George A. Birmingham

“ You can get James, the groom, to keep you company if you like. You cannot go to bed to-night, you understand. You must sit by the fire till those roisterers have drunk themselves to sleep. James will keep you company, There will be sound sleep for many in this inn to-night, but none for poor Neal, who’s down in some cellar, nor the sentry they post over him, nor for you, Maurice, nor for James. Maybe after all Neal won’t be hanged in the morning. That’s all I have to say to you, my son. A man in my position can’t say more or do more. ”

“ You have made the sick and the lame to go out of their way. You have eaten the good pastures and trodden down the residue with your feet. You care for Ireland, and you mean by Ireland the powers and privileges of a class. I care for Ireland, but I mean Ireland, not for certain noblemen and gentlemen, but Ireland for the Irish people, for the poor as well as the rich, for the Protestant, Dissenter, and Roman Catholic alike.”
“I have never denied, nor do I wish to deny, the need of reform,” said Lord Dunseveric, “but I see before all the necessity of loyalty to the constitution.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ I don’t say you are acting wrongly or dishonourably, but you and your friends are acting foolishly. You cannot win. You and hundreds of innocent people must suffer, and Ireland, Neal, Ireland will come to the worse, to the old subjection, to the old bondage, to the old misery, through your foolishness. I say this, not to dissuade you from going on, for I think that you must go on now, but in order that when you look back on it all afterwards you may remember that there were true friends of Ireland who were not on your side.”
Neal bent over Lord Dunseveric’s hand and kissed it solemnly. ”

“ The laughter and gay talk ceased. The sense of holiday joyfulness was overwhelmed by a vague awe of the ocean’s greatness, the oppression of its strength, and the black towering rocks which hung over the boat, casting a gloom across the sea. The feeling of this solemnity abides through life with the men and women who have been bred as children on this north Antrim coast. If they live their lives out among its rugged harbours and stern ways they become, as the fishermen are, people of slow thoughts, long memories, and simple outlook upon life. The fear of the Lord is over their lives. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The arrival of Captain Twinely, Lord Dun-severic’s grave face, and his summons to Neal had filled Una’s mind with an undefined dread of some threatening evil. She was nearly as anxious as her aunt to know what was to happen. The prospect of a scamper across country through the rain daunted her very little. She had no doubt of her ability to keep in touch with the horsemen without being discovered. They would keep to the high road. To her every short cut was known, every hill for observation, and every possible hiding-place were as familiar to her as the lawn of Dunseveric House. ”

“ The Book tells us that no man is altogether good; no, not one, and that’s true. Never was a truer word. We try, lad, we try, and the grace of God works in us, but there remains the old leaven of evil; ay, it’s there, even in the heart of a saint. Now, it isn’t written, but I think it’s just as true that there’s no man altogether bad. There’s a spark of good somewhere in the worst of us, if we could but get at it. There’s a spark of good in Finlay.”
“How can there be?” said Neal, angrily. “The man’s a spy, an informer, a paid liar, a villain that takes gold and perjures himself.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ He had never seen, never even imagined, the existence of such a woman. Lord Dunseveric watched her and listened to her with quiet amusement. It seemed to him that his sister-in-law meant not only to rescue Una from an undesirable lover, but to attach a handsome, gauche youth to herself. He understood that a woman like Estelle de Tourneville might find the attentions of Neal Ward vastly diverting in a place like Dunseveric, where nothing better in the way of a flirtation was to be looked for. ”

“ Neal took his place beside a boy with bright red hair and a pleasant smiling face, who handed him a musket and a pouch of cartridges.
“Them’s yours, Neal Ward. Jemmy Hope bid me bring them for you.”
“But what are you to do?” said Neal. “You have no musket for yourself.”
“Faith I couldn’t use it if I had. I never shot off one of them guns in my life. I’d be as like to hit myself as any one. I’ll just go along with you, I have a sword, and I’ll be able to use that if I get the chance.”
Neal looked at the lad beside him, noted his smooth face and sparkling eyes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is, as you say, horrible. To inflict death is horrible, but it is sometimes just. If ever it is just for man to shed the blood of his brother man it is just to shed James Finlay’s. He has broken oaths, has brought death on men, has made women widows and children fatherless; has wrecked the happiness of homes. He has done these things for the sake of gain, for money counted out to him as the priests counted money out to Judas.”
It was impossible to plead his cause any more. Moylin pushed open the iron door of the vault. Neal dragged his hands from Finlay’s grasp, and crawled out. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Clair, Lord of Dunseveric. You have spoken well and pleaded speciously for yourself and your class. I might listen to you if I had not seen your armed ruffians break into our meeting-houses; if I had not in memory stories of burnt homesteads, outraged women, tortured men; you might persuade me if I did not know that to-night you have taken my friends, that you will drag them before unjust judges, and condemn them on the evidence of perjured informers, as you condemned William Orr. Human endurance can bear no more. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Micah Ward’s face was clean-shaved and marked with heavy lines. Thick, bushy brows hung over eyes which were keen and bright in spite of all his studying. Looking at his face, a man might judge him to be hard, narrow, strong—perhaps fanatical. Near the window:—one of the slanting windows through which it is tantalising to look—sat a young man, tall beyond the common, well knit, strong—Neal Ward, the minister’s son. ”

“ The sea remained calm and she was able to go twice more to the cave. She saw the yeomen spread over the country, searching everywhere, through fields and hills and along the river banks, by the shore, among the rocks, over the Causeway cliffs, through the sandhills, the ruins of Dunluce, among the white cliffs of Port-rush Strand, at high tide and low tide, everywhere except the one place—the nook where Una bathed. Estelle de Tourneville secured that spot from the searchers’ gaze. No man dared go there. Una could forgive the worst of tempers to the woman who purchased such security. ”

“ Is it any use going on now?”
“My lord,” said Neal, “I have heard things—I have seen things. Last night I myself was stripped for flogging. They have set a price on my head. I put it to you as a gentleman, as a just man and a brave, would it be right to go back now?”
“It is no use going on.”
“But would you go back? Would you desert friends who did not desert you? Would you leave them?”
“A wise man does not struggle against the inevitable, Neal.”
“But a man of honour, my lord. What would a man of honour do?”
“A man of honour,” said Lord Dunseveric, “would act as you are going to do.” ”

“ No engineer in the eighteenth century, when the road was made, dared lay his metal close to the Causeway cliffs or the awful precipice of Pleaskin Head. Still, now and then, in places where there are no sandhills and the cliffs are not appalling, the road ventures, for a mile or two, to run within a few hundred yards of the sea, before it is swept, like a cord bent by the wind, further inland. Thus, after passing the ruins of Dunseveric Castle, the traveller sees close beneath him the white limestone rocks and broad yellow stretch of Ballintoy Strand. ”

“ If you succeed, and I do not believe you can succeed, you will deluge the country in blood. If your best hopes are realised, and you receive the help you hope for from abroad, you will make Ireland the cockpit of a European war. Our commerce and manufactures, reviving under the fostering care of our own Irish Parliament, will be destroyed. Our fields, which none will dare to till, will be fouled with the dead bodies of our sons and daughters. ”

“ A silence followed Donald Ward’s words. In 1798 talk of death in battle or death on a scaffold moved even the youngest and most careless to serious thought. The world was full then of the kind of ideas for which men are well content to die, for the sake of which also they did not hesitate to shed blood. The Americans had set mankind a headline to copy in their Declaration of Independence. ”

“ General Clavering seemed in no way disconcerted by the escape of Hope’s musketeers. He marched through the town with drums beating and colours flying, having very much the air of a victorious general. Lord Dunseveric stepped out of the graveyard and saluted him.
“Accept my congratulations,” he said, “on your timely arrival. You have released me and my son from what might have been an unpleasant and uncomfortable captivity.”
“I am glad,” said the general, “to have been of any service to your lordship. I trust you suffered no ill-usage at the hands of the rebels. ”

“ Neal led the way across a stile and over a field. Lights moved from one window to another in the house. A sound of wailing rose! and fell, mingling with the monotonous roar of the waves. The door stood wide open. Within, a woman rocked herself to and fro on a low stool. Three children clung to her petticoats and cried piteously. A farm labourer stood, stupidly motionless, beside the dresser. A maid servant, with a light in her hand, flitted restlessly in and out of the kitchen. ”

“ The two young men shoved off into deep water, springing into the boat with dripping feet as she slid out clear of the shore. They placed the heavy oars between the wooden thole pins and steadied the boat while Una shipped the rudder. The wind was off shore and the sea, save for the long heave of the Atlantic, was still. The brown sail was hoisted and stretched with the sprit. Then, sailing and rowing, they swept past Carrighdubh, the Black Rock, which guarded the entrance of the little bay, and passed into the shadow of the mighty cliffs. ”

“ The rock lay far enough from the cliff to be clear of the shadow. The sun shone on its brown weed-clad sides, glistened on black clusters of mussels, glowed on the red seams of the rock where the iron cropped out, and baked the black basalt of the upper surface. ”

“ Your nephew, Neal, is telling me that when we have a reign of terror in Ireland you will make him cut off my head. Please promise me you won’t.”
Donald rested on his oar and gazed at the girl as she sat smiling at him in the stern of the boat.
“Young lady,” he said, “don’t trouble yourself. We didn’t hurt woman or girl in America. No woman shall die a violent death in Ireland at the hands of the people.”
“And no man, either?” cried Una. “Say it again, Mr. Donald Ward. Say ‘And no man, either.’ Can’t we settle everything without killing men?”
“Men are different,” said Donald. ”

“ You are his prisoner, released on your parole, and you must present yourself to him when he calls for you at Dunseveric. Besides, Neal, you owe a duty to your father and to those at home who love you. For their sakes you must not throw your life away.”
The anger died out of Neal’s heart. This last appeal left him with no feeling but tenderness. He thought of his father, a lone man, waiting for news of him, of Donald, of the battle, and the cause. He thought of Una St. Clair and the ever-new marvel of the love that she had confessed to him. ”

“ I shall shock my sweet Una, but she will forgive me because her heart has no room in it for unkind thoughts of anyone. I shall shock my nephew and the solemn Mr. Neal Ward, and they will not forgive me because they are young and, therefore, have very strict ideas of how a woman ought to behave herself. Nevertheless, I am going to make a speech and propose a toast. I am Irish. Long ago my fathers lived in Ireland and were grands seigneurs as my good brother, Lord Dunseveric, is to-day. They left Ireland for the sake of their faith and their king. ”