At breakfast the next morning James Hope spoke again about Finlay.
“The man went home last night with Aeneas Moylin. I think that I ought
to go to Donegore to-day and tell Aeneas of our suspicions. I had
intended to go straight to Templepatrick, and I might have had your
company so far, but it will certainly be better for me to go round by
Donegore.”
Donald Ward nodded.
“I shall not see Finlay himself,” said Hope. “He was to leave early this
morning for Belfast. You must ride fast to be there before him.”
He paused. Then, after a moment’s thought, he said:
“I should like to have Neal with me, if you can spare him, Donald Ward,
if you do not object to riding alone.”
“I am sure,” said Donald, “that Neal will benefit much more by your
company than mine. He can join me in Belfast this evening.”
This was Donald’s apology, his confession of contrition for the rough
language of the night before; his confession that in James Hope he had
met a man who was his superior.
“So be it,” said Hope. “I shall not propose to you, Neal, that we ride
and tie as the custom of the country is for travellers who have only one
horse between them. You shall lead the horse, and so we shall be able to
talk to each other.”
Neal agreed to the plan gladly. He was greatly attracted by James Hope,
and glad to spend some hours with him.
The girl came running into the room, her face flushed with excitement.
“Come, come,” she cried, “the soldiers are riding down the street in
their braw red coats. Oh, the bonny men and the bonny horses!”
The three travellers went to the door of the inn. Four companies of
dragoons were passing through the town at a trot. It was Neal’s first
view of any considerable body of troops. He stared at them, fascinated
by the jingling and clattering of their accoutrements. These were very
different from the yeomen he had seen at Dunseveric. Everything about
them, the uniformity of their appearance, the condition of their arms
and horses, the regularity of their march, expressed the fact that they
were highly disciplined men. Donald Ward smiled grimly as he watched
them.
“There are the men we’ve got to beat,” he said. “Fine fellows, eh, Neal?
They look as if they could sweep you and me and Jemmy Hope here, and a
crowd like us, out of their way; but I’ve seen men in those same pretty
clothes glad enough to turn their backs on troops no better organised
nor drilled than ours will be.”
“Poor fellows!” said Hope “poor fellows! Paid to fight and die in
quarrels which are not their own. To fight for their masters, that their
masters may grow rich and great. And yet they are of the people, too. It
is just starvation, or the fear of it, that led them to enlist.”
“Where are they going now?” asked Neal.
“To Belfast,” said Hope. “I heard that the garrison there was deemed
insufficient and that a fresh regiment of dragoons had been ordered in
from Derry.”
“Look at them well, Neal,” said Donald. “Look at them so that you’ll
know them when you next see them. You’ll meet them again before long.”
James Hope and Neal started on their walk soon after the dragoons had
passed. Just outside the town they turned aside to view the round tower,
the most famous of the buildings of its kind in the north.
“None knows,” said Hope, “who built these towers, or why, but it seems
certain to me that they were built by men with lofty thoughts, by men
who looked upward rather than to the earth. Some say that it was to
other gods they looked up and not to the true God. What does it matter?
Their hearts, like their towers, rose clear of earthly hamperings and
reached towards heaven.”
He asked Neal many questions about his way of life and education, about
the books he had read, and the periods of history he found specially
interesting.
“I had no such opportunities when a boy,” said Hope, “as you have had.
I am a self-educated man. I never had but fifteen months of schooling in
my life. What little knowledge I have I gained with great difficulty.”
This surprised Neal, for it seemed to him that he had never talked to
anyone who possessed more of that sweetness and wide reasonableness of
outlook upon life which ought to be the end of education. He tried to
express something of what he felt, but Hope stopped him and turned the
talk into other channels.
At Farranshane Hope bade him stand still and look at a farmhouse which
stood a little back from the road.
“It was there,” he said, “that William Orr lived. His widow and weans
are there now. You know the story, Neal?”
“I know it; yes, I know the outlines of it. Do you tell it to me again.”
Hope repeated the story, which in those days hardly needed telling among
the Antrim peasants, of the man whose name had become a watchword; so
that men, seeking to revive failing enthusiasms, said to each
other--“Remember Orr.” It was a pitiful tale; a man marked down as
odious by a powerful faction, spied upon, informed against, tried by
prejudiced judges, condemned on the word of false witnesses, hanged. The
same tale might have been told of many another then, but William Orr
came first on the list of such martyrs, and even now his name is not
wholly forgotten.
They reached Donegore. Moylin’s house--a comfortable, two-storeyed
building, built of large blocks of stone--stood on the side of the steep
hill, near the old church and the graveyard. Hope, bidding Neal wait for
him on the roadside, entered the house. In about a quarter of an hour he
returned.
“It is as I thought,” he said. “Finlay left early this morning after
arranging for a meeting of the United Irishmen here next week. Well,
there is no more to be done for the present. I have warned Moylin to be
careful. Come and let me show you the ancient fort from which the parish
takes its name and the view from it.”
“This,” said Hope, when they stood at last on the top of the great rath,
“is my Pisgah. From this I have looked many a time over the land. See,
west, south, east of you, how it spreads, rich, beautiful, from the
shores of Lough Neagh to the shores of Belfast Lough and the sea of
Moyle. Here great men, warriors of the past, had their hill-top burial,
and it may be fixed their fortress home. From this they looked over the
country which they took and held by strength of arm and courage of soul.
Are we a meaner race, men of a poorer spirit? Shall we not enter in and
possess the land in our turn? All over the world the voice of liberty
is heard now, clear and strong, bidding the people assert themselves and
claim right and justice. Are our ears alone deaf to the high call? Has
the pursuit of riches dulled our souls? Is the clink of gold and silver
so loud in our ears that we can hear nothing else?”
They descended the grassy sides of the old fort, walked down the steep
lane from Moylin’s house, and joined the road again. Turning to the
right, they went under the shade of fine trees which reached their
branches over the road from the demesne in which they grew.
“The big house in there,” said Hope, “belongs to one of the landlord
families of this county. It has been their’s for generations. On the
lawn in front of that house a company of Volunteers used to meet for
drill. The owner of the house, the lord of the soil, was their captain.
In those days we had all Ireland united--the landlords, the merchants,
and the farming people. Now it is not so. Our landlords won then what
they wanted--freedom and power. They have ruled Ireland since 1782.
The merchants and manufacturers also won what they chiefly wanted--the
opportunity of fair and free trade. They have grown rich, and are every
year growing richer. They bid fair to make Ireland a great commercial
nation--what she ought to be, the link between the Old World and the
New. But both the landlords and the traders have been selfish. Having
gained the object of their desires, they are unwilling to share
either power or riches with the people. They have refused to consider
reasonable measures of reform. They have goaded and harried us
until----”
He ceased speaking and sighed.
“But,” he went on, “they will not be able to keep either their power or
their riches. In refusing to trust the people they are ensuring their
own doom. They forget that there is a power greater than theirs--that
England is continually on the watch to win back again her sovereignty
over Ireland. Our upper class and our middle class are too jealous of
their privileges to share them with us. They will give England the
opportunity she wants. Then Ireland will be brought into the old
subjection, and her advance towards prosperity will be checked again as
it was checked before. She will become a country of haughty
squireens--the most contemptible class of all, men of blackened honour
and broken faith, men proud, but with nothing to be proud of--and of
ruined traders; a land of ill-cultivated fields and ruined mills; a
nation crushed by her conqueror.”
Neal listened attentively. It was curious that the fear to which James
Hope gave expression was the very same which he had heard from Lord
Dun-severic. Each dreaded England. Each saw that out of the turmoil of
contemporary politics would come the restoration of the English power
over Ireland. But Lord Dunseveric blamed the schemes of the United
Irishmen. James Hope blamed the selfishness of the upper classes.
Neal tried to explain to his companion what he understood of Lord
Dunseveric’s opinions.
James Hope broke in on him, interrupting him.
“But the people are slaves, actually slaves, not a whit better. Are
nine-tenths of the people to be slaves to one-tenth? The thing
is unendurable. Look at the Catholics in the south, men without
representation, without power, without direct influence; men marked with
a brand of inferiority because of their religion. Look at the men of our
own faith here in the north. Our case is not wholly so bad, but it is
bad enough. We have asked, petitioned, begged, implored, for the removal
of our grievances. If we are men we must do more--we must strike for
them. Else we confess ourselves unworthy of the freedom which we claim.
They alone are fit for liberty who dare to fight for liberty. Think
of it, Neal Ward, think. It is we, the people, digging in the fields,
toiling at the looms, it is we who make the riches, who win the good
fruit from the hard ground, who weave the thread into the precious
fabric. And we are denied a share in what we create. It is from us in
the last resort that the power of the governing classes comes. If we
had not taken arms in our hands at their bidding, if we had not stood by
them, no English Minister would ever have yielded to their demands, and
given them the power which they enjoy. And they will not give us the
smallest part of what we won for them. ‘What inheritance have we in
Judah? Now see to thine own house, David. To your tents, O Israel!’”
James Hope’s voice rose. His eyes flashed. His whole face was
enlightened with enthusiasm as he spoke. Neal listened, awed. Here was
the devotion to the cause of suffering and oppressed men, the spirit
which had produced revolution, which had begotten from the womb
of humanity pure and noble men, which had, in the violence of its
self-assertion, deluged cities with blood and defiled a great cause
with dreadful deeds. He had no answer to make, and for a long while they
walked in silence.
Reaching Templepatrick, Hope took Neal to the house of John Birnie, a
hand-loom weaver, a cousin of his own. They were welcomed by the woman
of the house and given a share of a meal which even to Neal, brought
up as he had been without luxury in his father’s manse, seemed poor and
meagre. But no thought of the hardness of their fare seemed to trouble
the mind of the weaver and his wife. Theirs was the kind of hospitality
which disdains apology or pretence. They gave of their best. There was
no more that they could do. Also, it was evident that the tickling of
the palate with food, or the filling of the belly with delicate things
was not a matter of much importance to these people. Living hard and
toilsome lives, they had the constant companionship of lofty thoughts.
They felt as James Hope did, and spoke like him.
Neal lingered so long in the company of these new friends that it was
far on in the afternoon when he started on his ride, and late in the
evening when he arrived in the outskirts of Belfast. It was his first
visit to the town, and he approached it with feelings of interest
and curiosity. Riding down the long hill by which the road from
Templepatrick approaches Greencastle on the way to the town, he was able
to gaze over the waters of the lough which lay stretched beneath him on
his left. In the Carrickfergus roads several ships lay at anchor, among
them a frigate of the English navy. Pinnaces and small craft plied
between them and the shore, or headed for the entrance of Belfast
Harbour by the tortuous channel worn through mud and sand by the Lagan.
Below him, by the sea, were the handsome houses which the richer class
of merchants were already beginning to build for themselves on the
shores of the lough. Between Carnmoney and Belfast he passed the bleach
greens of the linen weavers, where the long webs of the cloth, for which
Belfast was afterwards to become famous, lay white or yellow on the
grass. On his right rose the rugged sides of the Cave Hill. High above
its rocks towered MacArt’s fort, where Wolfe Tone, M’Cracken, Samuel
Neilson, and his new friend, James Hope, with others, had sworn the oath
of the United Irishmen. They had separated far from each other since the
day of their swearing, but each in his own way--Tone among the intrigues
of Continental politics, M’Cracken in Belfast, Neilson and Hope among
the Antrim peasantry--had kept the oath and would keep it until the end.
Entering the town, he passed the recently-erected poorhouse and
infirmary, a building designed with a curious spacious generosity, as
were the buildings in Dublin and elsewhere which Irishmen erected during
the short day of their national independence. In Donegall Street he saw
the new church--Ann’s Church, as the people called it---thinking rather
of the lady of Lord Donegall, who interested herself in its building,
than the Mother of the Virgin in whose honour good Protestants were
little likely to build a church. But the classic portico and tall tower
did not hold his attention long. He could not but notice that there was
an air of anxious excitement in the demeanour of the citizens who passed
him in the street. They were all hurrying one way, making from one
direction or another for the side street whose entrance faced the
church. Neal accosted one or two, but received either no answer or words
uttered so hurriedly that he could not catch their import. Determined
at length to get some intelligible reply to his questions, he pulled his
horse across the path of an elderly gentleman of respectable appearance.
“Will you tell me,” he said, “the way to North Street? I am a stranger
in your town.”
“And if you are a stranger you will do well to keep out of North Street
the night.”
“But I seek a house of entertainment to which I have been
directed--Felix Matier’s inn at the sign of Dumouriez.”
“Who are you, young man, who seek that house? They say----. But let me
pass, let me pass. I am the secretary of William Bristow, the sovereign
of Belfast, and I must see for myself, I must see for myself what these
incarnate devils of dragoons are doing in our streets.”
“I will not let you pass,” said Neal, “till you give me a civil answer
to my question. I think you citizens of Belfast are as uncivil as men
say you are, and are all gone mad to-night that you will not direct a
stranger on his way.”
“A wilful man, a wilful man. Follow me. Or, let me lay my hand on your
bridle. The crowd gathers fast. It may be that your horse, if I keep by
it, will enable me to push my way through. But blame me not if you come
by a broken head through your wilfulness.”
Neal’s guide, the sovereign’s pursy and excited secretary, led the horse
down the side street, along which the people were hurrying. Suddenly the
crowd hesitated, stopped, began to surge back again. Neal, standing up
in his stirrups, saw that the end of the narrow street along which he
rode was blocked by another crowd, which fled into it from a larger
thoroughfare beyond. There was much trampling and pushing and shouting.
Neal’s guide, clinging desperately to the horse’s bridle, was borne
back. The horse began to plunge. This was too much for the old
gentleman. He loosed his grip.
“Go on,” he said, “go on if you can, young man. That’s the North Street
in front of you.”
The reason for the crowd’s flight became obvious. A number of dragoons,
dismounted, half-clothed, and apparently free from all discipline, came
rushing down North Street. As they swept past the entrance of the side
street Neal had a clear view of them over the heads of the crowd. In a
moment they had passed out of sight again, but the moment was enough.
Running with the soldiers, his arm gripped by a dragoon, but running
with his own free will, was James Finlay. Neal was stung to fury by the
sight of this man. He had no doubt at all now that he had to do with
a traitor. He drove his heels against his horse’s side, lashed at the
creature’s flanks with his rod, and fairly forced his way through the
cursing, shouting crowd into North Street.
At the far end of the street he saw the dragoons raging and rioting
round a house which stood a storey higher than any other near it. The
whole length of the street lay almost empty before him. The soldiers had
effectually cleared a way for themselves. He rode towards the scene
of the riot. He saw that two civilians were defending the front of the
house against the soldiers. They fought with sticks, and Neal recognised
one of them as his uncle, Donald Ward. Before he could reach them
they were forced into the house, and followed indoors by some of the
dragoons. James Finlay had disappeared. Neal hesitated and stopped,
uncertain what to do. Some of the soldiers placed a ladder against
the wall. One of them mounted, with a sledge hammer in his hand, and
battered at the iron supports which held a signboard to the wall. The
iron bars bent under his blows, the holdfasts were torn from the wall,
and the painted board fell into the street. A yell of triumph greeted
the fall. The soldiers stamped on the board with their heavy boots and
hacked at it with their swords. Then another man mounted the ladder with
a splintered fragment in his hand. He whirled it round his head, and
flung it far down the street.
“There’s for the rebelly sign,” he shouted. “There’s for Dumouriez!
There’s the way we treat damned French and Irish croppies.”
The crowd, which had gathered courage and followed Neal down the street,
answered him with a groan and a volley of stones. The man sprang from
the ladder, called to his comrades, and in a moment the dragoons drew
together and, their swords in their hands, charged the crowd. Neal’s
horse, terrified by the shouting, became unmanageable. Neal flung
himself to the ground, staggered, was knocked down and trampled on,
first by the flying people, then by the soldiers who pursued them. He
rose when the rush was over. The street around him was empty again. The
fragments of the shattered signboard lay around. The windows of the
house that had been attacked were all broken, either by the stones of
the people or the blows of the soldiers. There was a sound of fighting
within the house. Neal ran towards the door. A woman’s shriek reached
him, and a moment later a soldier came out of the door dragging a girl
with him. He had a wisp of her hair gathered in his hand, and he pulled
at it savagely. The girl stumbled on the doorstep, fell, was dragged a
pace or two, staggered to her feet, clutched at the soldier’s hand and
fastened her teeth in his wrist. Neal sprang forward at the man’s
throat, grasped it, and, by the sheer impetus of his spring, bore the
dragoon to the ground. He was conscious of being uppermost in the fall,
of the fierce struggling of the man he held, of the girl tearing with
her hands and writhing in the effort to free her hair, of shouting near
at hand, of a rush of men from the house. Then he received a blow on the
head which stunned him. He awoke to consciousness a few minutes later,
and heard his uncle’s voice.
“Is the girl inside and the man? Have you got him? Then for the door.
They’ll hardly venture into the house again after the reception we gave
them. It was a mighty nice fight while it lasted. Now a light, a light.
Let us see if anyone’s hurt.”
Someone brought a light. Neal tried to rise, but was too giddy. The
girl whom the soldier had dragged into the street stood beside him.
Her hair--bright red hair--hung about her shoulders. Her dress was in
tatters, she was spitting blood, and wiping it off her mouth with the
back of her hand.
“Hullo, Meg, Peg, whatever your name is,” said Donald Ward, “you’re
bleeding. Where are you cut? Let me see to it?”
“Thon’s no my blood,” said the girl. “It’s his. I got my teeth intil
him. Ay, faith, it’s his blood that I’m spitting out of my mouth. I did
hear tell that it was black blood was in the likes of him, but I see now
it’s red enough. I’m glad of it, for I’ve swallowed a gill of it since I
gripped his wrist, and I wouldna’ like to swallow poison.”
“Well, then, Peg, my wench, since you’re not hurt, let’s take a look
at the man that helped you. He’s lying there mighty quiet. I’m afraid
there’s some harm done to him.”
Donald Ward took the light and bent over Neal.
“By God,” he said, “it’s Neal, and he’s hurt or killed.”
“It’s all right,” said Neal, feebly, “I’m only dizzy. I got a bang on
the head. I’ll be all right in a minute.”
“Matier,” said Donald, “come and help me with the boy. I must get him to
bed. Where can I put him?”
“There’s not a room in the house with a whole pane of glass in the
window,” said Felix Matier, “except my own. It looks out on the back,
and the villains never came at it. We’ll take him there. I’ll lift his
shoulders, and go first.”
He approached Neal and was about to lift him when the girl pushed him
aside and stooped over Neal herself.
“Come now, what’s the meaning of this, Peg Macllrea? Are you so daft
with your fighting that you hustle your master aside?”
“Master or no master,” said Peg, “you’ll not carry him. It was for me
that he got hurted, and it’s me that’ll carry him.”
She put her arms under Neal and lifted him. He was a big man, but she
carried him up a flight of stairs and laid him on her master’s bed.
The long matted tresses of her red hair hung over his face, and an
occasional drop of the blood which still dripped from her fell on him.
Donald Ward and Matier followed her.
“Let’s have a look at him,” said Donald. “Ah! here’s a scalp wound and a
cut on the head the length of my finger. This must be seen to. Run, Peg,
get me linen and a basin of cold water. It must have been a boot did
this. A kick from one of the rascally dragoons as they passed over him
when we chased them. Now, Neal, are you hurt anywhere else?”
“I’m bruises from head to foot. Half the people in Belfast have trampled
over me this night, and when they wear boots they wear mighty heavy
ones.”
Donald, with wonderful gentleness, took Neal’ clothes off him, put on
him a night shirt of Felix Matier’s, and laid him between cool sheets.
“Sit you here, Peg,” he said, when he had bandaged the cut head, “with
the jug of water beside you, and keep the bandage wet. The other bruises
are nothing, but a broken head needs to be minded. Now, Neal, don’t you
talk.”
Matier fetched a bottle of wine and set it with the light on the table
which stood near the window.
“We’ll have to sit here,” he said, “if we don’t disturb your nephew.
Every other room in the house is in a state of scatteration. I have set
the girls to clean up a bit, and after a while they’ll have beds for us
to sleep in. It’s a devil of a business, but as poor Tone used to say
when things went wrong with him--
‘Tis but in vain
For soldiers to complain.’”
“What started the riot?” asked Donald. “The Lord knows. Those dragoons
only marched into the town this afternoon. I suppose the devil entered
into them, if the devil’s ever out of them at all.”
“I guess,” said Donald, “those were the lads that marched through Antrim
this morning.”
“The very same.”
“They’re strangers to the town, then?”
“Ay; I don’t suppose one of them ever saw Belfast before.”
“Tell me this, then. How did they know what house to attack? They came
straight here.”
“It was my sign angered them. They couldn’t abide the sight of
Dumouriez’ honest face in a Belfast street.
“Then let us fight about, Dumouriez;
Then let us fight about, Dumouriez;
Then let us fight about,
Till freedom’s spark is out,
Then we’ll be damned no doubt--Dumouriez.”
“You miss the point, man; you miss my point. How did they know about
your sign or you either, unless someone told them?”
There was a knocking, gentle at first, and then more confident, at the
street door. Donald looked inquiringly at his host.
“It’s all right,” said Matlier, “I know that knock. It’s James Bigger, a
safe man.”
He left the room and returned with a young man whom he introduced to
Donald Ward.
“We were just talking about the riot,” said Donald. “What’s your opinion
about it, Mr. Bigger?”
“There are five houses wrecked,” said Bigger, “and every one of them the
house of a man in sympathy with reform and liberty and the Union.”
Donald and Matier exchanged glances.
“They were well informed,” said Donald. “They knew what they were at,
and where to go.”
“They say,” said Bigger, “that the leaders of the different parties had
papers in their hands with directions on them. They were seen looking at
them in the streets.”
“I’d like to put my hand on one of those papers,” said Donald.
“Zipperty, zipperty, zand,”
quoted Matier,
“I wish I’d a bit of that in my hand.”
“You know the old rhyme.”
Neal lay quiet, but wide awake. The conversation interested him too
much to allow him to sleep. Twice he tried to speak, but each time Peg
Macllrea, determined now that he was under her care to keep him quiet,
put her hand over his mouth. At last he succeeded in asserting himself
in spite of her.
“I saw James Finlay,” he said, “along with a party of the soldiers going
up this street.”
The three men at the table turned to him. Donald seemed about to
cross-question him when Peg Macllrea spoke.
“Is it a bit of the soger’s paper you’re wantin’? Here’s for you.”
She fumbled in the pocket of her skirt and drew out a crumpled scrap of
paper.
“I snapped it out of his hand in the kitchen. It was for grabbing it
that he catched me by the hair o’ the head. I saw him glowerin’ at it as
soon as ever he came intil the light.”
Donald Ward took it from her hand and read--
“The house of Felix Matier, an inn at the far end of North Street, to be
known easily by the sign of Dumouriez which hangs before the door. Felix
Matier is + + +.”
He passed it without comment to Matier, who read it and laughed.
“They have me marked with three crosses,” he said. “I’m dangerous. But
what do they mean by it. How do they come to know so much about me?
“‘Ken ye aught of Captain Grose Igo and ago.
Is he amang friends or foes? Iram, coram, dago.’
“Who set the dragoons on you?” said Donald. “That’s the question.”
“By God, then, it’s easily answered,” said Matier. “I’ll give it to you
in the words of the poet--
“‘Letters four do form his name.
He let them loose and cried Halloo!
To him alone the praise is due.’
“P.I.T.T. Does that content you?”
“Pitt,” said Donald. “Oh, I see. That’s true, no doubt. But I want
some one nearer hand than Pitt. Who gave them this paper? Whose is the
writing on it?”
“I can tell you that,” said James Bigger. “I have a note in my pocket
this minute from the man who wrote that. It’s a summons to a meeting
for important business at the house of Aeneas Moylin, on the hill of
Donegore, next week.”
“Have you?” said Donald.
“Ay, and the man’s name is James Finlay.”
A dead silence followed the statement. It was Donald who broke it.
“I reckon, friend Bigger, that I’ll go with you to that meeting. We’ll
take Neal here along, too. He knows the man. There’ll be some important
business done that night, though maybe not quite the same as what James
Finlay has planned.”