Darragh

“ When breakfast was ready Eve once more lay asleep with a slight dew of perspiration on her brow.
Darragh was half starved: Stormont ate little. Neither spoke at all until, satisfied, they rose, ready for sleep.
At the door of his room Stormont took Darragh's offered hand, understanding what it implied:
"Thanks, Jim. ... Hers is the loveliest character I have ever known. ... If I weren't as poor as a homeless dog I'd marry her to-morrow. ... I'll do it anyway, I think. ... I can't let her go back to Clinch's Dump!" ”

“ Eve was coming toward him in the dusk, moving painfully on her wounded feet. Darragh's flannel shirt and his hunting coat buttoned around her slender waist clothed her.
[166] The next instant he was beside her, lifting her in both arms.
As he placed her in the saddle and adjusted one stirrup to her bandaged foot, she turned and quietly thanked Darragh for the clothing.
"And that was a brave thing you did," she added, "—to risk your life for my father's property. Because the morocco case which you saved proved to be empty does not make what you did any the less loyal and gallant." ”

“ When Stormont came out a great fire of birch-logs was blazing in the living-room, and Darragh stood there, his elbow on the rough stone mantel-shelf.
Stormont came straight to the fire and set one spurred boot on the fender.
"She's warm and dry and sound asleep," he said. "I'll wake her again if you think she ought to swallow something hot."
At that moment the fish-culturist came in with a pot of steaming coffee.
"This is my friend, Ralph Wier," said Darragh. "I think you'd better give Eve a cup of coffee." And, to Wier, "Fill a couple of hot water bags, old chap. ”

“ Kitty Clare had put one round, white arm on top of the gate palings, and was crying softly into the crook of it.
“And still they'll be making you take the fast mail run,” she sobbed brokenly. “'Tis your grandfather and my grandmother—she's always saying that your luck would turn.”
It is not often that the man becomes the comforter; but this time Darragh proved the exception.
“Don't cry, Kitty, colleen. The luck's with us yet. Three times have I seen the Darragh dwarf, and twice death has leaped at me. But I've got to be a man, darlin' ”

“ They went out together. Stormont lifted Eve out of the saddle. She did not wake. Darragh led the way into the log house and along a corridor to his own room.
"Turn down the sheets," whispered Stormont. And, when the bed was ready: "Can you get a bath towel, Jim?"
Darragh fetched one from the connecting bath-room.
"Wrap it around her wet hair," whispered Stormont. "Good heavens, I wish there were a woman here."
"I wish so too," said Darragh; "she's chilled to the bone. You'll have to wake her. She can't sleep in what she's wearing ”

“ The court-martial of Darragh throws light upon the details of the conspiracy as well as the methods of the spies of the English government, and inasmuch as it is an episode which has never been printed, liberal extracts from the proceedings will be given. The charges against Darragh were:—
First: "For mutinous conduct at Cork on or about the month of April, 1865, in that coming to the knowledge of an intended mutiny in her Majesty's forces quartered in Cork barracks, he did not give information thereof to his commanding officer." ”

“ For by this time the Grand Duchess of Esthonia—Ricca, as she was called by her companion, Valentine, the pretty Countess Orloff-Strelwitz—must have arrived in New York.
At the big hunting lodge of the late Henry Harrod—now inherited by Darragh—there might be a letter—perhaps a telegram—the cue for Hal Smith to vanish and for James Darragh to enter, play his brief but glittering part, and——
[161] Darragh's sequence of pleasing meditations halted abruptly.... To walk out of the life of the little Grand Duchess did not seem to suit his ideas—indefinite and hazy as they were, so far. ”

“ Is it settled then?"
"Thanks," said Trooper Stormont, reddening. They clasped hands. Then Stormont went about and lighted the candles in the room. Clinch's face, again revealed, was still faintly amused at something or other. The dead have much to be amused at.
As Darragh was about to go, Stormont said: "We're burying Clinch at eleven to-morrow morning. The Ghost Lake Pilot officiates."
"I'll come if it won't upset Eve," said Darragh.
"She won't notice anybody, I fancy," remarked Stormont.
He stood by the veranda and watched Darragh take the Lake Trail through the snow. ”

“ There was a silence; the State Trooper looked down at the dogs:
"What are they, Jim?"
"Otter-hounds," said Darragh, "— a breed of my own. ... But that's all they are capable of hunting, I guess," he added grimly.
Stormont's gaze questioned him.
Darragh said: "After I telephoned you this morning that a guest of mine at Harrod Place, and I, had been stuck up and robbed by Quintana's outfit, what did you do, Jack?"
"I called up Bill Lannis first," said Stormont, "— then the doctor. After he came, Mrs. Ray arrived with a maid. Then I went in a spoke to Eve. ”

“ After a little while he remembered Clinch's daughter, and he cursed her, elaborately, thoroughly, wishing her black mischance awake and asleep, living or dead.
Darragh, too, he remembered in his curses, and did not slight him. And the trooper, Stormont—ah, he should have killed all of them when he had the chance.... And those two Baltic Russians, also, the girl duchess and her friend. Why on earth hadn't he made a clean job of it? Over-caution. A wary disinclination to stir up civilization by needless murder. But after all, old maxims, old beliefs, old truths are the best, God knows. ”

“ Drumdarragh, otherwise Trillick, has been recently thoroughly examined by W. F. Wakeman, whose report, accompanied by numerous drawings of remains discovered within the crannog, is prepared for publication in the Journal of the Royal Hist. and Arch. Association of Ireland. To the Museum of that Society the Earl of Enniskillen, in 1875, presented an oak paddle found at Drumdarragh crannog, in company with a single-tree canoe that had been unfortunately destroyed. ”

“ From east to west before him, lies the Drumadarragh range; between himself and which [Pg 38] lies the valley of the Deer Park, intersected by the river, whereabouts, in all probability, the assassination of Oscar took place. Beyond the ridge and through the pass just visible, rises the Glenwherry Water; near the head of which, as has been fully explained, both in "Ossian and the Clyde" and elsewhere, should be found a cave in some rocky cliff, with oaks, or the remains of oaks, before it; whilst the river, in its sheltered course or Cluna, glides below. ”

“ Its roads for the cyclist or the automobilist are, like the Irish character, a blend of the seducing and the bold, corrugated and rough in places, but withal fascinating and appealing, if only for their variety. Powerscourt, the Dargle, the Glen of the Downs, and the Devil’s Glen are the chief points of interest upon which one first comes from Dublin. The Dargle is a wooded glen of extreme beauty, three miles from Bray, from which a little mountain stream runs at the bottom of the gorge, quite hidden at times in a depth of wooded bank which must approximate three hundred feet. ”

“ Michael Daragh sat back with deep wonder in his eyes. In all her exquisite plumage she had alighted in this dull place, filling it with freshness. And an onlooker would have gathered that the young artist and the beautiful lady who wrote were the best of merry chums, the silent man in the background a civilly tolerated outsider.
After a while something of this seemed to strike young Randal. "Look here, Daragh, you haven't to start uptown yet! Why don't you contribute something to the gayety of nations? Haven't you any parlor tricks?" ”

“ For the next seventeen years he laboured in Ireland, and during this time founded the still more celebrated schools of Durrow in the present King's County, and of Kells in Meath, both of which became most famous in after years. Durrow, [7] which, like Derry, was named from [Pg 171] the beautiful groves of oak which were scattered along the slope of Druim-caín, or "the pleasant hill," seems to have retained to the last a hold upon the affections of Columcille second only to that of Derry. ”

“ Assault, he might encounter; perhaps murder! He began to tremble violently. Down he crouched in the dark corner where the porch joined the house. He held his breath. The pounding of his heart seemed certain to betray him. There in an abject, cringing heap he obliterated himself.
None too soon, for already the unknown person was cautiously coming down the walk. Darrow could hear his breathing; the wheeze of it indicated a bulky individual. At the bottom of the steps the man paused an instant. Against the pallid dark of the sky, Darrow perceived a black blotch, which was the newcomer’s head. ”

“ Death has relieved you of the task I imposed upon you. John Darrow’s body is in the well in the cave on Malabar Hill, where, before this reaches you, my body will have also gone to meet it. To this fragment of paper, then, must I confide the debt of gratitude I owe to you and to him who will bear it to you, Nana Kandia. ”

“ Eyes gleaming with excitement, lips compressed to a tight, thin line, two pink spots beginning to burn on his hollow cheeks, Darrow worked on and on.
“Come on, now! Come on!” he breathed eagerly to himself, as though he had been beside a race-track, encouraging his choice. And with intense eagerness he scrutinized the large scale-map of the harbor. His pencil traced lines here and there, paused, darted, and made black jabs.
“‘Ua’?” he exclaimed. “That might mean anything! “There’s a little million of ’em, there! ”

“ Darrow noticed that his hat was gone. He felt around the bench. On the grass he found it. This gave him a grain of comfort. Nothing is more forlorn than your civilized man without a hat. The hat was dry, too; and that was something.
He put it on his wounded head, and felt a tiny flicker of hope revive. A great weariness oppressed him; but he dared not sit down again in the park, to think. His wet, clinging clothes, too, urged him to be moving. Even though his billfold was now gone, and with it the precious scraps of paper, apparently his only clue, he could not feel that everything was lost. ”

“ As a man will, when trying to readjust his mental processes, Darrow clasped his hands behind him, bent his head, and strolled along a little way, oblivious to all about him. Little he knew that, half a block behind, a husky individual in a gray suit and Panama, with bristly, close-cropped yellow mustache, had slacked his pace at the same moment, and now with sudden interest was studying the shop-window signs, as though looking for some very special place. ”

“ Then came a voice, surly, suspicious:
“All-a close’ for-a business!”
Darrow’s only answer was to rattle the catch more vigorously than ever. The proprietor, after a moment’s silence, came forward heavily. A key turned. The door opened.
“Well, w’at-a you want?” demanded P. Buccamano & Co., compounded of fat and curls, a greasy mustache, an odor of garlic, and a general shirt-sleeve effect. From the rear room Darrow heard an infant’s wail, then the tones of a woman soothing it with the “La-la-la-la!” which speaks a universal tongue. ”

“ The scenery, which at first is flat and uninteresting, except to an agricultural eye, increases in attraction, as you progress towards Limerick, and is exceedingly beautiful about Lough Derg. There are delightful residences on either side, of which we admired particularly Portumna, my Lord Clanricarde's 1 and a place called Derry. The view from the upper windows of this latter home must be “a sight to make an old man young.” The mountains, inclosed and cultivated, have a tame unnatural look, as though they had been brought here from Connamara, and been broken to carry corn ”

“ The grave Irishman, Michael Daragh, was a constant delight. He was no more aware, she saw clearly, of her as a person, as a woman, than he was of Emma Ellis of the lidlike hats and shabby hair. Nothing that was human was alien to him, certainly, and nothing that was feminine was anything more than merely human to him. ”

“ Half way down the pier the prod of an umbrella increased his exasperation by rousing him to the fact that it was raining. Instantly the narrow ledge became a battle-ground of thrusting, slanting, parrying domes. The wind rose with the rain, and the harried wretches exposed to this double assault wreaked on their neighbours the vengeance they could not take on the elements.
Darrow, whose healthy enjoyment of life made him in general a good traveller, tolerant of agglutinated humanity, felt himself obscurely outraged by these promiscuous contacts. ”

“ But the woman who weds Michael Daragh, I don't care who she is (lie: I care enormously!) will always be burning incense to him in her lesser soul, always straining on tiptoe to breathe the air in which he lives and moves and has his being.
Michael Daragh, that time he renounced the flesh-pots and "took to bride the Ladye Povertye with perfect blithenesse," did it so thoroughly that any literal spouse will be only a sort of morganatic wife, anyway. ”

“ The shade is so thick as to exclude the heavens; all is retired and gloomy, a brown horror breathing over the whole. It is a spot for melancholy to muse in.
Return to the carriage, and quit the Dargle, which upon the whole is a very singular place, different from all I have seen in England, and I think preferable to most. Cross a murmuring stream, clear as crystal, and, rising a hill, look back on a pleasing landscape of inclosures, which, waving over hills, end in mountains of a very noble character. Reach Dublin. ”

“ Darrow had straightened, and his indolent manner had fallen from him.
"I have said I would permit no harm to come to these people, and I mean it," said he.
"No harm!" cried Helen. "What do you call this—"
Darrow turned to the window looking out over the city.
"This!" he said. "Why, this isn't harm! There isn't a man out there who is not better off for what has happened to him. He has lost a little time, a little money, a little sleep, and he has been given a new point of view, a new manhood. As a city dweller he was becoming a mollusk, a creature that could not exist without its shell. ”