run off to America with Tom and Alick. Perhaps he was of a more
patient nature than they. Perhaps the life held him down. It was,
indeed, such a round of hard, unvarying toil that at night he was
content to drop down in his place like a dead man, and sleep as the
worn-out horses sleep, dreaming of a land of endless green pastures,
beyond man's harrying. Alick and Tom were younger. They had not had
time to get broken to hardship like him, and Patrick was yet a baby.
Friends or social pleasures were beyond their maddest dreams. Their
parents' idea of a life for them was one in which hard work should
keep them out of mischief. James could never remember in those days a
morning when he had risen refreshed; he was always heavy with sleep
when following the plough-horses, or feeding the cattle. Food of the
coarsest, sleep of the scantiest, were the rule of the house. Joy, or
love, or kindness, never breathed between those walls.
Meanwhile, the father was getting old, and a time came when he sat
more and more by the fire in winter, sipping his glass of grog and
reading the country papers, or listening to his wife's acrid tattle.
Mrs. Rooney hated with an extreme hatred all the good, easy-going
neighbours who were so soft with their children, and encouraged
dancing, and race-going and card-playing--the amusements of the Irish
middle classes. She had a bitter tongue, and once it was set agoing no
one was safe from it--not the holiest nor purest was beyond its
defilement.
It was about this time that the labourers began to think the young
master rather more important than the old one; but for their
connivance, James Rooney could never have been drawn into Fenianism.
The conspiracy was just the thing to fascinate the boy's
impressionable heart. The poetry, the glamour of the romantic devotion
to Mother Country fed his starved idealism; the midnight drillings
and the danger were elements in its attraction. James Rooney drilled
with the rest, swore with them their oaths of fealty to Dark Rosaleen,
was out with them one winter night when the hills were covered with
snow, and barely escaped by the skin of his teeth from the capture
which sent some of his friends into penal servitude.
Mrs. Rooney's amazed contempt when she found that her eldest son was
among 'the boys' was a study in character. The lad was not compromised
openly; and though the police had their suspicions, they had nothing
to go upon, and the matter ended in a domiciliary visit which put Mrs.
Rooney in a fine rage, for she had a curious subservient ambition to
stand well with the gentry.
However, soon after that, as she was pottering about the fowl-yard one
bitter day--she would never trust anybody to collect the eggs from the
locked henhouse but herself--she took a chill, and not long afterwards
died. If she had lived perhaps James would never have had the courage
to assert himself and take the reins of management as he did. But
with her going the iron strength of the old man seemed to break down.
He fulfilled her last behest, which was that her funeral was to take
place on a Sunday, so that the farm hands should not get a day off;
and then, with some wonder at the new masterful spirit in his son, he
gave himself up to an easy life.
This independence in James Rooney was not altogether the result of his
Fenianism. As a matter of fact, he had fallen in love, with the
overwhelming passion of a lad who had hitherto lived with every
generous emotion repressed. The girl was a gay, sweet, yet impassioned
creature who was the light of her own home. At that home James Rooney
had first realised what a paradise home may be made; and coming from
his own gloomy and horrid surroundings, the sunshine of hers had
almost blinded him. In that white house among the wheatfields love
reigned. And not only love, but charity, hospitality, patriotism, and
religion. There was never a rough word heard there; even the
household creatures, the canary in the south window, the comfortable
cats, the friendly dogs, partook of the general sunniness.
They were rebels of the hottest type. The one son had been out with
the Fenians and was now in America. His exile was a bitter yet proud
grief to his father and mother; but their enthusiasm was whetted
rather than damped by the downfall of the attempted rebellion. At
night, when the curtains were drawn and the door barred against all
fear of 'the peelers,' the papers that had the reports of the Dublin
trials were passed from hand to hand, or read aloud amid intense
silence, accompanied by the flushing cheek, the clenching hand, often
the sob, that told of the passionate feeling of the hearers.
Sometimes Ellen would sing to them, but not the little gay songs she
trilled so delightfully, now when their friends were in prison or the
dock. Mournful, impassioned songs were hers, sung in a rich voice,
trembling with emotion, or again a stave of battle and revenge, which
set hearts beating and blood racing in the veins of the listeners. At
such moments Ellen, with her velvety golden-brown eyes, and the bronze
of her hair, was like the poet's 'Cluster of Nuts.'
I've heard the songs by Liffey's wave
That maidens sung.
They sang their land, the Saxon's slave,
In Saxon tongue.
Oh, bring me here that Gaelic dear
Which cursed the Saxon foe.
When thou didst charm my raptured ear
_Mo craoibhin cno!_
Among those admitted freely to that loving circle, James Rooney was
one held in affectionate regard. The man who had been the means of
bringing him there, Maurice O'Donnell, was his Jonathan, nay more than
his Jonathan, for to him young Rooney had given all his hero-worship.
He was, indeed, of the heroic stuff, older, graver, wiser than his
friend.
James Rooney spoke to no one of his love or his hopes. For he had
hopes. Ellen, kind to every one, singled him out for special kindness.
He had seen in her deep eyes something shy and tender for him. For
some time he was too humble to be sure he had read her gaze aright,
but at last he believed in a flood of wild rapture that she had chosen
him.
He did not speak, he was too happy in dallying with his joy, and he
waited on from day to day. One evening he was watching her singing,
with all his heart in his eyes. Among people less held by a great
sincerity than these people were at the time, his secret would have
been an open amusement. But the father and mother heard with eyes dim
with tears; the young sisters about the fire flushed and paled with
the emotion of the song; the hearts of the listeners hung on the
singer's lips, and their eyes were far away.
Suddenly James Rooney looked round the circle with the feeling of a
man who awakes from sleep. His friend was opposite to him, also gazing
at the singer; the revelation in his face turned the younger man cold
with the shock. When the song was done he said 'good-night' quietly,
and went home. It was earlier than usual, and he left his friend
behind him; for this one night he was glad not to have his company;
he wanted a quiet interval in which to think what was to be done.
Now, when he realised that Maurice O'Donnell loved her, he cursed his
own folly that he had dared to think of winning her. What girl with
eyes in her head would take him, gray and square-jawed, before the
gallant-looking fellow who was the ideal patriot. And Ellen--Ellen, of
all women living, was best able to appreciate O'Donnell's qualities.
That night he sat all the night with his head bowed on his hands
thinking his sick thoughts amid the ruin of his castles. When he stood
up shivering in the gray dawn, he had closed that page of his life. He
felt as if already the girl had chosen between them, and that he was
found wanting.
That was not the end of it, however. If he had been left to himself he
might have carried out his high, heroic resolve to go no more to the
house which had become Paradise to him. But his friend followed him,
with the curious tenderness that was between the two, and with an arm
on his shoulder, drew his secret from him. When he had told it he put
his face down on the mantelpiece by which they were standing, ashamed
to look O'Donnell in the face because they loved the same woman. There
was a minute's silence, and then O'Donnell spoke, and his voice, so
far from being cold and angry, was more tender than before.
'So you would have taken yourself off to leave me a clear field, old
fellow!'
'Oh, no,' said the other humbly, 'I never had a chance. If I had had
eyes for any one but her, I would have known your secret, and should
not have dared to love her.'
'Dear lad!' said O'Donnell. 'But now you must take your chance. If she
chooses you rather than me--and, by heavens! I'm not sure that she
won't--it will make no difference, I swear, between us. Which of us
shall try our luck first?'
They ended by drawing lots, and it fell to O'Donnell to speak first. A
night or two later he overtook James Rooney as the latter was on his
way to Ellen's house. He put his arm through Rooney's and said,
'Well, old fellow, I've had my dismissal. I'm not going your way
to-night, but I believe your chance is worth a good deal. Presently I
shall be able to wish you joy, Jim.'
They walked on together in a silence more full of feeling than speech
could be. At the boreen that turned up to the white house they parted
with a hand-clasp that said their love was unchanging, no matter what
happened. That night James Rooney got his chance and spoke. The girl
heard him with a rapt, absent-minded look that chilled him as he went
on. When he had done she answered him:--
'I can never be your wife, Jim. I have made my choice.'
'But----' stammered the lad.
'I know what you would say,' she answered quietly. 'I gave the same
answer to Maurice O'Donnell. Why did two such men as you care for me?
I am not worth it, no girl is worth it. 'Tis the proud woman I ought
to be and am, but I can't marry the two of you, and perhaps I can't
choose.' She laughed half sadly. 'Put me out of your head, Jim, and
forgive me. I'm away to the Convent at Lady Day.'
And from this resolve it was impossible to move her. Whether she had
really resolved before on the conventual life, or whether she feared
to separate the two friends, no one knew. From that time neither
O'Donnell nor Jim Rooney was seen at the white house, and in the
harvest-time Ellen, as she said she would, entered St. Mary's Convent.
Jim Rooney never loved another woman, and when, in the following year,
Maurice O'Donnell went to New Orleans to take up a position as the
editor of a newspaper, Jim Rooney said good-bye to friendship as
lastingly as he had to love.
The old father died, and left what wealth he had to be divided between
his two sons. For all the pinching and scraping it was not much; there
seemed something unlucky about the farm, poor, damp, and unkindly as
it was. Jim was a good brother to the young lad growing up. He kept
him at a good school during his boyhood, and nursed his share of the
inheritance more carefully than he did his own. They had the
reputation of being far wealthier than they were, and many a girl
would have been well pleased to make a match with Jim Rooney. But he
turned his back on all social overtures, and by and by he got the name
of being a sour old bachelor, 'a cold-hearted naygur,' going the way
of his father before him. But the rule on the farm was very different,
every one admitted; to his men James Rooney was not only just but
generous.
Presently the young fellow came home from school, gay and
light-hearted. He was a tall young giant, who presently developed a
fine red moustache, and had a rollicking gait well in keeping with his
bold blue eyes. He was soon as popular as James was the reverse, and
his reputation of being 'a good match' made him welcome in many a
house full of daughters.
One day the youth came to his brother with a plan for bettering
himself. He wanted to draw out his share from the farm and to invest
it in a general shop which was for sale in the country town, close
by. Now Jim Rooney had a queer pride in him that made the thought of
the shop very distasteful. The land was quite another thing, and
farming, to his mind, as ennobling an occupation as any under heaven.
But he quite understood that he could not shape the young fellow to
his ways of thinking. He said, gently: 'And why, Patrick, are you bent
on leaving the farm and bettering yourself?'
The young fellow scratched his head awkwardly, and gave one or two
excuses, but finally the truth came out. He had a fancy for little
Janie Hyland, and she had a fancy for him, but there was a richer man
seeking her, and, said the young fellow simply, 'I'm thinking if the
father knew how little came to my share he'd be showing me the door.'
'Does Janie know, Patrick?' asked the elder brother.
'Oh, divil a thing!' said the younger, with a half-shamed laugh. 'I
don't trust women with too much; but if I had Grady's, I'd soon be a
richer man than they think me. Old Grady cut up for a lot of money,
and he was too old for business. It's a beautiful chance for a young
man.'
'Well, Patrick,' said the other at last, with a sigh, 'your share
won't buy Grady's, but yours and mine together will. I'll make it over
to you, and you can keep your share in the farm too. I'll work the
farm for you if you won't ask me to have anything to do with the shop.
Tut, tut, man!' he said, pushing away Patrick's secretly delighted
protests, 'all I have would come to you one day, and why not now, when
you think it will make you happy?'
So Patrick bought Grady's and brought home Janie Hyland. He has
prospered exceedingly, and makes the lavish display of his wealth
which is characteristic of the Irishman. They have added to the old
house, thrown out wings and annexe, planted it about with shrubberies,
and made a carriage drive. Young Patrick, growing up, is intended for
the University and one of the learned professions, and Mrs. Patrick
has ideas of a season in Dublin and invitations to the Castle. Her
house is very finely furnished, with heavy pile carpets and many
mirrors, and buhl and ormolu everywhere.
She feels her brother-in-law to be the one blot in all her splendour
and well-being. When Patrick first brought her home, she took a
vehement dislike to James, which has rather waxed than waned during
the years. He minds her as little as may be, working on the farm
during the day-time, and in the evening departing, with his slow,
heavy step, to his sanctum upstairs, where he has his books, his
carpenter's tools, and his telescope. Yet her words worry him like the
stinging of gnats, and the nagging of years has made him bitter.
He turns out delightful bits of carving and cabinet-making from time
to time, and he mends everything broken in the house with infinite
painstaking. Up there in his garret-room the troubles fall away from
him, and he forgets the lash of Mrs. Patrick's tongue. The hardest
thing is that she discourages the children's friendship for him, and
he would dearly love the children if only he might.
The other women are rather down on Mrs. Patrick about it; indeed, Mrs.
Gleeson told her one day that the creature was worth his keep if it
was only for his handiness about the house. Patrick has grown used to
his wife's gibes and flings, which at first used to make him red and
uncomfortable. He has half come to believe in the secret hoard his
wife says old Jim is accumulating.
Meanwhile, the land is as poor as ever, for James has no money to
spend in the necessary drainage that should make it dry and sweet. His
share scarcely pays for his keep, and his money for clothes and books
and tools is little indeed. His shabbiness is another offence to Mrs.
Patrick. She has declared to some of her intimates that she will force
James yet to take his face out of her house, and go live on his money
elsewhere. She expresses her contempt to her husband for his brother's
selfishness in holding his share in the farm, when he must be
already, as she puts it, 'rotten with money.' Patrick is too much
afraid of his wife to tell her now what he has so long kept a secret
from her.
But James, in his high attic, looks upon the mountains and the sky,
and shakes off from him with a superb gesture the memory of her
taunts.
XII
THE MAN WHO WAS HANGED
It was outside the town of Ballinscreen, on the country side of the
bridge over the Maeve, that Mr. Ramsay-Stewart was shot at in the
League days, and that the shot struck a decent boy, Larry Byrne, a
widow's only son, and killed him stone dead. The man that fired the
shot would rather have cut off his right hand than hurt an innocent
creature like Larry,--but there, when you go meddling with sin and
wickedness, as often as not you plunge deeper into it than you could
ever have foreseen. Anyhow the old women, who turn out everything to
show the Lord's goodness, said it was plain to see that Larry was
fitter to go than his master, and that was why the shot glanced by Mr.
Stewart's ear to lodge in the poor coachman's brain as he leant
forward, whipping up his horse with all his might, to get out of reach
of that murderous shower of shot.
Now a few months later all you comfortable people that sit reading
your newspapers by an English fire, and thinking what a terrible place
Ireland must be to live in, were comforted by the news that the man
who shot Larry Byrne was swinging for it in the county jail at
Ballinscreen. But you never made such a mistake in your born lives.
That man was out on the mountains in the bleak, bitter winter weather,
was in hiding all day in the caves up there in the clouds on top of
Croghan, and by night was coming down to the lonely mountain
farmhouses to beg what would keep the life in his big hungry body. The
man that swung for the murder was as innocent as yourself, and more
betoken, though he was great on war and revolutions, would no more
fire on a man out of the dark night than you would yourself. He had
little feeling for sin and crime, always barring the secret societies,
by some considered a sin.
It was beautiful to hear Murty Meehan,--that was his name, God rest
his soul!--having it out with old Father Phil on that same question.
Why, he told the priest that he himself belonged to a secret society,
for the matter of that, and the most powerful secret society of them
all. Father Phil used to end it up with a laugh, for he was fond of
Murty. He nearly broke his heart over the man when he was in jail,
waiting to go to the gallows, and wouldn't open his lips to clear
himself. Murty had been in every 'movement' from the '48 onwards. But
like all the other old Fenians, he thought worse of the League than
Mr. Ramsay-Stewart himself. His ideas were high-flown ones, and he
could put them in beautiful language, about freeing his country, and
setting her in her rightful place among the nations. But not by the
League methods. There was a bit of poetry of Davis he was fond of
quoting:
For Freedom comes from God's right hand,
And needs a godly train,
And righteous men must make our land
A Nation once again.
Many a time he hurled it at the Leaguers' heads, but they bore him no
malice; the worst they did was to call him a crank. I often think that
when Murty died on the gallows for a crime he hated, it was a
sacrifice of more than his life. Well, God be good to him!
Murty hadn't a soul in the world belonging to him. His father and
mother died in the black '47, and the little girl he had set his heart
on sailed in a coffin-ship for New York with her father and mother in
the same bitter year, and went down somewhere out on the unkindly
ocean. She had hung round Murty's neck imploring him to go with her,
but Murty was drilling for the rising of the following year, and could
see no duty closer than his duty to his country. He promised to follow
her and bring her back if there were happier days in Ireland, but the
boat and its freight were never heard of after they left Queenstown
quay in that September of blight and storm. And so Murty grew with the
years into a pleasant, kindly old bachelor, very full of whimsies and
dreams, and a prophet to the young fellows.
Now Mr. Ramsay-Stewart, though he kept himself and his tenants in hot
water for a couple of years, wasn't a bad kind of gentleman, and now
that things have settled down is well-esteemed and liked in the
country. But when he came first he didn't understand the people nor
they him, and there's no doubt he did some hard things as much out of
pure ignorance, they say, as for any malice. He'd put his bit of money
in the estate and meant to have it out of it, and he didn't like at
all the easy-going ways he found there. The old Misses Conyers who
preceded him were of a very ancient stock, and would rather turn out
themselves than turn out a soul of their people. They had enough money
to keep them while they lived; and 'pay when you can,' or 'when you
like,' was the rule on the estate. Every man, woman and child was
Paddy and Biddy and Judy to them. Oh, sure it was a bad day for the
tenants when they went; and more betoken, they had laid up trouble
for the man that was to succeed them.
The people never gave Mr. Ramsay-Stewart a chance when he came. They
disliked him, and he was an upstart and a _gombeen_ man and a usurper,
and such foolishness, in the mouths of every one of them. As if it was
his fault, poor gentleman, that the Misses Conyers never married, and
so let Coolacreva fall to strangers.
Now there was a widow and her daughter, Mrs. Murphy and little Fanny,
that had a big patch of land on the estate, and the memory of man
couldn't tell when they'd paid a penny of rent for it. It was so
overgrown with weeds and thistles, and so strewn with big boulders,
that it was more like a boreen than decent fields. Well, it vexed Mr.
Ramsay-Stewart, who was accustomed to the tidy Scotch fields,
amazingly, and he got on his high horse that the widow should pay or
go.
She couldn't or wouldn't pay, and she wouldn't go. She never thought
the crow-bar brigade would be set on her cabin; but, sure, the new
landlord wasn't a man to stop short of his word, and one bleak, bitter
November day he was out with the police and bailiffs. Before the
League could put one foot before another the roof was off Mrs.
Murphy's cabin, the bits of furniture out in the road, and the pair of
women standing over them shaking their fists at the Scotchman, and
whimpering out the revenge they'd have, till Lanty Corcoran, a strong
farmer, took them home, and set them up snug and easy in one of his
outhouses.
Fanny was a pretty little girl, a golden-ringleted, blue-eyed slip of
a _colleen_, with a sturdy and independent will of her own, that
belied the soft shy glances she could cast at a man. She was promised
to a boy over the seas, who was making a home for her and her mother
in America, and there was another boy in the parish, John Sullivan, or
Shawn Dhuv, as they usually called him because of his dark complexion,
was fairly mad about her. Shawn was well off. He was the cleverest
farmer that side of the country, just the kind of man Mr.
Ramsay-Stewart wanted and was prepared to encourage when he got him.
His land was clean and well-tilled, and he had a fine stock of cattle
as well as horses, and hay, and straw, and machines that had cost a
handful of money, for he was quick to take up new-fangled notions.
People used to say Shawn would be a rich man one day, for he was
prudent, drank little, and was a silent man, keeping himself to
himself a good deal.
Well, little Fanny had a hard time with the mother over her steady
refusals to have anything to say to Black Shawn. She was an
aggravating old woman, one of the whimpering sort; and sorely she must
have tried poor Fanny often with her coaxing and crying, but the
little girl was as stout as a rock where her absent boy was concerned.
Shawn Dhuv heard in time of the eviction, and in a bad moment for
himself thought he'd press his suit once more; he knew he had the old
woman on his side, and he thought he might find the young one in such
a humour that she'd be glad to accept his hand and heart, and the
cover of his little farmhouse. He had an idea too that he'd only to
ask Mr. Ramsay-Stewart for the Murphys' farm and he'd get it, and he
thought this would be a fine lever to work with.
But he never made such a mistake, for little Fanny turned on him like
the veriest spitfire.
'You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Black Shawn,' she cried, with
her eyes flashing, 'to keep persecuting a girl that's as good as wife
to another man. Why, if he was never in the world, do you think I'd
take one like you, that's plotting and planning to take our bit of
land before the ashes of our roof-tree are gone gray? If he was here
he'd know how to avenge us, and not till he had done it would he look
the girl he loved in the face.'
She was holding forth like this, her words tripping each other up in
her anger; but sure, the poor little girl didn't mean what she was
saying about revenge; it was likely some hot words she'd picked up out
of the newspapers that came into her head in her passion, and tripped
off her tongue without her knowing a word of what they meant.