The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLVIII, Issue 35, 1 September 1921, Page 3

The Storyteller

(By William O'Brien.)

WHEN WE WERE BOYS

CHAPTER XXVlL—(Continued.) Lord Drumshaughlin had been all his life a lazy, but never a cowardly man. The second blow, instead of dejecting him still further, only steadied him. Duty, which he had spent his feeble years in dodging, has come upon him at last like an armed man, and Ralph Westropp turned to face the enemy as unflinchingly as ho had long ago faced Antonaccio's pistol in the hotel of the Rue de la Paix. That intolerable sting Humphrey Dargan had •inserted in his easy-chair had cured him of his weakness for cushions. He had behaved like an idiot, like a coward, like a reprobate. Quite true, lie almost felt the sanguine blood fly to his yellow cheeks as he thought of it allhow he had ceased to be an Irish gentleman, without becoming more than an English club Bohemianhow he had cringed to money-lenders instead of mastering his affiairs like a manhow he had allowed his wretched Harry to drift from him into vacancy, and his beautiful Mabel into God only knew what fantastic follies of an innocent childish heart —and how for all these treasures wasted, and abdicated duties, he had substituted the dreary joys of that dreariest of egoists, the elderly-juvenile man of pleasure sodden club enjoyments of the table, [the unwholesome appetite for late hours and gaslight and green tables and smoking-room banalities, and the rest of the feverish follies which make young cheeks pale and old ones shamlessthese, and the little three-cornered note, whose scent had just died away in ashes. But it was not too late, at least, to die with harness on his back —who knew? Perhaps not too late to retrieve the fortunes of the day? Imprimis, these troubles must bo faced on the spot— Ireland. The first thing was to rescue Mabel from this monstrous rabble Harry's low associations had brought about the poor child; this much was so clear to him that he performed the. whole journey to Drumshaughlin in imagination without a stop, even to telegraphing Mick Brine to have his chaise-and-pair in waiting at the night mail train in Garrindinny the night before, so as to press on without the intermission of an hour. So much accomplished, a resolute attempt must be made to grapple with the financial condition of the estate; and, above all, and at any cost, to shake off Humphrey Dargan's unbearable clutches. After all the Dargan mortgage was only for 55,000?. and upon not too advantageous terms in the present prospects of Irish landed security—six per cent. There could be no insuperable difficulty about contracting a fresh loanat two per cent, additional, perhaps, but even sothat would beat the gombeen-man's insolent claws off the estate, and place Lord Drumshaughlin in a position to give tho answer for which the creature's letter cried to Heaven. And in casting about for a financial Machine-god, Lord Drumshaughlin's thoughts recurred to Hugg, the second mortgagee, whose present lien was only, for 30,000/.. and'who might be willing enough to consolidate the whole loan upon the estate at his own figure of eight per cent. Hugg, it seemed, was some city notable who, for reasons of his own, did not choose to be known as the money-lending Petite Bourse, and Hans Harman, who was in the secret (as he was in all others), had observed the obligations of confidence so rigorously that he had himself, with Mundle, witnessed the signature to the mortgage-deed; but Hugg was beyond question some Jewish Croesus, doubtless in the —possibly on the Treasury Bench, as Harman once more than half hintedand the thought had struck Lord Drumshaughlin that, if he could only get into comunication with Hugg himself, who would scarcely -fear to entrust bis secret tn

the honor of a Westropp, it might be possible to strike up an understanding more satisfactory than could be. obtained on pedantic lines of business. It .seemed to him he could face the rearrangement of his affairs with a lighter heart, if he was in a position to approach Hans Harman with some bold and fruitful suggestion of his own,, instead of turning to his agent helplessly for baby-feeding, as he

had always hitherto done ,in every whining, sickish moment. And it was to the Hugg address in South Audley Street, Grosvenor Square, his cab was now speeding with a cele* rity which yet, was not halt impetuous enough for thj eager, fretting fire within. Forwho will sound that fathomless ocean of mystery, the'ordinary human aorta? —he who had stepped into the cab a chastened penitent, had already grown so rebellious-proud of his own virtuous resolutions that he burst into imprecations on the slowness of those infernal jades of cab-horses, and on stepping out felt coerced to present the cabby with an additional halfcrown as a propitiatory sacrifice to his own conscience and cabby’s outraged pride in his steed.

“Eh? Ton my soul, 27a is a dancing-master!” cried. Lord Drumshaughlin, bounding up the steps, only to. find the brass plate on the ground-floor suite sacred to M. Passeul et Filles, professors of the new waltzes. The first-floor afforded no better light. It was the dingy domain of a corsetiere of the same grand nation. “M. Ougg? mais non, monsieur,” said the civil little corsetmaker, shaking her head. “M. Ougg? Ah, my God, I recollect myself. A letter to that address entremeled itself with my letters one morning, there are some months, and the Madame d’en - has —Madame la proprietaire— Madame Callaghan, charged herself * with it. Sonnette de rez de chaussee, Monsieur—en bas,” twittered the little staymaker ; and Lord Drumshaughlin applied himself to the area-bell. The lady of the house, Madame Callaghan, a slatternly, bony woman, with a soft Munster accent disguised in a harsh voice, and in those tags of Cockney speech which the humbler Irish in England sometimes assume, as, in a way, taking out naturalisation papers, answered him at the area gate.

“No,” said the Madame d’en-has. “Mr. Hugg didn’t live here, and she didn’t know where he lived ; but if there was any commands for Mr. Hugg she would take charge of them.” “Perhaps she would be good enough to say how soon she could convey a comunication to Mr. Hugg?” “Didn’t know from Adam — a week, maybe a month —a gentleman called and tuk away —didn’t know how soon he’d call again, and didn’t care.” “A gentleman called? Indeed! And pray might he inquire what sort of gentleman?” “That he might find from them whose business to tell him,” snapped the suspicious dame, banging the area-gate in his face.

“Yes, hang it! always failed in diplomacy—as what did I not fail in ” reflected his lordship, as he walked away towards the Chief Secretary’s house in the adjoining square“ Shall have to fall back upon Hans Harman, as usual, he won’t fail! He’d find Hugg. He’d tear all about him out of that damned surly old shrew faster than Torquemada would with his pincers. Hugg!—what a deucedly uncomfortable name —Bug, Mug, Lug, Tug, Dug, Jug, Drug, Slug, —why, you might set a whole Chamber of Horrors to rhyme with it! But Harman’ll he a match for ’em all. He’ll get Hugg to extinguish Dargan, and then you’ll have Harman coming down to extinguish Hugg, or trumping him with some other mysterious old financier —an astonishing fellow! —an invaluable fellow! — and, by Jove! he did warn me what would come of this madcap adventure of Mabel’s— as it turned outHah! glad to see I’m not wholly out of luck to-day. Chief Secretary in town, and I’ve run him down, too!” he cried, as he stopped opposite a mansion in the Square. The blinds were all close-drawn, and muffled in proper autumnal weeds of widowhood for a family out of town; but Lord Drumshaughlin espied two men of drilled backs, loafing in elaborate idleness about the railings, their real calling about as well disguised in civilian dress as the frog who would a-wooing go must have looked in morning costume.

“Would you kindly present this card to Mr. Jelliland, and say the matter is urgent?” he said boldly to the servant who opened the door, and who, with a glance at the card, said hesitatingly: “Not altogether certain whether ’ee’s returned from the Hahirish Hoffice, h’ lawd—p’raps your lawdsh’p would please to hentaw.”— “Thanks make your mind easy about that; his detectives are at the door,” replied his lordship, resolutely pushing his way into the dining-room.

In a moment, the servant returned and ushered him upstairs into a snuggery, where John Jelliland sat cowering over his desk by the fire amidst mountains of official documents, reports, and warrants, amidst which he ap-

peared to be burrowing for the bare life like a dormouse, in a particularly hard winter. The Secretary was woefully changed since we last saw him in the fresh gloss of his office. The little bald head that bobbed up to welcome Lord Drumshaughlin did so much less stiffly, and more amicably. The sparse hairs that peered about the edges of the bald wastes of his scalp on either side, like sad ,veterans inspecting the graves of their old comardes, had grown ever so much sparser and greyer within these few Irish months; and the keen little bird’s eye with which John Jellilantl took in the whole Irish situation at a glance had grown strangely dim and suggested spectacles. The fact of it w r as things had not turned out precisely as any reasoning being who was not an Irishman would • have expected them to turn out in that provoking country. The army of projects with which he went to the country had not quite, as the French say, marched. It was not that he was beaten in fair fight; but, like the Earl of Essex’s splendid cohorts, / had got lost in the bogs. Most excellent and painstaking of men, he pegged away like a Titan at his magnum opus, or scheme for the reclamation of Slob Lands and the drainage of the Sucka meandering, ne’er-do-weel river in Connaught, which spreads its lazy limbs over miles of country in the best months of the year for no other object in life than to suck haystacks, cornstooks, and weak-minded live stock into its worthless gulletfor, as the member for the county observed, “the blackguard river wasn’t even fit to make whisky-and-water.” John Jelliland had taken this common disturber of Irish peace and happiness by the throat. He set a Parliamentary Committee and a Hybrid Committee at the monster. He ran down himself to take personal cognisance of the river at its unholy work. He subsequently brought the House of Commons boating gently down the sluggish mazes of that incorrigible stream, in a speech of two hours’ duration, in which he was accompanied by a beautiful serenade of “hear, hears,” from the Member for the County, and at the termination of which a frivolous Member of the Opposition suggested that, if it was a Bill for the drainage of old Jelliland, as well as the Suck, the House would vote it nemine contradicente. It never for one instant struck the honest gentleman that all that was sound in Ireland was not watching with breathless interest his encounter with that Connaught riverdemon; and, the devil once victoriously cast out of the Suck, and the river put peacefully to sleep in its bed, John Jelliland could see further conquests ahead in the way of cutting off a few more Bishoprics from the Establishment, and even rejoicing the soul of the Irish tenant with some modest legal viaticum, some slight testimony of natural regard, on eviction —the background always gleaming with an eventually happy, loyal, and contented Ireland, lapt in universal law, and having nothing further for the heart of man to desire except some state courtesies to the Cardinal’s red stockings and charitable institutions, an occasional magistracy for a devout Catholic, or a Governorship of the Loochoo Islands for some Parliamentary Patriot of more than usually ardent spirit (or spirits).

Immersed in such flattering visions—floating gently along one evening upon one of those dreamy boating excursions on the broad bosom of the Suck —he suddenly met a man who said; “Jelliland, are you mad or dreaming? Don’t you see that the people you suppose are watching you with admiring eyes from the banks are getting guns and pikes upon their shoulders? Have you eyes, that you don’t perceive that it’s not a question of the overflow' * of the Suck, but of the outburst of an insurrection? For heaven’s sake, dock up your ridiculous boating apparatus send it adrift to the deep sea or to the devilring the alarum-bell, and draft your Insurrection Act, or it’s yourself and your empire that’ll soon be drifting to the deep sea or — further!” It was upon that night many of John Jelliland’s remaining hairs sickened and died, or survived as sadder and greyer monitors. That night also there was born into his brain an infant suspicion that that bird’s-eye view' of his had possibly overlooked some important elements of the Irish problemthat the policy* of Blue-book Jelly must be postponed for a policy of Red-coat Steel—and that, in fact, Ireland was a country intended by an all-chastising Providence for the sole purpose of plaguing that England and those Englishmen whom Providence most loved. Ever since, it Avas rivers of blood and not of muddy Suck-water that overflowed the poor gentleman’s vision, until now, when Mrs. Jelliland and the girls .were away

basking in the after-season on the golden sands of Ostend, the unfortunate Secretary was still chained to his kennel in Grosvenor Square, absorbing the horrors of police reports, signing warrants of arrest, • and listening to all the maddening Dutch chorus of panic, advice, information, and abjuration that reached him from a country from which the next telegram might bring news of the first shot of an insurrection. x

If Ireland's mission in the -universe was to chasten John Jelliland's good soul, the Green Isle had not lived in vain. The Secretary was as humble, cordial, and amenable to reason as could be. "My dear lord," he cried, shaking himself up out of his papers, like a genial rat popping out of his hole, "I'm so glad— pleased to have the benefit of your counsel at such a crisis for your unfortunate country." "To tell the truth, Mr. Jelliland, my advice about Ireland is not worth three strawsnot worth more than my advice how to get at King Theodore of Abyssinia," said his visitor. (To be continued.)