Neal Ward was awakened next morning by the noise which Peg Macllrea made
sweeping and tidying the room where he slept. He lay for a few minutes
watching the girl. Her red hair was coiled up now in a neat roll at
the back of her head. Her freckled face was clean, and had apparently
escaped bruising in her conflict with the dragoon. She wore a short grey
skirt of woollen homespun. The sleeves of her bodice were rolled up, and
displayed a pair of muscular red arms. The girl was more than commonly
tall, and anyone listening to her heavy footfall, and noting her thick
figure and broad shoulders, would have understood that she was well able
to carry a young man, even of Neal’s height, up a flight of stairs. The
dragoon might easily have come to the worst in single combat with such
a maiden if he had not obtained an advantage over her at the start by
twisting her hair round his hand.
It was not very long before she noticed that Neal was awake. She came
over to him smiling.
“You’ve had a brave sleep,” she said. “It’s nigh on eleven o’clock. The
master and Mr. Ward are out this twa hours. They bid me not stir you.
I was just readying up the room a bit, and I went about it as mim as a
mouse.”
“I’m thinking,” said Neal, “that I’ll be getting up now.”
“‘Deed, then, and you’ll no. The last word the master said was just that
you were to lie in the day. I’m to give you tea and toasted bread, and
an egg if you fancy it.”
“But,” said Neal, “I can’t lie here in bed all day.”
“Whisht, now, whisht. Be good and I’ll get you them twa graven images
the master’s so set on and let you glower at them. Maybe you never seen
the like.”
She spoke precisely as if she had a sick child to humour; as if she were
the nurse in charge, determined at any sacrifice to keep the peevish
little one from crying. She crossed the room to a book-case and took
down two bronze busts. With the utmost care she carried them over and
laid them on the bed in front of Neal.
“The master’s one of them that goes neither to church nor mass nor
meeting,” she said. “If ever he says his prayers at all, at all, it’s
to them twa graven images he says them, and the dear knows they’re no so
eye-sweet.”
She left the room, well satisfied apparently that she had provided her
patient with playthings which would keep him good till she returned with
his breakfast. Neal took up the busts and examined them. He would not
have known whose faces were represented had not an inscription on the
pedestal of each informed him. “Voltaire,” he read on one, “Rousseau” on
the other. These were strange household gods for a Belfast innkeeper to
revere. Neal, gazing at them, slowly grasped their significance. He had
heard talk of French ideas, had seen his father shake his head over the
works of certain philosophers. He knew that there was an intellectual
freedom claimed by many of those who were most enthusiastic in the cause
of political reform. He had not previously met anyone who was likely to
accept the teaching of either Voltaire or Rousseau. His eyes wandered
from the busts to the book-case on which they had stood. It was well
filled, crammed with books. Neal could see them standing in close rows,
books of all sizes and thicknesses, but he could not read the names on
their backs. Peg Macllrea returned with his breakfast on a wooden tray.
She put it down in front of him and then set herself to entertain him
while he ate.
“Thon was a brave coup you gave the soger in the street,” she said. “You
gripped him fine, the ugly devil. But you did na hurt him much. He was
up and off when they got us dragged from him, as hard as ever he could
lift a foot. You’ll be fond of fighting?”
“So far,” said Neal, “I have generally got the worst of it when I have
fought.”
“Ay, you would. Your way of fighting is no just the canniest, but I
like you no the worse for it. You might have got off without thon bloody
clout on the top of your head if ye’d just clodded stones and then run
like the rest of them. But that’s no your way of fightin’. Did ye ever
fight afore?”
“Just two nights ago,” said Neal, “and I got the scrape on the side of
my face then.”
“And was it for a lassie you were fightin’ thon time? I see well by the
face of you that it was. And she liked you for it. Did she no? She’d
be a quare one that didna. Did she give you a kiss to make the scrab on
your face better? I wouldna think twice about giving you one myself only
you wouldn’t have kisses from the likes of me. Be quiet now, and sup up
your tea. I willna have you offering to slabber ower my hand if that’s
what you’re after.”
Neal, who had felt himself goaded to some act of gallantry, returned
sheepishly to his tea and toast.
“You’re no a Belfast boy?” said Peg.
“No,” said Neal, “I’m from Dunseveric, right away in the north of the
county.”
“Ay, are you? Do you mind the old rhyme--
‘County Antrim, men and horses,
County Down for bonny lasses.’
Maybe your lassie, the one that kissed you, was out of the County Down?”
“She was not,” said Neal, unguardedly.
Peg Macllrea laughed with delight and clapped her hands.
“I knew rightly there was a lassie, and that she kissed you. Now you’ve
tellt me yourself. But I willna split on you, nor I willna let on that
you tellt on her. But I hope she’s bonny, though she does not come from
the County Down.”
Neal grew angry. It did not seem fitting that this red-haired, freckled
servant, with her bold tongue and red arms, should make game of Una St.
Clair’s kisses. They were sacred things in his memory.
“Now you’re getting vexed,” she said. “You’re as cross as twa sticks. I
can see it in your eyes. Well, I’ve more to do than to be coaxing you.”
She turned her back on him and began to sing--
“I would I were in Ballinderry,
I would I were in Aghalee,
I would I were on bonny Ram’s Island,
Sitting under an ivy tree.
Ochone! Ochone!”
“Peg,” said Neal, “Peg Macllrea, don’t you be cross with me.”
“I would I were in Ballinderry,”
she began again.
“Peg,” said Neal, “I’ve finished my tea, and I wish you’d turn round.
Please do, please.”
She turned to him at last with a broad smile on her face.
“Is that the way you wheedled the poor lassie out of the kiss? But there
now, I’ll no say a word more about her if it makes you sore. But I
can’t sit here crackin’ all day. I’ve the dinner to get ready, and the
master’ll be quare and angry if it’s no ready against he’s home.”
She picked up the tray as she spoke.
“Would you like me to leave you them twa graven images?” she said.
“I’d like you to take them away,” said Neal, “and then get me a book out
of the case.”
“I will, surely. What sort of a book would you like? A big one or a wee
one. There’s one here in a braw red cover with pictures of ships in it.
Maybe it might content you.”
“Read me a few of their names,” said Neal, “and I’ll tell you which to
bring.”
“Faith, if you wait for me to read you the names you’ll wait till the
crack of doom. Nobody ever learned me readin’, writin’, or ‘rithmetic.”
“Bring me three or four,” said Neal, “and I’ll choose the one I like
best.”
She deposited half a dozen volumes on the chair beside him and left the
room. Neal took them up one by one. There was a volume of “Voltaire,”
Tom Paine’s “Rights of Man,” “The Vindiciæ Gallicæ,” by Mackintosh,
Godwin’s “Political Justice,” Montesquieu’s “Esprit des Lois,” and
a volume of Burns’ poetry, not long out from a Belfast printer. Neal
already knew Godwin’s works and the “Esprit des Lois.” They stood on his
father’s bookshelves. He glanced at the pages of the others, and finally
settled down to read Burns’ poetry. The Scottish dialect presents little
difficulty to a man bred among County Antrim people. The love songs,
with their extraordinary freshness and vivid emotion, delighted Neal.
Like many lovers of poetry, he tasted the full pleasure of verse best
when he read it aloud. One after another he declaimed the marvellous
songs, returning again and again to one which seemed peculiarly suited
to his circumstances--
“It’s not the roar o’ sea or shore
Wad make me longer wish to tarry;
Nor shouts o’ war that’s heard afar--
It’s leaving thee, my bonny Mary.”
He read the song aloud for the fourth time. As he uttered the last words
he heard a laugh, and, looking up, saw his host, Felix Matier, standing
at the door of the room.
“Well, Neal, good morrow to you. You’re well enough in body, to judge
by your voice. But if that poem’s a measure of the state of your mind
you’re sick at heart. Never mind Mary, man. There’s better stuff in
Burns than that. He’s no bad poet, is Rabbie Burns. Listen to this now.
Here’s one I’m fond of.”
He took the book out of Neal’s hand, and read him “Holy Willie’s
Prayer.” His dry intonation’, his perfect rendering of the dialect of
the poem, the sly twinkle of his eyes as he read, added exquisite malice
to the satire.
“But maybe,” he said, “I oughtn’t to be reading the like of that to you
that’s the son of the Manse, though nobody would think of Holy Willie
and your father together. I’m not very fond of the clergy myself, Neal,
either of your Church or another. I’m much of John Milton’s opinion that
new presbyter is just old priest writ large, but if there’s one kind
of minister that’s not so bad as the rest it’s the New Light men of
the Ulster Synod, and your father’s one of the best of them. But here’s
something now that Micah Ward would approve of. Just let me read you
this. I’ll have time enough before your uncle comes in. He’s not a
man of books, that uncle of yours, and I’d be ashamed if he caught me
reading at this hour of the day. But listen to me now.”
He took up the volume of “Voltaire” and read--
L’âme des grands travaux, l’objet des nobles voeux,
Que tout mortel embrasse, ou désire, ou rapelle,
Qui vit dans tous les coeurs, et dont le nom sacré
Dans les cours des tyrans est tout bas adoré, La Liberté!
J’ai vu cette déesse altière
Avec égalité répandant tous les biens,
Descendre de Morat en habit de guerrière,
Les mains teintes du sang des fiers Autrichiens
Et de Charles le Téméraire.”
Felix Matier’s manner of pronouncing French was somewhat painful to
listen to. Voltaire would probably have failed to recognise his solitary
lyric if he had heard it read by Mr. Matier. But if the poet had
discovered that the verses were his own and had got over his shudder at
a mangling of French sounds worse than the worst he can have heard at
Potsdam from the courtiers of Frederick William, he would probably have
been well enough satisfied with the spirit of the rendering. Mr. Matier,
of the North Street, Belfast, was obviously a sincere worshipper of
the _déesse altière_, and would have been delighted to see her hands
_teintes du sang_ of the men who had torn down his sign the night
before. Neal, though he could read French easily, did not understand
a single word he heard. He took the book from his host to see what the
poem was about. Mr. Matier did not seem the least vexed, although he
understood what Neal was doing.
“The French are a great people,” he said. “Europe owes them all the
ideas that are worth having. I’d be the last man to breathe a word
against them, but I must say that it requires some sort of a twisted
jaw to pronounce their language properly. I understand it all right when
it’s printed, but as for Speaking it or following it when a Frenchman
speaks it----”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“But it’s time I stopped moidering you with poetry. I hope you’re really
feeling better. I hope Peg took good care of you, and brought you your
breakfast.”
“Indeed she did. She took rather too good care of me. I thought one time
she was going to kiss me.
“Did she make to do that? Well, now, just think of it! Isn’t she the
brazen hussy? And I’m sure her breath reeked of onions or some such
like.”
“Oh,” said Neal, “we didn’t get as far as that. Her breath may be roses
for all I know.”
“You kept her at arm’s length. Serve her well right. I never heard of
such impudence. But these red-haired ones are the devil. It’s the same
with horses. I had a chestnut filly one time--a neat little tit in her
way--but she’d kick the weathercock off the top of the church steeple
whenever she was a bit fresh. Never trust anything red. A red dog will
bite you, a red horse will kick you, a red wench will kiss you, besides
being a damned unlucky thing to meet first thing in the morning, a red
soldier will hang you. There’s only one good thing in the world that’s
red, and that’s a red cap--the red cap of Liberty, Neal, and may we soon
have all the red coats in the country cut up into such head-gear.”
It was fortunate for Neal that he found Felix Matier’s conversation
amusing and Felix Matier’s books interesting. He had ample opportunity
of enjoying them during the week which followed the dragoons’ riot.
Donald Ward refused, as long as possible to allow him to get out of bed,
and even when Neal was up and dressed, peremptorily forbade him to leave
the house. He spoke weighty words about his experience of wounds, of
frightful consequences which followed cuts on the head when the cold of
the outer air got at them, of men who had died of lockjaw because they
would not take care of scalp wounds, of burning eruptions which broke
out on the unwary, of desperate fevers threatening life and reason.
Neal was puzzled. He had tumbled about among the rocks at Ballintoy a
good deal during his boyhood, cutting and bruising most parts of his
body. Even his head had not escaped. There was a deep scar under his
hair which he had come by in the course of an attempt to enter a long
fissure among the rocks of the Skerries, off Port-rush. But such wounds
had troubled him very little. He had never made a fuss about them or
taken any special precautions on account of them, neither knowing nor
caring anything about the evils which may follow wounds, which do follow
wounds, in pampered bodies. He could not understand why his uncle, who
was certainly not otherwise given to morbid coddling, should insist upon
such excessive care of a cut which was healing rapidly.
The fact was that Donald Ward was nervous about Neal, not at all on
account of his cut head, which was nothing, but because Captain Twinely
and his yeomen had returned to Belfast. It leaked out that the military
authorities were not pleased with Captain Twinely. He had brought back
three prisoners and the cannon, but he had not brought back Micah
Ward, who was particularly wanted. Captain Twinely, angry at his cold
reception, and furious at the hanging of his trooper, was anxious to
revenge himself upon some one. Lord Dun-severic was too great a man
to be attacked. The Government could not afford to interfere with his
methods of executing justice in North Antrim. Captain Twinely was given
a broad hint that he must hawk at lower game, and keep his mouth shut
about the hanging of his trooper. There was no objection to the yeomen
outraging women so long as they confined themselves to farmers’ wives,
but an insult offered to Lord Dunseveric’s sister and daughter, under
Lord Dunseveric’s own eyes, was a different matter. The less said the
better about the hanging of the man who had distinguished himself by
that exploit. Captain Twinely, growing savage at this second snub,
and afraid lest perhaps he himself might be sacrificed when Lord
Dunseveric’s story of his raid came to be told, sought to ingratiate
himself with the authorities by offering them a fresh victim. He gave
an exaggerated version of Neal Ward’s attack on the troopers outside the
meeting-house, and drew an imaginary picture of the young man as a deep
and dangerous conspirator. He even managed to shift the responsibility
for the hanging of the trooper from Lord Dunseveric’s shoulders to
Neal’s. He knew that Neal had left Dunseveric, and he assured Major Fox,
the town major, that Neal was at that moment in Belfast arranging for
the outbreak of the rebellion. Major Fox was worried by the complaints
which respectable citizens were making about the dragoons’ riot. He
was anxious to prove, if possible, that the soldiers’ conduct had been
provoked by the violence of the United Irishmen. He produced the man
whom Peg Macllrea and Neal had mangled and set him before the public as
an object of pity, his wrist tied up and his head elaborately bandaged.
A great idea flashed on him. He allowed it to be understood that he was
on the track of a most dangerous rebel--a young man who had hanged
a yeoman in Dunseveric and nearly murdered a dragoon in Belfast. In
reality he was too busy just then with more important matters to make
any real search for Neal Ward. But a week later he offered a reward of
fifty pounds for such information as would lead to his apprehension.
But the rumours of Captain Twinely’s sayings were sufficient to frighten
Donald Ward. He did not shrink from danger himself, and, had his own
life been threatened, would have taken measures to protect himself
without any feeling of panic, but his apprehension of peril for Neal
was a different matter. He felt responsible for his nephew, and did not
intend to allow him to be captured if caution could save him. Therefore,
he insisted on Neal’s remaining indoors, and plied him with the most
alarming accounts of the danger of his wound. He hoped in a few days to
get Neal out of Belfast to the comparative safety of some farmhouse. He
was particularly anxious that Finlay, who would certainly recognise the
young man, should not see him.
News reached Belfast that the United Irishmen in Wexford were in arms
and had taken the field against the English forces. The northern leaders
became eager to move at once and to strike vigorously. Everything seemed
to depend on their obtaining the command of Antrim and Down, and opening
communications with the south. James Hope arrived in Belfast. Henry Joy
M’Cracken was there. Henry Monro rode in every day from Lisburn.
Meeting after meeting was held in M’Cracken’s house in Rosemary Lane, in
Bigger’s house in the High Street, in Felix Matier’s shattered inn, or
in Peggy Barclay’s. Robert Simms, the general of the northern United
Irishmen, resigned his position. His heart failed him at the critical
moment, and when pressed by braver men to take the field at once he hung
back and gave up his command. He forgot his oath on MacArt’s Fort, where
he stood side by side with Wolfe Tone. Henry Joy M’Cracken, a man of
another spirit, was appointed in his place. With extreme rapidity and an
insight into the conditions of the struggle, marvellous in a man with
no military training, he laid his plans for simultaneous attacks upon a
number of places in Down and Antrim.
The Government was not idle. The northern United Irishmen were the best
organised and most formidable body to be dealt with. During the pause
before the outbreak of hostilities spies went busily to and fro. Reports
were carried to the authorities of every movement made, of almost every
meeting held. Men were arrested, imprisoned, flogged in the streets of
Belfast. Information was forced from prisoners under the lash. Parties
of yeomen rode through the country burning, ravishing, and hanging as
they went.
James Finlay earned his pay with the best of his kind, denouncing men
whom he knew to be United Irishmen, and giving information about their
whereabouts. He was settled in Bridge Street, and, strangely blind to
the fact that he was no longer trusted, invited the leaders to confer
with him, and allowed his house to be used as a store for ammunition.
Donald Ward, grimly determined that this man should get his deserts,
insisted that nothing should be said or done to alarm him.
“We can’t deal with him here,” he said. “Wait, wait till we get him down
to Donegore next week. If we frighten him now he won’t go.”
Of all these doings Neal heard only vague rumours. Sometimes Peg
Macllrea, crimson with horror and rage, came to him and told him of a
flogging, sparing him no details of the brutality. Sometimes his uncle
sat an hour with him and talked of the fight that was coming. He seemed
neither impatient nor excited. He looked forward with calm satisfaction
to the day when he would have a gun in his hand and an opportunity of
shooting at the men who were harrying the country.
“We have a couple of brass cannons, Neal. They’re not much to boast of,
but if they are properly served they will do some mischief. I have a
little experience of artillery, though it wasn’t in my regular line of
fighting. I think I’ll perhaps get charge of one of them.”
Felix Matier came often to see Neal. As things grew darker outside
he became more and more extravagantly cheerful. His talk was all of
liberty, of the dawn of the new era, of the breaking of old chains, and
the rising of the peoples of the world in unconquerable might.
“We’re to do our share in the grand work, Neal Ward, you and me; we’ll
have our hands in it in a day or two now.
“‘May liberty meet with success!
May prudence protect her from evil!
May tyrants and tyranny tine in the midst
And wander their way to the devil.’
“Ora, but fighting’s the work for a man after all. Here am I that have
spent my life making up reckonings and seeing to drink and men’s dinners
and the beds they were to sleep in. But I never was contented with such
things, and the money I made didn’t content me a bit more. _They_ taught
me better, boy.” He put his hand on the pile of books which lay on the
table in front of Neal. “They taught me that there was something better
than making money and eating full and living soft, something in the
world a man might fight for. Eh, but I wasn’t meant for an innkeeper--I
was meant for a fighter.
“‘I’d fight at land, I’d fight at sea;
At hame I’d fight my auntie, O!
I’d meet the devil and Dundee
On the braes o’ Killiecrankie, O!’”
James Hope also came to see Neal. His talk was very different from the
flamboyant exultation of Felix Matier; very different also from Donald
Ward’s cool delight in the prospect of battle. James Hope seemed
to realise the awful gravity of taking up arms against established
government. He alone understood the very small chance there was of
victory for the United Irishmen. Yet Neal never for an instant doubted
Hope’s courage. He felt that this man had argued out the whole matter
with himself and thought deeply and prayed earnestly and had made up his
mind.
“I do not think that we are sure to win, Neal, but I hope that our
fighting will enable those coming after us to obtain by other means the
liberty and security which will surely be withheld from them unless we
fight. I do not say these things to every one, but I feel safe in saying
them to you. You will not fear to die, if death is to be the end of it
for us.”
Neal felt convinced that Hope himself would go calmly, steadfastly on if
he were quite sure that the gallows waited for him. It was to Hope, more
than to either of the others, that he complained about his confinement
in Matier’s house.
“I cannot bear,” he said, “to be shut up here. I am not ill. The cut
on my head is cured now. There must be some other reason for keeping
me here. Am I not to be trusted? You say that you believe I will not
shrink. Why keep me here as if you were all afraid of my turning coward
or traitor?”
Hope parried these complaints as well as he could, telling Neal that a
soldier’s first duty was obedience, that in good time he would be given
something to do; that in the meanwhile he must show himself brave by
being patient!
“It is harder,” he said, “to conquer yourself than to conquer your
enemy.”
One day, when Neal had been a week in captivity, he broke out
passionately to Hope--
“I cannot bear this any longer. I hear of you and my uncle and the
others risking your lives. I hear of the brutality of the soldiers.
I hear of great plans on foot. I claim my share of the danger that
surrounds us. I understand now why you all combine to keep me here. You
are afraid of my running risks. I claim, I claim as a right, that I be
allowed to take the same risks as the rest.”
James Hope sat silent. His fingers played with the dark lock of hair
which hung over his forehead. Neal knew the gesture well. It was common
with Hope when he thought deeply and painfully. His fine dark eyes were
fixed on Neal’s, and there was the same curiously gentle expression in
them which had attracted Neal the first time he noticed it.
“I admit your claim,” said Hope, slowly, at last. “I shall speak to your
uncle. To-morrow, I think I may promise this; to-morrow you shall come
with me, and we shall do something which will be difficult, and I think
a little dangerous too.”