The Northern Iron Part 16

"And was it for a la.s.sie 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 la.s.ses.'

Maybe your la.s.sie, 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 la.s.sie, 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 la.s.sie 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. n.o.body 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 Vindiciae Gallicae," by Mackintosh, G.o.dwin's "Political Justice," Montesquieu's "Esprit des Lois," and a volume of Burns' poetry, not long out from a Belfast printer. Neal already knew G.o.dwin'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 circ.u.mstances--

"It's not the roar o' sea or sh.o.r.e 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 n.o.body 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'ame des grands travaux, l'objet des n.o.bles voeux, Que tout mortel embra.s.se, ou desire, ou rapelle, Qui vit dans tous les coeurs, et dont le nom sacre Dans les cours des tyrans est tout bas adore, La Liberte!

J'ai vu cette deesse altiere Avec egalite repandant tous les biens, Descendre de Morat en habit de guerriere, Les mains teintes du sang des fiers Autrichiens Et de Charles le Temeraire."

Felix Matier's manner of p.r.o.nouncing 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 _deesse altiere_, 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 t.i.t in her way--but she'd kick the weatherc.o.c.k 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 d.a.m.ned 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.