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 vainFor 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.”
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 shoreWad 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—