Stories by English Authors: Ireland Part 7

Crash, crash, crash! Again and again the steel fangs of the pick ate their way through the solid timber. The lock yielded quickly, but, heavily barred at top and bottom, the good door resisted staunchly. Polly had glided away from Harold's side. He fancied that she had sought a place of safety, and rejoiced thereat; but in a moment she reappeared. She carried a shot-gun in her hands, and when she reached his side she rested the b.u.t.t on the ground and leaned on the weapon.

"I have often fired at things," she said, simply. "Why shouldn't I now?"

Mr. Connolly and Jack joined them in the hall, and Neil had come up from the kitchen door. The main entrance was evidently the weak point, and the whole garrison must be on hand to defend it. The a.s.sailants had waxed cautious of late, and for some time had allowed the sharp-shooter no chance. He thought that he would be of more service below; but, as it proved, when he abandoned his post he committed a fatal error.

Apparently the enemy had discovered that the galling fire from above had ceased. Perhaps some of their number had ventured out and returned scatheless. They speedily took advantage of this immunity.

While the attacks with the pickaxe were not relaxed for a moment, a score of men had brought the trunk of a young larch from the saw-pit at the back of the house. Poised by forty strong arms, this improvised battering-ram was hurled against the front door, carrying it clear off its hinges. In the naked entry a crowd of rough men jostled one another, as they sprang forward with hoa.r.s.e imprecations on their prey. The garrison was vanquished at last.

Not yet. Four shots rang out as one, instantly repeated as the defenders discharged their second barrels into the very teeth of the advancing mob. Then Mr. Connolly, Neil, and Jack clubbed the guns they had no time to reload, and prepared to sell their lives dearly in a hand-to-hand struggle. Polly, as soon as she had fired, dropped her weapon, and in an instant Harold had swept her behind him, and stood, revolver in hand, his breast her bulwark, confronting the mob.

But the mob, withered by the volley, hesitated a moment. The vestibule was streaming with blood, and shrieking, writhing victims strove in vain to rise. It was a sickening sight, but there was the electricity of anger in the air and no one faltered long. On they came again with undiminished fury.

But again the rush was checked. Sharp and vengeful rang out the close reports of the American revolver, and at each echo a man fell.

Less noisy, less terrific, but far more deadly, the six-shooter took up the work where the breech-loaders had left it; and Harold, covering with his body the girl he loved, fired as steadily as if practising in a pistol gallery, and made every shot tell.

He had not used his weapon in the first rush; somewhere or other, young Hayes had heard of the advantages of platoon firing.

The lights had been extinguished and day was just breaking. Firing from the obscurity into the growing light, the garrison had the best of the position; but there were firearms among the a.s.sailants too, and the b.a.l.l.s whistled through the long hall and buried themselves in the panelling.

But this could not last. Much as they had suffered in the a.s.sault, the a.s.sailants were too numerous to be longer held at bay. With a feeling of despair, Harold recognised the futile click that followed his pressure on the trigger and told him that he had fired his last cartridge.

With a wild yell the a.s.sailants rushed forward. Not a shot met them; nothing stood between them and their vengeance but four pale, determined men, weaponless but unflinching.

A quick trampling as of a body of horse was heard on the gravel without. A sharp, stern order reached the ears even of those in the house.

"Unsling carbines! Make ready! Present!"

Clubs and blunderbusses dropped from nerveless hands as the advancing mob paused, faltered, and then surged backward through the doorway. The l.u.s.t of vengeance gave way to the instinct of self-preservation, and the rioters scattered in flight.

d.i.c.k's gallant race against time had not been fruitless. A squadron of constabulary had reached the ground at the critical moment, and Lisnahoe was saved.

Few of the a.s.sailants escaped--every avenue was guarded by mounted policemen; and the gang which had long terrorised the neighbourhood--whose teachings and example had done so much to convert the sullen discontent of the peasantry into overt violence--was effectually broken up. From that night the boycott on the Connolly household was raised.

Red Mike Driscoll expiated on the gallows the murder of the Emergency man Fergus, and nearly a score of others were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment for a.s.sault and housebreaking.

The attacking party had lost three men killed, besides many wounded, more or less severely, by the shot-guns. The judicial inquiry into the casualties brought out details of the defence which struck terror to the hearts of the country people. It was not likely that Lisnahoe would be molested again.

Harold Hayes and Polly Connolly were married shortly after Easter.

They are living in New York now, in a pleasant flat overlooking Central Park. They entertain a good deal, and Irish affairs are sometimes discussed at Mr. Hayes's table; but so far he has failed to convince any of his American friends that there may be more than one side to the agrarian question in Ireland.

"Nonsense," remarked one gentleman, who professed to be deeply read in the subject; "they are an oppressed and suffering people.

Let them have their land."

"And what is to become of the landlords?" inquired Polly, with a wistful remembrance of her girlhood's beautiful home.

But to this question there has been no reply, and none has been offered yet.

A LOST RECRUIT

BY JANE BARLOW

When Mick Doherty heard that there was to be route-marching next day in the neighbourhood of Kilmacrone, he determined upon going off for a long "stravade" coastward over the bog, where there were no roads worth mentioning, and no risks of an encounter with the military. In this he acted differently from all his neighbours, most of whom, upon learning the news, began to speculate and plan how they might see and hear as much as possible of their unwonted visitors. Opinions were chiefly divided as to whether the Murghadeen cross-roads would be the best station to take up, or the fork of the lane at Berrisbawn House. People who, for one reason or another, could not go so far afield, consoled themselves by reflecting that the band, at any rate, would be likely to come through the village, and would no doubt strike up a tune while pa.s.sing, as it had done a couple of years ago, the last time the redcoats had appeared in Kilmacrone. And, och, but that was the grand playin' intirely!

It done your heart good just to be hearin' the sound of it, bedad it did so. Old Mrs. Geoghegan said it was liker the sort of thunder-storms they might be apt to have in heaven above than aught else she could think of, might goodness forgive her for sayin' such a thing; and Molly Joyce said she'd as lief as not have sat down and cried when't was pa.s.sed beyond her listenin', it went that delightful thumpety-thump, wid the tune flyin' up over it.

The military authorities at Fortbrack were not ignorant of this popular sentiment, and had considered it in the order of that day. For experience had shown that a progress of troops through the surrounding country districts generally conduced to the appearance before the recruiting officer of sundry long-limbed, loose-jointed Pats, Micks, and Joes; and a recent scarcity of this raw material made it seem expedient to bring such an influence to bear upon the new ground of remote Kilmacrone. Certain brigades and squadrons were accordingly directed to move thitherward, under the general idea that an invading force from the southeast had occupied Ballybeg Allan, while in pursuance of another general idea, really more to the purpose, though not officially announced, the accompanying band received instructions to be liberal and lively in its performances by the way.

All along their route through the wide brown land the soldiers might be sure of drawing as much sympathetic attention as that lonesome west country could concentrate on any given line. Probably there would be no one disposed, like Mick Doherty, to get out of the way, unless some very small child roared and ran, if of a size to have acquired the latter accomplishment, at the sound of the booming drums. To the great majority of these onlookers the spectacle would be a rare and gorgeous pageant, a memory resplendent across twilight-hued time-tracts as a vision of scarlet and golden gleams, and proudly pacing horses, and music that made you feel you had never known how much life there was in you all the while. Some toll, it is true, had to be paid for this enjoyment. When it had pa.s.sed by things suddenly grew very flat and colourless, and there was a tendency to feel more or less vaguely aggrieved because you could not go a-soldiering yourself. In cases, however, where circ.u.mstances rendered that obviously impossible, as when people were too old or infirm, or were women or girls, this thrill of discontent, seldom very acute, soon subsided, by virtue of the self-preserving instinct which forbids us to persist in knocking our heads hard against our stone walls. But it was different where the beholder was so situated that he could imagine himself riding or striding after the rapturous march-music to fields of peril and valour and glory, without diminishing the vividness of the picture by simultaneously supposing himself some quite other person.

The gleam in young Felix M'Guinness's eyes, as he watched the red files dwindle and twinkle out of sight, was to the brightening up beneath his grandfather's s.h.a.ggy brows as the forked flash is to the shimmering sheet-lightnings, that are but a harmless reflection from far-off storms. And there, indeed, pleasure paid a ruinous duty. If those who were liable to it did not imitate Mick Doherty's prudence and hold aloof, the reason may have been that they had not fort.i.tude enough to turn away from excitement offered on any terms, or that their position was less desperately tantalising than his; and the latter explanation is the more probable one, since few lads in and about Kilmacrone can have had their martial aspirations baulked by an impediment so flimsy and yet so effectual.

There was nothing in the world to hinder Mick from enlisting except just the unreasonableness of his mother, and that was an unreasonableness so unreasonable as to verge upon hat her neighbours would hare called "quare ould conthrariness." For, though a widow woman, and therefore ent.i.tled to occupy a pathetic position, its privileges were defined by the opinion that "she was not so badly off intirely as she might ha' been." Mick's departure need not have left her desolate, since she had another son and daughter at home, besides Essie married in the village, and Brian settled down at Murghadeen, here he was doing well, and times and again asking her to come and live with him. Then Mick would have been able to help her out of his pay much more efficaciously than he could do by his earnings at Kilmacrone, where work was slack and its wage low, so that the result of a lad's daily labour sometimes seemed mainly the putting of a fine edge on a superfluous appet.i.te. All these points were most clearly seen by Mick in the light of a fiercely burning desire; but that availed him nothing unless he could set them as plainly before some one else who was not thus illuminated.

And not far from two years back he had resolved that he would attempt to do so no more.

The soldiers had been about in the district on the day before, scattered like poppy beds over the bog, and signalling and firing till the misty October air tingled with excitement. When you have lived your life among wide-bounded solitudes, where the silence is oftenest broken by the plover's pipe or the croak of some heavily flapping bird, you will know the meaning of a bugle-call. Mick and his contemporaries had acted as camp-followers from early till late with ever intensifying ardour; one outcome whereof was that he heard his especial crony, Paddy Joyce, definitely decide to go and enlist at Fortbrack next Monday, which gave a turn more to the pinching screw of his own banned wish. It was with a concerted scheme for ascertaining whether there were any chance of bringing his mother round to a rational view of the matter that he and his friend dropped into her cabin next morning on the way to carry up a load of turf. Mrs. Doherty was washing her couple of blue-checked ap.r.o.ns in an old brown b.u.t.ter-crock, and Mick thought he had introduced the subject rather happily when he told her "she had a right to be takin' her hands out of the suds, and dippin' the finest curtsey she could conthrive, and she wid the Commander-in-Gineral of the Army Forces steppin' in to pay her a visit." Of course this statement required, as it was intended to require, elucidation, so Mick proceeded to announce: "It's himself's off to Fortbrack a-Monday, 'listin' he'll be in the Edenderry Light Infantry; so the next time we set eyes on him it's blazin' along the street we'll see him, like the boys we had here yisterday."

"Ah! sure now, that'll be grand," said Mrs. Doherty, unwarily complaisant; "we'll all be proud to behold him that way. 'T is a fine thing far any young man who's got a fancy to take up wid it."

"Och, then, bedad it is so!" said Mick, with emphasis, promptly making for the opening given to him.

"Bedad it is," said Paddy.

"There's nothin' like it," said Mick.

"Ah, nothin' at all," said Paddy.

Mrs. Doherty made no remark as she twisted a dripping ap.r.o.n into a sausage-shaped roll to wring the water out.

"How much was it you were sayin' you'd have in the week, Paddy, just to put in your pocket for your divarsion like?" inquired Mick, with a convenient lapse of memory.

"Och, seven or eight shillin's anyway," said Paddy, in the tone of one to whom shillings had already become trivial coins; "and that, mind you, after you've ped for the best of aitin' and dhrinkin', and your kit free, and no call to be spendin' another penny unless you plase. Sure, Long Murphy was tellin' me he was up in the town awhile ago, on a day when they were just after gettin' their pay, and he said the Post-Office was that thick wid the soldier lads sendin' home the money to their friends, he couldn't get speech of a clerk to buy his stamp be no manner of manes, not if he'd wrecked the place. 'T was the Sidmouth Fusileers was in at that time; they're off to Limerick now."

"But that's a grand regulation they have," said Mick, "wid the short service nowadays. Where's the hardship in it when a man can quit at the ind of three year, if he's so plased? Three year's no time to speak of."

"Sure, not at all; you'd scarce notice it pa.s.sin' by. Like Barney Bralligan's song that finished before it begun--isn't that the way of it, ma'am?"

"It's a goodish len'th of a while," said Mrs. Doherty.

"But thin there's the lave; don't be forgettin' the lave, Paddy man. Supposin' we--"

"Tub be sure, there's the lave. Why, it's skytin' home on lave they do be most continial. And the Edenderrys is movin' no farther than just to Athlone; that's as handy a place as you could get."