Gilbert Parker

“ If it was to your credit, even if they believe you guilty of killing Erris Boyne, they’d touch you lightly. Ah, in the name of the mother you loved, I ask you to tell the truth about that quarrel! Give it into the hands of the jury, and let them decide. Haven’t you got a heart in you? In the name of God—”
“Don’t speak to me like that,” interrupted Dyck, with emotion. “I’ve thought of all those things. I hold my peace because—because I hold my peace. To speak would be to hurt some one I love with all my soul.” ”

“ I have always loved you, Sheila, and shall do so while I have breath and life. I have always given you the best that is in me, tried to do what was good for us both, since my misfortune—crime, Lord Mallow calls it, as does the world. Never a sunrise that does not find you in the forefront of all the lighted world; never a flower have I seen that does not seem sweeter—it brings thoughts of you; never a crime that does not deepen its shame because you are in the world. In prison, when I used to mop my floor and clean down the walls ”

“ Am I only—God, am I only to be what I am for the rest of my days, a planter denied the pleasure of home by his own acts! Am I only a helpless fragment of a world of lost things? I have no friends—but yes, I have. I have Michael Clones and Captain Ivy, though he’s far away-aye, he’s a friend of friends, is Captain Ivy. These naval folk have had so much of the world, have got the bearings of so many seas, that they lose all littleness, and form their own minds. They are not like the people who knew me in Ireland—the governor here is one of them—and who believe the worst of me. ”

“ The two men started to leave, but old Christopher turned and stretched a hand up and out.
“Son of Ireland, bright and black and black and bright may be the picture of your life, but I see for you brightness and sweet faces, and music and song. It’s not Irish music, and it’s not Irish song, but the soul of the thing is Irish. Grim things await you, but you will conquer where the eagle sways to the shore, where the white mist flees from the hills, where heroes meet, where the hand of Moira stirs the blue and the witches flee from the voice of God. There is honour coming to you in the world.” ”

“ Then, in company with a rogue, I got wealth from the depths of the sea, and here I am in the bottom of my luxury, drunken and obscene—yes, obscene, for I permit my overseers and my manager to keep black women and have children by them. That I do not do so myself is no virtue on my part, but the virtue of a girl whom I knew in Connemara. I fill myself with drink. I have a bottle of madeira or port every night, and pints of beer or claret. I am a creature of low habits, a man sodden with self-indulgence. And when I am in drink, no slaver can be more cruel and ruthless. ”

“ The governor stood up and came to the open French windows that faced the fields of sugar-cane. In the near distance were clumps of fruit trees, of hedges of lime and flowering shrubs, rows of orange trees, mangoes, red and purple, forbidden-fruit and grapefruit, the large scarlet fruit of the acqui, the avocado-pear, the feathering bamboo, and the Jack-fruit tree, with its enormous fruit like pumpkins. Parrots were chattering in the acacia and in the Otaheite plum tree, with its bright pink blossoms like tassels, and flanking the negro huts by the river were bowers of grenadilla fruit. ”

“ We’re a great country and we’re a great people, but, by God, we’re not good to our own! Look at them there.”
He turned and waved a hand to the bowels of the ship where sailors traded with the slop-sellers, or chaffered with women, or sat in groups and sang, or played rough games which had no vital meaning; while here and there in groups, with hands gesticulating, some fanatics declared their principles. And the principles of every man in the Nore fleet so far were embraced in the four words—wages, food, drink, prize-money. ”

“ When one sets oneself against the Crown one must be sure of one’s ground, and fear no foe, however great and high. Well, I have won so far, and I shall win in the end. Mallow should have some respect for one that beat him at Phoenix Park with the sword; that beat him when he would have me imprisoned here; that beat him in the matter of the ship for Haiti, and that will beat him on every hazard he sets, unless he stoops to underhand acts, which he will not do. That much must be said for him. He plays his part in no small way, and he is more a bigot and a fanatic loyalist than a rogue. ”

“ Then came the general population, moving cheerfully in the inspiriting sun; for Irishmen move so much in a moist atmosphere that on a sunshiny day all tristesse of life seems changed, as in a flash, into high spirits and much activity. Not that the country, at its worst, is slow-footed or depressed; for wit is always at the elbow of want.
Never in all Ireland’s years had she a more beautiful day than that in which Dyck Calhoun and the Hon. Leonard Mallow met to settle their account in a secluded corner of Phoenix Park. ”

“ When Dyck had told her first, she had shivered with anger and shame—but anger and shame had gone. Only one thing gave her any comfort—the man who knew Erris Boyne was a traitor, and could profit by telling it, held his tongue for her own sake, kept his own counsel, and went to prison for four years as the price of his silence. He was now her neighbour and he loved her, and, if the shadow of a grave was not between them, would offer himself in marriage to her. This she knew beyond all doubt. He had given all a man can give—had saved her and killed her father—in ignorance had killed her father ”

“ Yet every man’s heart beat faster as they came to the place where the ambush was. Indeed, Dyck saw a bush move, and had a glimpse of a black, hideous face which quickly disappeared. Dyck’s imperturbable coolness kept them steady. They even gossiped of idle things loud enough for the hidden Maroons to hear. No face showed suspicion or alarm, as they passed, while all felt the presence of many men in the underbrush. ”

“ I am a man whom some men fear—”
“Lord Mallow!” she interjected.
“He does not fear me. Why do you say that?”
“I speak with a woman’s intuition. I don’t know what he fears, but he does fear you. You are a son of history; you had a duel with him, and beat him; you have always beaten him, even here where he has been supreme as governor—from first to last, you have beaten him.”
“I hope I shall be even with him at the last—at the very last,” was Dyck Calhoun’s reply. “We were made to be foes. We were from the first. I felt it when I saw him at Playmore. ”

“ Look you, after to-day you and I will never break bread or drink wine together. No—by Heaven, no! I don’t know whether you’ve told me the truth or not, but I think you have. There’s this to say—I shall go from this place to Dublin Castle, and shall tell them there—without mentioning your name—what you’ve told about the French raid. Now, by God, you’re a traitor! You oughtn’t to live, and if you’ll send your seconds to me I’ll try and do with you as I did with Leonard Mallow. Only mark me, Erris Boyne, I’ll put my sword into your heart. You understand—into your filthy heart! ”

“ Presently Dyck turned to old Christopher with a kindly laugh.
“Well, old friend! You, too, come to see the stag set loose again? You’re not many, that’s sure.” A grim, hard look came into his face, but both hands went out and caught the old man’s shoulders affectionately. “This is no day for you to be waiting at prison’s gates, Christopher; but there are two men who believe in me—two in all the world. It isn’t the killing,” he added after a moment’s silence—“it isn’t the killing that hurts so. If it’s true that I killed Erris Boyne, what hurts most is the reason why I killed him.” ”

“ It is the hidden machinery which makes the world of success go round. With brains, you say? Yes, money and brains, but without the money brains seldom win alone. Do not I know? When I was in prison, with estate vanished and home gone and my father in his grave, who was concerned about me? Only the humblest of all God’s Irish people; but with them I have somehow managed to win back lost ground. I am a stronger man than I was in all that men count of value in the world. I have an estate where I work like any youth who has everything before him. ”

“ Here men live according to the law of the knife, fork, and bottle, yet nowhere in the world is there deeper national morality or wider faith or endurance. It is a land where the sea is master, where naval might is the chief factor, and weighs down all else. Here the navies of the great powers meet and settle their disputes, and every being in the island knows that life is only worth what a hundred-ton brig-of-war permits. I have seen here in Jamaica the off-scourings of the French and Spanish fleets on parole; have seen them entering King’s House like loyal citizens ”

“ None who has ever breathed the air of Ireland can breathe in another land without memory of the ancient harp of Ireland. But it is as a memory-deep, wonderful, and abiding, yet a memory. I sometimes think I have forgotten, and then I hear coming through this Virginia the notes of some old Irish melody, the song of some wayfarer of Mayo or Connemara, and I know then that Ireland is persuasive and perpetual ”

“ Dyck Calhoun of Playmore! Take your hand in the game that’s going on! For a man as young as you, with brains and ambition, there’s no height he mightn’t reach in this country. Think of it—Ireland free from English control; Ireland, with all her dreams, living her own life, fearless, independent, as it was in days of yore. Why, what’s to prevent you, Dyck Calhoun, from being president of the Irish Republic? You have brains, looks, skill, and a wonderful tongue. None but a young man could take on the job, for it will require boldness, skill, and the recklessness of perfect courage. ”

“ If all your men were as faithful to the Crown as are the men on the Ariadne, then they deserve well of the King. But will you put for me on paper the written word that every man now aboard the Ariadne shall be held guiltless in the eyes of the admiral of this fleet; that the present officers shall remain officers, that the reforms I have made shall become permanent? For myself, I care not; but for the men who have fought under me, I want their amnesty. And I want Michael Clones to be kept with me, and Greenock, the master, and Ferens, the purser, to be kept where they are. ”

“ I don’t know which is worse—Ireland bloody with shootings and hangings, Ulster up in the north and Cork in the south, from the Giant’s Causeway to Tralee; no two sets of feet dancing alike, with the bloody hand of England stretching out over the Irish Parliament like death itself; or France ruling us. How does the English government live here? Only by bribery and purchases. It buys its way. Isn’t that true?”
Dyck nodded. “Yes, it’s true in a way,” he replied. “It’s so, because we’re what we are. We’ve never been properly put in our places. The heel on our necks—that’s the way to do it.” ”

“ Six years of horrible shame wiped out, and a new world was before her eyes.
This woman who had killed Erris Boyne must now suffer. She must bear the ignominy which had been heaped upon Dyck Calhoun’s head. Yet all at once there came to her mind a softening feeling. Erris Boyne had been rightly killed by a woman he had wronged, for he was a traitor as well as an adulterer—one who could use no woman well, who broke faith with all civilized tradition, and reverted to the savage. Surely the woman’s crime was not a dark one ”

“ What more could we do if we went to Dublin, except listen to gossip, read the papers and be jarred every moment? My dear, our best place is here. If the spending of money could be of any use to him, I’d spend it—indeed I would; but since it can’t be of any use, we must stay in our own home. Of one thing I’m sure—if Dyck Calhoun killed Erris Boyne, Boyne deserved it. Of one thing I’m certain beyond all else—it was no murder. Mr. Calhoun wasn’t a man to murder any one. ”

“ For I am an old man, Sheila, in all that makes men old. My step is quick still, my eye is sharp, and my brain beats fast, but my heart is ancient. I am an ancient of days, without hope or pleasure, save what pleasure comes in thinking of one whom I worship, yet must ever worship from afar. I wonder why I seem to feel you very near to-day! Perhaps it’s because ‘tis Christmas Day. I am not a religious man but Christmas is a day of memories. Is it because of the past in Ireland? ”

“ How I induced one of the big men of Jamaica to be banker and skipper for us need not be told; but he is one of whom men have dark sayings—chiefly, I take it, because he does bold, incomprehensible things. That business paid him well, for when the rent of the ship was met, and the few men on it paid—slaves they were chiefly—he pocketed ten thousand pounds, while Biatt and I each pouched forty thousand, and Michael two thousand. Aye, to be sure, Michael was in it! He is in all I do, and is as good as men of ten times his birth and history. Michael will be a rich man one day. ”

“ Then the stormy doors of the navy had opened wide to him; and as many a man is tempted into folly or crime by tempestuous nature, so he, forlorn, spiritually unkempt, but physically and mentally well-composed, in a spirit of bravado, flung himself into the bowels of the fleet.
From the moment Dyck arrived on board the Ariadne he was a marked man. Ferens, a disfranchised solicitor, who knew his story, spread the unwholesome truth about him among the ship’s people, and he received attentions at once offensive and flattering. ”

“ Then you do not speak what is in your mind, your honour. You say what you feel is the right thing to say—the slave of circumstances. I will be wholly frank with you. I came here to see Dyck Calhoun, for I knew he would not come to see me. Yes, there it was, a real thing in his heart. If he had been a lesser man than he is, he would have come to America when he was freed from prison. But he did not, would not, come. He knew he had been found guilty of killing my father, and that for him and me there could be no marriage—indeed he never asked me to marry him. ”

“ Is nothing left to your judgment? Do you say to me that if he keeps the freedom such as he has enjoyed, you’d punish him? Must the governor be as ruthless as his master? Look, your honour, I wouldn’t impose that command—not till I’d taken his advice about the Maroons anyway. There’s trouble brewing, and Mr. Calhoun knows it. He has warned you through the provost-marshal. I’d heed his warning, your honour, or it may injure your reputation as a ruler. No, I’d see myself in nethermost hell before I’d meddle with Mr. Calhoun. He’s a dangerous man, when he’s moved. ”