The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 17 March 1921, Page 3

The Storyteller

(By William O’Brien.)

WHEN WE WERE* BOYS

CHAPTER XlX.(Continued.) Three or four nights afterwards Myles Rohan fell off his office-stool in a fit. It happened in this wise. Danny had several hours before shut down the sluicegate and stopped the water-wheel, the drought having reduced the midstream to a rill,- and had locked up the premises lor the night ; Myles, as had happened several times after tea, had quitted the parlor, taking the key with him, and unlocked the office and lighted the gas. He had spent many absorbed hours of late over his accounts and bundle of freight-notes. It so chanced that, some loads of corn having arrived unexpectedly from the Garrindinny railway station, Danny 'Was called up to the windlass to hoist in the sacks, and, having come into the office for the carter’s docket, found his master’s body lying beside the overturned stool in a great blotch of blood, which was still oozing from a wound in the head; the teeth were locked tightly together, and the breathing that of a man almost strangled. Though Mrs. Rohan was a delicate woman, who indulged in her full share of woman’s luxurycomplainingshe took the command in this emergency by as divine a right as Israel Putnam in his shirt-sleeves, fresh from the plough, went to the front at Bunker’s Hill. She had the wound in the head bandaged, and the blood sponged away, and the throat freed, while the carters were standing glued to the ground in stupefied horror. She had, with Ken’s and Danny’s help, a comfortable bed made up in the office, and a fire sparkling in the grate. By the time the old doctor came, blinking profoundly through his round spectacles, and administering his sparse medical knowledge with an abundance of stock consolations, Mrs. Rohan’s decisive measures had already tided over the worst of the fit, and the excellent doctor gradually came to see that his directions were as superfluous as his condolences. “He is at present, madam, exhibiting favorable symptoms of a somnolent condition, with still some stertorous indications as to breathing,” he observed, with much impressiveness. “Yes, doctor, he is getting into a beautiful sleep, thank God!” said Mrs. Rohan. Another wonderful thing was to see how coolly little Katie bore herself amidst the horrors which paralysed the rough carters Katie, who would almost swoon with terror every time the blood even of a chicken came to be shed on the premises. She was as white as her own little counterpane, indeed, but there was not a tear ' or a cry ; and she moved about with the mysterious instinct of those gracious presences which are missing nowhere and are noticed nowhere, and which are as welcome in a sick room as lint. The wound in the head had saved Myles Rohan. He fell into a heavy sleep. Towards three o’clock in the morning, when the dawn began to struggle with the night-lights, Mrs. Rohan, watching by the bedside, felt an outstretched arm laid, upon her hand, and in a mute transport of joy saw Miles sitting up in the bed. He could not speak, however. Several gallant efforts, which I shrink from describing, made that plain. He motioned convulsively towards the high desk at which he had been writing when he fell. She thought she understood. In an instant she had writing materials at his hand. He scrawled, very eagerly and rudely: Documents on desk. Don't want the children know,” and then signalled for them violently. There was a letter advising him of the failure of a Cork corn merchant with whom he had considerable transactions; there was an account with a stinging word or two wi itten across .it,, in red ink; and there was a cheque of ; his own, with two still more intolerable words on the face of it. He pounced on then! like a wild animal and stuffed . them under his pillow, and then,, calmly

lay back with something like a smile' on his face, as though the bad news were now effectually placed; beyond discovery by the children.' 1 " ;**. ' ;! '' ; l * ySi ' Poor Myles's plan for keeping the children in the dark was however, destined to be sucessful. Ken Rohan was at his father's business at the mill by cockcrow the next morning, after a night of torturing self-reproaches upon his own selfish idleness and unprofitableness. He would begin at the very beginning and aid Danny (to that stiff-necked and' ungrateful person's deep-mouthed indignation) by setting the wheel in motion before there was water to turn it, and the hoppers before they had anything but one another to grind. When the post arrived, he could not go far through his father's letters without receiving dismal, intimations that his son's wayward course was not the only cloud that had been daunting the miller's sturdy heart of late. One letter he had torn open amidst the heap of invoices, business notes, and accounts, without noticing Mr. Hans Harman's cognisance, a boar's head,, stamped on sealing-wax on the cover. The letter fascinated him as though the Harman family boar's head were the head of a Gordon-

Confidential. “Stone Hall, Sept. 8, 186—. Dear Rohan, You will see by enclosed note from the Attorney-General (which I must ask you to return) that I have been as good as my word. You will see also that there is no time to be lost to save our young friend from mischief. Yours, etc., “Hans Harman.” The enclosure from the Attorney-General, the Right Hon. Tobias Glascock, contained these words on the second leaf of a letter, the first of which’ had been detached: Your young protege bears a bad reputation with the police but if you really want him transferred from the gallows to the Civil 'Service there is a Second Clerkship in the Pipe-Roll Office which you can have for him on the understanding that you will answer with your head for his loyalty and (what is of more consequence) for the county.—T. G.”

Ken read this over and over till his eyelids crew hot and his brain was on fire. His cheeks could scarcely have tingled more if they had been cut across with a riding-whip. t "Great God !" he cried, in an agony,"have I sunk into such a pit*of infamy as this?—made a subject of bargain and sale in some wretched market of corruption, for God knows what base considerations—pitched into some scullion's office by the Government J have dared to dream of overturning—nay, indebted "for it, as for a favor— in eternal gratitude for it to the man who is probably a personal enemy and certainly a pestilent villain. Gracious heaven! what is to be done? I feel as if I were in a bath of boiling pitch." , And Mrs. Rohan and Katie, seeing him stride about all day m a raging fever, marvelled that the poor boy took on so at his father's condition, thought they had found an antidote for the whole trouble when they were able to report that the sufferer was beginning to articulate faintly again. What was actually passing through Ken's , mind at the moment was a fancied scene in which he was flinging the fragments of Mr. Hans Harman's letter in his teeth in his own office with words that would bite like vitriol Such alas! is youth's selfishness that, when he espied Dr.' U Hartes massive-figure arriving at the Mill (the greathearted Doctor having caught the very first train to his old friends bedside, the moment the tidings reached nim, notwithstanding his unconquerable terror of death S?3 ft \ fi^ th °? ghfc of J°y was not so much that his father had found a friend as that he himself had found a counsellor, whose broad shoulders were enormously comforting is an emergency of this kind ;l This seems to be a good post enough," was the ESlf S f f le T k ' atCr ' he had ™ad the letters a coupe pf times leisurely "There are a great .many people who are neither knaves nor lickspittles who would jump at it." He turned : his keen eyes full on

the young man, as if in search of some carefully concealed flaw in his bold purpose. A less practised eye than his would have given up the search at sight of that transparent face with the indignant blood manning its battlements. "Very well, Ken, I understand you," he said, in an altered key, "and you are right.- You ought not in your position to close with Harman's offer. But recollect, sir," he "suddenly said, with sternness, "your poor father's feelings ought, to be considered as well as vour own in this matter." The deep flush of shame that suddenly mantled Ken's'cheeks and forehead told . how keenly the reproach had gone home. "Before; you indulge in any expensive luxury of indignation, recollect that your poor father has had trials, and must have had sore ones before he would ask or receive favors from Plans Harman. It would be murder to involve your father in any further worry in his present state. It looks like a merciful arrangement of Providence that heshould # know nothing about it. Besides, the note looks like a civil one; and why answer it with insult? Upon the whole, I can see nothing better to do with this offer for the present than to put it here," he said, putting the letter with its enclosure into the fire; "and let it rest there," he added, as the nomination to the Second Clerkship in the Pipe-Roll Office turned into a little heap of white ashes.

Myles Rohan's power of speech returned, and Dr. O'Harte, immensely relieved to find that it was not to be a death-bed scene after all, blossomed into the sunniest spirits, and, like a triumphant surgeon after an operation, roared out: "I knew I'd do it, Myles. I knew my old bark would bring your view-halloo back, if there was a shout in the country." Myles shifted his position so as to cover one of the documents which was escaping from under his pillow, and with his hospitable smile, though the old heart voice was feeble, responded: "You always had the cheerful Word, Doctor ! You're as welcome as the flowers of May."

"It has caused a great shock in town, and I am really distressed," said Monsignor McGrudder, with whom Dr. O'Harte was dining that evening, "for I always will say that Myles Rohan is an upright man. I am not sure that I ought not to call to see him myself," said the Monsignor, with a graciousness worthy of Cardinal Rimbomba's reception-room on an Ambassadors' Night, "only that his son is one of those rash young men. that make scenes—you understand 'I understand perfectly," said the Doctor, with a roll of the eye which made a young priest sitting opposite him choke and redden in a remarkable manner. "Besides, I don't think it is necessary."

-: "Unless," said Monsignor McGrudder, "unless that, of course, it is a singular and shocking event — I go no further than that— for Myles Rohan's sake I should not like my people to consider it a judgment from Providence for the language he unhappily did use to me." *• -

"Your people are more likelv to : consider it an invitation from Providence to break your windows," said Dr. O'Harte, dryly..

CHAPTER XX.— MABEL OPENS A MENAGERIE There was a letter; from Lord Drumshaughlin (lying on the ' breakfast-table, which Mabel immediately pounced upon, and kissed. “Dear old papa! so the gout has given him permission to write at last,” she cried, opening it as she might a jewel-box, and lingering fondly, as girls are apt to do, to observe the look of it. The writing was quaint and crooked, but refined,as became handwriting- subject 'to .fits of the., gout.' It was upon'thick club' notepaper, and faintly scented, Mabel thought. The old lord began In an elevated strain of moral reflection, with a touching reference to filial insensibility to the tribulations of 1 desolate old age. “For myself, my dear Mabel,” he wrote, “I do not complain. I have been too long inured to suffering and neglect. You will* be sorry to hear, by the way,, that g the gout ' has * advanced" to the « knee joint/and your mother has not been much asked to ' the country since your departurewhich has not

improved the temper of either of us. As I have said, however, I should be disposed to waive my' own claim to a daughter’s duty and affection towards a father who has always idolised her if I could persuade myself that the extraordinary resolution you have taken of burying yourself from the world was attended with any compensating advantage, either to your own happiness or the reformation of the foolish boy to whom you are inconsiderately sacrificing so precious a portion of your youth and of your father’s comfort. I am not surprised, however, to learn that you have consigned yourself to a hopeless and ungrateful task/ and that you have not only failed to influence him for the better, but that he has of late fallen more and more into courses which young ladies of your age, brought up as you have been, cannot be expected to understand, much less to correct him in. You will sufficient!v appreciate his position when I tell you that there is serious danger of his entangling himself in an alliance that would be disgraceful to our family, and that he is, I learn on the surest authority, involved deeply in an atrocious communistic conspiracy for an armed insurrection against the forces of the Crown and the abolition of property and religion.” (To be continued.)