—this time an entirely successful one—and her fragile daintily-moulded waist was in the grasp of a violent man. "Lily," he said, in low, rapid tones, "if we like one another like thatif we love one another—who has the right to part us Why should your father and mother make us two miserable for life? What are money and the wretched little rags of distinction that people scramble for in country villages? I am unknown and poor; but we can wait, Lily, and we have the wealth of the Indies, in the meantime, in one another's love. If we fail—well, any tears you ever drop on my grave.will not be tears of shame. But we won't fail, darling—we will win—we will clothe this old land with sunshine from sea to sea—and we will have a nation of soldiers with their victorious banners to attend your wedding and to worship your blue eyes." 1 J •

"Let me go, Ken—please, let me go," cried Lily, struggling, with an energy marvellous in so small a person, to release herself. "Somebody will come. I will hate myself if you do not go at once. It is unkind of youit is wrong is a sin ! "A sin to love you'and ask you not to| make both of us wretched for life, darling!" "A sin for me— certainly, to be here kissed by a young man whom my parents have forbidden me ever to speak to again." This she said with a decisiveness the most astonishing ever recorded of a young lady of her years and amiability; and then she burst into a flood of tears. "I did not think you would stay arguing with me," she cried, passionately. "Call Georgey to me—call Georgey, please,, instantly^ or. I shall cry out!" -■ . ',' ; :; -i "'H > '•' O, $ ir%)

n> r And the horrible thing," remarked Georgey U Meagher, confiding some vague guesses at what had happened, to her friend, Katie Rohan, that evening in the seclusion of the latter tiny blue-and-white papered bedroom," "the horrible 'thing is that it all comes of that wretched midget, Mr. Flibbert, fluttering about for old .Dargan's money."t K ;*V t* $* "You don't mean to say that it is he who has made this change m Lily?" asked Katie indignantly. ■i | I don t know that anything will ever make a change in Lily. She is a petrified lump of perfection " said Georgey, ma not very sisterly tone, "but f mean that that conceited little creature has been to tea with the Dargans more than once, and that Mrs Dargan is mean enough to set her cap at him because he

is a sort of an officer and in the Club. Poor Ken ! Poor boy!" -—■- - 2 »~ - -

The two girls looked at one another, the color flying to and »from their cheeks.. 1 r'Oh ! dear Georgey, I wish—l do wish " Katie flung her arms around her friend, and whatever she wished was buried between i pair of soft white necks where the girls hid their tell-tale faces.

I It was anything but exhilarating to Ken Rohan, in his present mood, to hear the Hark-like voice of Jack Harold as he mounted the heights chirping the gay carillon of some cafe cJiantaM love ditty, with an airy dash of zim.;ij'lan,,l(i's through ; it. They had not been much together late. :$. The f one was too busy with his Christy Minstrels and the other with his dreams. • A.Christy is not, the very gentlest physician for a wounded heart. Ken glanced around nervously for some way'of escape; but it was too late. Jack's confounded' bavarding Closerie-de-Lilas voice, hailed him. " "'.

"Hillo, ho, ho, boy! I have searched the Glen, there are I don't know how many hours for you. I have seen the vision '.of your tinge, dux (/rands yeux Metis. Then I knew you could not be far. Ken, she looked divineher hat alone was an apotheosis." "I hate small talk on serious subjects," said the other impatiently. "Let's talk of something else,Jack." '- : ■-'■'<*■ .'v . -'--' ; '?. ■ '..- .-'.

"Nay, but by Saint Patrick, we will talk of nothing else, while there is a Philomel in all these woods to sigh with us—and, indeed, whether there is or not. That is what I have come to . talk to you about. I can talk "of nothing else. : I can think of' nothing else. Ken, on the subject of woman you will never hear my mocking voice again. I will listen to you by the hour pouring out the perfections of your loved one. I will give you verse for verse and rapture for rapture. Don't spare your poetrypile it on heavens high. I will agree t with .you ~in: every syllable of ■ worship of our divinity except her name. There you will be mistaken ; but' that is a detail. Now, seriouslymost seriously—l am in love!" "I have no doubt about the love, and I am sure you are serious in thinking yourself serious." "Listen, Ken—l have come to you as the fellow of all the world to bring a wildly-throbbing heart to. Do not revenge yourself for my infernal flippancy by making fun of me like .that,,- 1,, know my faults. I am only a poor devil who twangs a guitar. Nobody will ever believe I have a . deeper note in me. I 'sometimes hardly believe it myself," he said, in a strangely downcast way. ' "Why, old fellow, what could put such things into your head ?" said Ken, his own haggard 1 face lighting up with kindness. "I think you could do anything and win anybody." ' "We shall see! Quoi qu'il en suit, this time it will be all deadly earnest. ./,..,.I have found at last that life may have a purpose which is no joke. lam tired of trifling. Polly Atkins, at the Drum, is a good girl, but I could, not stand her small beer to-day. I had to come to find you. You are such a . grand audience! I wish.l could drop that cursed Christy concert. It's so 1 , idiotic—though she did so like that little slavesong. Oh! Ken, she is -'. themost glorious creature that ever made a man feel as if he could climb to the stars to win her!" ■■•''''

r 'Vss%si am glad, Jack. Tell us all about it," said Ken Rohan,, who,"* although not in the humor to respond to raptures about woman's love just* then, was relieved--' to find that. Cupid's, J,, new victim was entirely too much occupied with his' awn delightful pains to pay much attention to the bloodless cheek and lacklustre eye of his companion. .'. He had found "an audience," and that was a true, as well as a frank, statement of what he had come 3, in search 0f.,..,.

The story of his- meeting with .Mabel Westropp was narrated with such touches of color as , Jack Harold's nimble fancy knew excellently well how to r w^sliMir:^ThW^^^ co-operated with the devotee in

painting the willowy figure, the showery" yellow hair, the sweet sincerity of his goddess; and he : would not have been a vocalist if he had j omitted her artless compliment % to his singing.;-nor a lover if he had not constructed out of this and several other the like fairy filaments, quite a glistening fabric of hopes for his wooing. . ;* ~ ;.' \ 'f "Yes, she is very lovely, and, I think, better even than she is beautiful," said'Ken Rohan fervently., . "What! Do yon know her?" asked the other; with a sudden pang.

"By Jove, old fellow, you are in love! There are a thousand jealous devils in that look of yours. You may -disband your devils. I am the most harmless of mankind to you. I only met Miss Westropp accidentally with Harry, and I am not likely to meet her again. But I say, Jack," he continued, not exactly discerning in what direction he could suggest hopes that would feed his friend's daring ambition to Lord Drumshaughlin's daughter's hand, and quite alive to the folly of disheartening him, "how the deuce did you pic|£ up with that fellow Harman?" ~ The other colored slightly. ; He had passed i over this part of the narrative in a sketchy manner. With any other censor he would have sported his acquaintances at Stone Hall as a feather in his cap; but Ken's glum stoicism made him uncomfortable about his innocent little vanities. Still he made a gallant rally to carrv it off impudently. "Oh," he said, "Harman and I pound the piano together a little sometimes. You see we may have differences enough in Ireland without differing as to musical notation. A man may deserve to be shot as an agent and play a very passable thing from Bach en attendant."

"These are dangerous times," said the other, gravely. "Harman is a cunning fellow, and would not be half so dangerous only for his candor." "I believe well! But I humbly pretend to the talent to manager- my acquaintance as well as choose them," replied Jack, a little nettled. "Besides," he proceeded more placably, "a footing in the enemy's camp is ever useful. Harman is up to -every that the police think is worth knowing. Par exemple, he dropped me a hint about that fellow Dawleyyou would hardly believe it—of course, it was only- a hint. But damn Harman and Dawley to the lowest cellar! What brings their infernal names into the same-world with Mabel Westropp ? Ken, she is the loveliestthe most adorable " %.»•;-; ~

"God prosper you, Jack!" said his friend, pressing his hand. "I envy youyour hope!" He had almost to choke himself to swallow down a moan that came from his own lacerated heart. "Come," said he, with a good-humored smile, "it is my turn to tell you it" is growing late. You find something better than goat's milk and whisky on the Glengariff Hills, after all?" "Ah!" cried Jack Harold, with a happy laugh, "because those heather hills of yours.;now have the grace to -blush and acknowledge their goddess." tt . (To be continued.) '