The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 31 March 1921, Page 3

The Storyteller

(By William O’Brien.)

WHEN WE WERE BOYS

CHAPTER XX.—(Continued.) “I am afraid you will find this a very stupid place after London,” said Miss Westropp, as they sat at lunch. " “Oh," no; I hear there ‘is archery, and a dance now and then when a frigate comes,” said one of the girls. “Dull? Quite the contrary,” said Mr. Neville, anxious to put in an encouraging word for the country. “Glengariff has no end of interest for me. My father came over here as a member of the Friends’ Committee in the Famine. I remember the first sovereign I ever had I subscribed it to our little family fund for the poor Irish. “Yes,” Miss Westropp remarked quietly. “We are rich enough in Famine memories.” “But that’s not all. Come, you mustn’t run down your country like that,” he said good-humoredly. “If you had nothing to show but the Coomhola grits, Glengariff would always be a place of interest and renown —in the" eye of the geologist at any rate. Girls, we must take the first opportunity of making out the Coomhola grits. I believe you won’t get many fossils, but the formation gives us one of the most curious links in palaeozoic history—this whole neighborhood is singularly rich in the fish-life of the Devonian period.” “I can give you as gamey a fish as ever you hooked any day you like,” said Harry, who did not see why the Devonian period (whatever it might be) should not extend to the nineteenth century. “And there’s no end of carp and. perch in the loughs.” “That is very interesting;’ said Mr. Neville, who was consoled for this alarming contempt of the charms of geology by the promised feast to his other belle passion of rod-fishing. “I will certainly do myself the pleasure of placing myself under your direction. I mean to see and do everything. I have a theory that whatever country a man owes hospitality to, it is his duty Jo learn all about it and do the best he can for it.” “Our fashion here is just the other way,” said Miss Westropp. “It is supposed to be vulgar for a man who lives by the country to do anything but abuse it.” Yes, and I think that is one of the very points to which attention ought to be directed,” said Mr. Neville, preparing with much animation to mount one of his hobby-horses. “That’s just what leaves you with no other industries but agitation and the begging-box.” “You’ll have the governor in a few days producing a plan for the pacification of Ireland, and making the whole thing as clear as daylight,” broke in Reggy, who had been twirling his moustache in some alarm. “Well,” rejoined his father, placidly, “it is true I have a few ideas upon the subject, and, if I should happen to, put them in ship-shape some day —— ” “They’ll send us all to sleep, governor,” said his undutiful son. * ' “Your father’s plan will have one great advantage,” said Miss Westropp, coming to the rescue. “It cannot possibly be worse than the plans they’ve been trying up to the present:' Here have we, Westropps, been on the shores of Bantry Bay ever since the sixteenth century, and a man ,oi; woman of our house never knew-a soul, among the, people that pay us rent —I mean, knew in any real senseuntil Harry here broke the ice.” •‘ ? J : “I, Mabel! Nonsense!” said Harry, ’.blushing. The affability with which he drank pewters 'at Moll Carty ’s with the boys had never occurred to him in that dignified light, before, and he was never r sure * that compliments'to him were not sarcasms. / " : “I believe - you. are fond of the Germans, Mr.

Neville. I think it is ' Schiller - who ? gives * us- a - test of what real nobles ought to be- ” V> ■< “Ah! yes, Schiller,” ( observed | Mr. Neville, ing and stroking his beard profoundly. Their, names ought to have a good ring in the country ” “ 1 Ein gliter Klang im LandeV ” said Mr. Neville, in higher delight with the quotation than he had ever been with the poetry. "How many of our nobles would pass the mint if they were assayed in that way? Why, they rather pique themselves on being detested.” “That is a just observation, Miss Westropp,” said the ironmaster. "I have often (remarked it myself — my poor wife used to have a good many of these people about the house— Irish landlord would have nothing to talk about if he was not bragging about being shot at or deserving to be.” "Oh, come, hang it, there are no better judges of a horse,” said his son, who thought it a duty to stand up for Horace’ a s Irish friends. " t ; “And no worse judges of a human being,” said Miss Westropp; “at least a human being in frieze and with a Kerry accent. Here they are, for centuries, with millions of the kindest hearts in the world around them pining for somebody to idolise, and they have never yet been able to see there was anything but a crew of beggars and assassins on their estates or any cure for them except to clear them out.” ' * “And are you really interested in—in—that sort of "thing?” asked Reggy, with an earnest astonishment that made Miss Westropp smile. He would as soon have expected to hear that her bright eyes were secretly addicted to logarithms, or that she ba4 fallen in love with one of his father’s forges. “I am only a yroman,.and a very helpless one,” said Mabel, "but I should like very much to interest people—important people—in doing something to brighten the world around them a bit.” Young Neville’s eyes said what his English tongue refused to say for him. “You brighten' the world every moment of your existence. You have nothing to do but to live to brighten it. But what sort of brightness do you expect from a poor devil like me?” “But politics is such a dull subject,' and so—so argumentative,” said one of the Misses Neville (people were never quite sure who was who among the Neville girls). "You can’t get people to talk politics—can you, clear?” "Why not? What better do they talk about?” said Mabel warmly. "The weather?” "The weather, very largely,” assented Joshua Neville. “Or the betting, or some French milliner’s new way of twisting a hat out of shape. Three-fourths of what people say in society bores the person who says and the person who hears it. Yet how many hard and cheerless lives are sacrificed to bring those two people together in a London drawing-room to bore one ■another! How much less dull the thousands might be if they’ would only give themselves a little trouble to make the millions happier ! And yet society will admit any well-dressed crime except’ enthusiasm. You may talk for hours and hours about all that is worst in your neighbors; you will hear s a roomful, of young women pretend to know all about the odds that a parcel of rascally bookmakers have settled in some public-house but the moment you start any topic in the least generous on noble—if it be the freedom or happiness of millions of people here in the world, and for endless ages— are denounced as a prig, if a man and, if a woman-I really don’t know what name they would find for a monster like - myself.” ( S “I should like to catch*them!” muttered young Neville between his teeth. . P “They would have you up for seditious language; (Mabel,” said Harry with a laugh, "and they will if you don’t mind.” > flf f I | • "Then I yron’t mind, for lam a born rebel against A great deal that passes for law in England and against almost everything that is called law in Ireland. In England you at all events regard the people as part of your establishment,"like your * dogsyou feed them ; and

fon d e them. In Ireland we treat them as beggars at the-y gate and send t for the police f i?for r them nay, it is still worse, for we first .knock the people down and empty their wallets, and then we can on- aie constable, and abuse them to the world for mendicants.” * ||T||l ■ "These are very remarkable observations—“first knock- the people down and rob them, and then abuse them as| beggars.” I must really take a note of it,” said Joshua Neville, whose face during Mabel’s tirade was a curious study— Wild Irish' Girl held something? so like his own rugged sentiments, yet so transformed with Irish poetry, that he was puzzled to recognise them. : Joshua Neville had poetry-in his own texture, but it was of the fossiliferous embedded in rocks—rather than of the subtle Ariel sort which lights up the hills and whispers through the woodlands. Miss Westropp impressed him like the. Glengariff landscape—his Cromhola grits were the only parts of it he understood ; the rest was unintelligible but wondrous lair though, of course, shadowy and impracticable, as became Irish views either in noli tics or scenery. "Who would have expected to hear all this from a person in your class?” w ; No, indeed ; and in me it is extremely vulgar. But, do you know, it seems to me vulgarity is just what we wantif vulgarity means being a little like our neighbors and feeling like them. The most vulgar and the most blessed-system I know was the Irish clan system, in which the chief was everybody’s cousin. Our system is to keep the chief everybody’s enemy. People are more in dread of , being thought vulgar than of being wicked. But to my mind, so far as there is any reproach in the word, there is no vulgarity like the vulgarity of the man who will run down his countrymen as beggars over champagne bought with' the beggars’ pence, and give himself the airs of a god because some ancestor of his was successful in a highway robbery— or, as he would call it. won a battlethree or four hundred years ago. The worst vulgarians on will meet in Ireland are those who have titles or are hunting for titles. There was only one Irish nobleman for the past century that anybody remembers, and in speaking of him, as of the Kings of England, people do not even mention his family name. It is enough to say Lord Edward.’ ” “Yes, I remember,” said the ironmaster, who had conscientiously read a History of Ireland, as a qualification for his Irish trip. He was not the man to be content with the guide-book. "He was a fine fellow; but don’t you think he rather threw himself away, if t. may say so—speaking as a practical man, you know, Miss Westropp?” * " I dare say every man has to throw himself away on something, or ,on nothing. Men throw' themselves away on studying the habits of frogs—and great men. Men throw themselves away on braudv-and-soda at the Club below. How many Irish peers have gone to their grave since Lord Edward’s time; and who, loves them who even remembers their names ? All the gazettes of Europe could ' not ' give a man more ‘ enviable fame than to be mentioned in Irish peasants’ cabins in their evening prayers. lam afraid you will find mpst of us ambitious rather to be mentioned in their curses. .You happy-tempered English folk don’t curse, (or I should have deserved to be mentioned in your curses forsaking disagreeable ' speeches you instead of doing what I came to doasking you all over to our old den Harry’s and mine. -You will let me drive the girls over this afternoon for a cup of tea, won’t you? f ßut you will find this Irish question haunting your window, whether you will or no, like the face of a hungry child ; and believe me, when you hear people say they detest politics, that only means that ' they have sent for a policeman and removed the pale cheeks and the hungry eyes to prison. The rest you will have to find out for yourself, but I wanted you to know, when you hear people rating Harry with low , tastes and agitation and rebellion and the rest of it, it is all my fault. Harry fights under my flag, and his enemies are my enemies,’-’ “Happy Harry! X only wish th« Guards were in such luck said young Neville, in a low tone. “Mabel always takes my part,” said the Lord

Harry, proudly. He -was astounded to find himself gradually rising from a position in which he had honestly regarded Quish the bailiff as a more gifted being into heroic proportions which enabled him to look down upon Guardsmen. ■> The girls floated away to discuss what could be done with Lord Clanlaurance’s starved greenhouses. “I wonder could a fellow —an outsider, I mean — ever understand Ireland!” said Reggie, actively applying for information to his moustache. “Come along, and show me the stables, and give me a cigar, and I'll tell you all about it,” said Harry. “I know' so devilish little, ’twon’t take long. We're going to fight you, whenever we get the chance. That's all. Girls will always talk such poetry about things.” “I wish I could fall into the habit,” said the Guardsman with a groan, as he lit his cigar. “If it were only as easy as the fighting !” Miss Westropp was not a person to do things by halves. She had received the strangest exhilaration from circumstances that would have repelled and horrified any young lady of well-regulated mind with whom she was acquainted. But the discerning reader will have seen long ago that Miss Mabel’s was by no means a well-regulated mind. She would never have carried off the premium for ladylike deportment at a young ladies' finishing academy. I am free to confess that the influence which had led Harry to prefer the stables to the club as a social resort had, in a very different order, imparted an element of wilfulness and neglect to the character of his beautiful sister. Her mind was not at all a Dutch flower-garden' cut to pattern. It was as fair as Glengariff, but had something also of Glengariff’s wildness and unaccountable shadows. So far from being shocked to find her brother leagued with low people for some madcap feat of arms, it gave new fuel to her belief in Harry’s reclamation. She felt to some extent the intoxication of the explorer who has rushed on undauntedly against all warnings, and has found a North-West passage where all the world prophesied, eternal ice. She now knew the worst; and what had all the dark hints of shameful passion and unspeakable conspiracy come to but a boy’s unspoken love and a soldier’s fight for freedom ? Why should he not fall in love with the miller’s daughter Her gentle eyes could never lead him into perdition. Was he to fall in love with Miss Deborah Harman? Rebellion might or might not be a rash thing even a deadly thing— but could it possibly be worse than a life spent at Moll Carty’s in a soulless bondage to Quish ?nay, could it possibly be more ignoble than the vacuous lives of the pimply young squires who dawdled at the Club in the cast-off fashions and vices of last year’s London season? Her life at the Castle, which seemed so bleak and sterile, had all of a sudden flowered into interest. Her sympathies ran like a wild vine in search of things to cling around ; and, lo! not only was. Harry submitting to her graceful chains, but there was not a cabin far or near to which her wild festoons were not extending. She no longer felt hqkself under the chilling suspicion of coming as one of Miss Deborah’s missionaries to the Ranties. She had got a key that opened every cabin and every heart in it, and . f llew entrancing spirit expanding within her as her eye ranged over the royal picture spread under the Castle windows, to think that she could now understand not only its mountains, woods, and waters, but its past and future— the mission of the Westropp race for the future *vas to brighten, the hearths and not quench them—that the curls of smoke along the hillsides rose like maledictions no onger, but like blessings from the simple flowing hearts within In addition to the divine Necessity of the perfume-laden rose which she felt to spread herself abroad, she was indulging the wilful blood of the Westropps in doing as. she pleased, and gratifying a feminine foible also in doing as the spiteful little cot-: eries of Drumshaughlin society did not please. She sent presents of grapes and peaches to Myles : Rohan’s sick-bed, and placed at his disposal, the , old • bath-chair

to which her father had once been reduced by violent access of the goutwhich, however, the sturdy miller resisted as a well-intended but intolerable imputation rv ~ i\/r:n „ vji cuciiimav/y. vvixcn tixo cii.ai.iu an mo -Ltxiii. wad uvci, she; availed herself of Mrs. Rohan’s circle of introductions to the pinched and aching clients of her Society of St. Vincent de Paul. Life was not worth living, in Mrs. Dargan’s eyes, for quite half a day after they beheld so astounding a freak on the part of the great lady at the Castle. The presidency of the St. Vincent de Paul Society had never before struck her as at once so offensive a work of holiness and yet so legitimate an object of pious ambition in the right hands. Katie Rohan Miss Westropp could not make much of. The shy creature shrank from notice like a frightened fawn. Though she was almost her own age, Mabel felt strong enough to take her in her arms as she would a timid child. Captain Mike MacCarthy she met early, and liked cordially. (To be continued.)