In the summer of 1800 the Act of Union was passed. The Irish
Constitution ceased to exist. The country lay torpid and apathetic under
the blow. Blood had been let in Antrim and Down, in Wexford and Wicklow.
The society of United Irishmen was broken. The Protestant gentry were
frightened or bribed. They, or the greater part of them, surrendered
their birthright without even Esau’s hunger for excuse. Roman Catholic
ecclesiastics, deluded by the promise of emancipation, which was not
kept for many a long year afterwards, offered a dubious welcome to the
English power. The people, cowed, helpless, expectant of little any way,
waited in numb indifference for what the new order was to bring. There
was little joy and little cause for joy in Ireland then.
From the gate of Dunseveric House, in the twilight of the short October
afternoon, came a young man who seemed to feel no sense of depression or
sadness. He strode briskly along the muddy road, swinging his stick in
his hand, whistling a merry tune. After a while, for very exuberance
of spirits, he broke into song. His voice rang clear through the damp,
misty air--
“Oh, my love’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June:
Oh, my love’s like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.”
A hundred yards or so further along the road walked another traveller.
He carried a knapsack on his shoulders and a stout staff in his hand.
When the song reached his ears he stopped, listened carefully, and then
waited for the singer to overtake him. It seemed as if the young man
was too glad at heart to sing through one song. He began again, and
his voice was full of passion, as if he had abandoned himself to the
inspiration of his words--
“Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast,
On yonder lea, on yonder lea,
My plaidie to the angry airt,
I’d shelter thee, I’d shelter thee.”
“Neal Ward,” said the man who waited.
The singer paused.
“I’m Neal Ward, my friend, who ever are you? And I know your voice. I
know it. Let me see your face, man. You’re Jemmy Hope. As I’m a living
man, you’re Jemmy Hope. I couldn’t have asked a better meeting.”
He seized Hope’s hand and wrung it heartily. He held it firm.
“There’s no man in the world I’d rather have met to-night. But I might
have guessed I’d meet you. When a man’s happy every wish of his heart
comes to him. It’s only the poor devils who are sad that have to wait
and sigh for what they want and never get it.”
“So you are happy, Neal. I am right glad of it. It makes me happy, too,
for all that’s come and gone, to listen to your singing. Give me a share
of your good news, Neal. We want good news in Ireland now-a-days. What
makes you happy?”
“I’m to be married to-morrow, Jemmy Hope. To-morrow, to-morrow, man.
Isn’t that enough to make me happy?”
He put his arm round Hope, and led him along the road. He walked as if
there were music in his ears which made him want to dance.
“She’s the best girl in all the world,” he said, “the bravest and the
truest and the sweetest--
‘Or were I a monarch o’ the globe,
With thee to reign, with thee to reign,
The brightest jewel in my crown
Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.’
Haven’t I the right to be happy, James Hope? Tell me that.”
“You have the best gift that God has got to give to man,” said Hope,
“and I that speak to you know. I have my own dear Rose. I have found
that the love of a good woman made all my trouble easy, turned sorrow of
heart into a kind of gladness, brought joy out of disappointment, made
poverty sweet to bear.”
“But I’m not poor,” said Neal, “I have a home to offer her, a home not
unworthy of her. I have money to give her what she wants. I shall take
her across the sea in a fine ship that I own myself, in a cabin I have
fitted out for her, fine enough for a crowned queen, but not fine enough
for her--
“‘Blair in Athol’s mine lassie,
Fair Dunkeld is mine lassie,
St. Johnston’s bower and Hunting Tower,
And a’ that’s mine is thine, lassie.’
Oh, man, but I have cause for my happiness. I have the world before
me, good work to do, good money to earn, and her love like a “perpetual
sun-shine to make life fair to me.”
Then suddenly his voice changed.
“Ah, but my happiness is not complete. There are two things I want yet.
I want my father to come out with me, and I want you, too, my friend.”
“And will your father not go? I heard that they had released him at last
from the prison in Scotland, whew they kept him since the year of the
break at Antrim. He’s home again.”
“Ay, he’s home, and it’s little cause he has to stay here. They have
put a new minister in his place. The Synod, the conscienceless villains,
declared it vacant. Castlereagh, through his satellite Black, has
corrupted them, too. He’ll preach no more in the old meeting-house, nor
sit over his bodes in the old manse. He’s at the Widow Maclure’s now,
the woman whose husband was hanged. He’ll not want his bit while I’ve
money in my pocket. But I’d like to bring him with me, to give him a
better home.”
“And will he not go?”
“He will not. He says he’s too old to go to a new land now; but you’ll
help me to persuade him. I think, maybe, if you’d come with me that he’d
come, too. And you will come, won’t you?”
Hope shook his head.
“Don’t shake your head at me that way, James Hope. You don’t know what
you’re refusing. I can give you work to do out there, and money to earn,
and a fine house to live in. It’s a good land, so it is; it’s a land of
liberty. We’ve done with the tyrannies of this worn-out old world. A man
may speak his mind out there, and think his own thoughts and go his own
way. We doff our hats and make our bows to no man living, only to him
who shows himself by fine deeds to be our better. It’s the land for you
and the land for me, and the land for every man that loves freedom. Will
you not come?”
They reached the door of the Maclures’ house and entered. A bright fine
burned on the hearth. The Widow Maclure was busy spreading a white cloth
on the table. Her eldest girl, a child of twelve years old, stood near
at hand with a pile of wooden porridge bowls in her arms. The two other
children, holding by their mother’s skirts, followed, smiled on and
chidden as they impeded her work, and babbled questions about this or
that. Beside the fire, in the chair that had once belonged to the master
of the house, sat Micah Ward. He looked very old now and infirm. The
months in a prison hulk in Belfast Lough and the long weariness of his
confinement in bleak Fort George had set their mark upon him. On his
knees lay a Greek lexicon, but he was pursuing no word through its
pages. It was open at the fly-leaf inside the cover. He was reading
lovingly for the hundredth time an inscription written there--
“This book was given to Rev. Micah Ward by his fellow-prisoners in
Fort George, in witness of their gratitude to him for his ministrations
during their captivity, and as a token of their admiration for his
fortitude, his patience, and his unfailing charity.”
There followed a list of twenty names. Four of them belonged to men of
the Roman Catholic faith, six of them were the names of Presbyterians,
ten were of those who accepted the teaching of that other Church which,
trammelled for centuries by connection with the State, hampered with
riches secured to her by the bayonets of a foreign power, dragged down
very often by officials placed over her by Englishmen, has yet in spite
of all won glory. Out of her womb have come the men whose names shine
brightest on the melancholy roll of the Irish patriots of the last two
centuries. She has not cared to boast of them. She has hidden their
names from her children as if they were a shame to her, but they are
hers.
Thus far off in a desolate Scottish fortress, after the total failure
of every plan, in the hour of Ireland’s most hopeless degradation, the
great dream which had fired the imagination of Tone and Neilson and
the others, the dream of all Irishmen uniting in a common love of their
country, a love which should transcend the differences of rival creeds,
found a realisation. The witness, written in crabbed characters on
the fly-leaf of a lexicon, lay on the knees of a broken old man in the
cottage of a widow within earshot of the perpetual clamour of the bleak
northern sea.
“Well, father,” said Neal, “here I am back again. And here’s Jemmy
Hope, whom I picked up on the road. He’s come to see you. He’s going to
persuade you to cross the sea with me. You and I and he together, and
Hannah Macaulay, who’s coming, too. Una will make you all welcome on her
sturdy ship. It’s her ship now. All that I have is her’s.”
Micah Ward looked at his son with a gentle, sad smile on his face. Then
he turned to welcome his visitor.
“So you have come to see me, James Hope. It was good of you. Ah, man,
there’s not so many of us left now. Orr, they hanged him; M’Cracken,
they hanged him; Monro, they hanged him; Porter, they hanged him. And
many another, many another. And the rest are gone across the sea. You
and I are left, with one here and there besides--a very small remnant,
a cottage in a vineyard, a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, a besieged
city.”
“It’s hard to tell,” said Hope, “why they did not hang me, too. There
were times when, only for my wife, who would have grieved after me, I
could have found it in my heart to wish they would.”
“Father,” said Neal, “Hope is coming to America with me.”
“Nay, lad, nay. I was born in Ireland, I’ve lived my life in Ireland,
I’ll die in Ireland when my time comes. Maybe before the end I’ll find a
chance to strike another blow for her.”
“Doubtless,” said Micah Ward, “such a blow will be stricken, but not in
our time, James Hope. The fighting spirit is gone from us. The men are
laid low or scattered or broken. The people speak about the ‘break.’
They call it well. ‘Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel?’
Yea, but iron hath broken us. It hath entered into our souls. And if one
look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow and the light is darkened
in the heavens thereof.”
“But there is another land,” said Neal, “where the sun shines, where
neither palaces of kings, nor haughty churches, nor the banners and
cannon smoke of England’s soldiers, nor yet the gallows, casting shadows
over the green fields, and overtopping every village, can come between
the people and the good light which the Lord God made for them. That’s
the land for you and me.”
“For you, Neal,” said Micah Ward, “and for the girl you love. But there
is no other land except only this lost land for me and him.”
He took Hope’s hand and held it. Then, with his other hand, he drew his
son down beside him. Neal knelt on the earthen floor of the cottage. He
felt hands laid upon his head--his father’s hands and James Hope’s. The
benediction came from both of them, though it was Micah Ward’s voice
which spoke the words--
“The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble, Neal;
The name of the God of Jacob defend thee;
Send thee help from the sanctuary,
And strengthen thee out of Zion;
Remember all thy offerings,
And accept thy burnt sacrifice;
Grant thee according to thine own heart,
And fulfil all thy counsel.”
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg’s The Northern Iron, by George A. Birmingham