Dr. O'Grady

“ Billing, “and start at once.”
“Doctor,” said Gallagher anxiously, “what’ll I do when he starts asking me questions about the General?”
“Answer him, of course,” said Dr. O’Grady.
“How can I, when I never heard tell of the General till to-day. For the love of God, doctor dear, will you tell me who he was?”
“Thady,” said the doctor, “I’m ashamed of you. Aren’t you a politician? You are, and well you know it. Aren’t you a newspaper editor? You are, there’s no use denying it. Don’t you spend your whole life either talking or writing on subjects that you know nothing about? You do. ”

“ Lord Manton, for instance, and Jimmy O’Loughlin’s wife. What would you say to——? Good Lord! Emperor, put that thing down, it might go off!”
Mr. Red had taken a revolver from his pocket, and pointed it at Dr. O’Grady’s head.
“Lead the prisoner upstairs,” he said.
“I’m going all right,” said Dr. O’Grady. “But, like a good man, put down that pistol. I dare say it’s not loaded, and I’m sure you don’t mean to pull the trigger; but it makes me feel nervous. If you injure me you will be in a frightful fix. There isn’t another doctor nearer than Ballymoy, and he’s no good of a surgeon. Do be careful.” ”

“ A fee of such extravagant amount must be meant to purchase something else besides his medical skill. Men, even if they are as rich as Mr. Red appeared to be, even if they have the eyes of a mad gander and an eccentric taste in house decoration, do not pay ten pounds to a country doctor for dressing a wound. Dr. O’Grady began to wonder whether he might not be called upon to deal with the victim of some kind of foul play, whether he were being paid to keep his mouth shut. ”

“ After all, it was she who urged us on to have him hanged.”
“Adeline Maud,” said Dr. O’Grady, “has more sense than to quarrel with a man who has been paying me five pounds a day. He suggested four pounds at first; but he sprang it to a fiver the moment I made the suggestion.”
“Of course, if Miss Blow is satisfied——” said Lord Manton.
[297]
“She is,” said Dr. O’Grady. “Aren’t you, Adeline Maud?”
“Now that I know you’re safe——” said Miss Blow.
“In any case,” said Dr. O’Grady, “your pursuit would be quite useless. The Emperor started at ten o’clock last night in his motor-car. ”

“ Miss Blow came downstairs as he spoke and walked up to Jimmy O’Loughlin.
“Will you kindly have some luncheon ready for me,” she said, “at two o’clock?”
“Certainly, miss, why not? Is there any particular thing that your ladyship would fancy, such as a chop or the like?”
He reverted to the “ladyship” again, although he knew her name and degree. The girl’s manner seemed to force him to. She deserved something better than a mere [42] “miss.”
“In the meanwhile will you be so good as to tell me where Dr. O’Grady lives?”
“Is it Dr. O’Grady? ”

“ O’Grady’s flight to America as the natural result of his financial embarrassment. He was sorry; but he recognized that the doctor had taken the wisest course.
“Might I be speaking a word to your lordship about the doctor?”
“Certainly, Patsy.”
“It’s what Jimmy O’Loughlin was saying to me that there’d be no need, if your lordship was agreeable to the same, to be telling the young lady the way the doctor is gone off and left her without a word. She has trouble enough, the creature, without that.”
“What young lady?”
“Be damn!” said Patsy hurriedly, “if there isn’t herself coming up the avenue. ”

“ The Red Branch feasted one night in their great hall at Emain Macha. So vast was the hall that a man, such as men are now, standing in the centre and shouting his loudest, would not be heard at the circumference, yet the low laughter of the King sitting at one end was clearly audible to those who sat around the Champion at the other. The sons of Dithorba made it, giants of the elder time, labouring there under the brazen shoutings of Macha and the roar of her sounding thongs. ”

“ Nor was the renowned O'Grady without his hobby, too. While the various members of his family were thwarting each other, his master-mischief was thwarting them all; like some wicked giant looking down on a squabble of dwarfs, and ending the fight by kicking them all right and left. Then he had his troop of pets too—idle blackguards who were slingeing [13] about the place eternally, keeping up a sort of "cordon sanitaire," to prevent the pestilential presence of a bailiff, which is so catching, and turns to jail fever, a disease which had been fatal in the family. ”

“ The ball flew from the young hero’s hand like a bolt from a sling, and it struck the giant in the middle of the forehead below the rim of his helmet, but above his blazing eyes, and the ball crashed through the strong frontal bone, and tore its way through the hinder part of his head, and went forth, carrying the brains with it in its course, so that there was a free tunnel and thoroughfare for all the winds of heaven there. ”

“ At a distance he was little, commonplace, fat. Just a pink-cheeked business-man all ready to declare a dividend. Until you looked in his eyes. Then you saw romance, and a longing for ports where the big ships never touch.”
I knew then that O'Grady had read the message of a kindred soul in the eyes of Aloysius McMan. My friend was himself a follower of strange gods along the shores of picture-book lands—a lover of the world's byways, a shunner of its highways. We dropped down under a convenient palm and looked out towards the waves where they whispered their unnecessary admonition to the sand. ”

“ Just then they heard the baying of the dog sounding terribly in the hollow night, and every face was blanched throughout the vast chamber. Then without was heard a noise of trampling feet and short furious yells and sibilant gaspings, as of one who exerts all his strength, after which a dull sound at which the earth seemed to shake, mingled with a noise of breaking bones, and after that silence. ”

“ His eyes are blue-black under fine and even brows and his hair is a wonder, so dense is it, so lustrous and so curling, blacker than the crow’s wing, more shining than the bright armour of the chaffer. His body is broad above and narrow below, strong to withstand and agile to pursue. ”

“ She bade her women go and fetch him, and afterwards the whole household. They called aloud, “Setanta, Setanta,” but there was no answer, only silence and the watching and mocking trees and a sound like low laughter in the leaves; for Setanta was far away.
The boy came out of that forest on the west side. Soon he struck the great road which from Ath-a-clia [Footnote: Ath-a-cliah, i.e., the Ford of the Hurdles. It was the Irish name for Dublin.] ran through Murthemney to Emain Macha, and saw before him the purple mountain of Slieve Fuad. ”

“ Naysi paid slight attention to her, though, as she was the first to come forth, he observed these things. The other was young, tall, slender, and lissom, her raiment costly and splendid like a high queen’s on some solemn day, and like a queen’s her behaviour and her pacing over the flowery lawn. Never had that hunter seen such a form, so proudly modest and virginal, such sweetness, grace, and majesty of bearing. ”

“ Far away at the other end of the hall, on a raised seat, sat the Champion Fergus Mac Roy, like a colossus. The stars and clouds of night were round his head and shoulders seen through the wide and high entrance of the dun, whose doors no man had ever seen closed and barred. Aloft, suspended from the dim rafters, hung the naked forms of great men clear against the dark dome, having the cords of their slaughter around their necks and their white limbs splashed with blood. Kings were they who had murmured against the sovereignty of the Red Branch. ”

“ The Ultonians on their side ran to the walls and plucked down their spears from the pegs, and they raised their shields and balanced their long spears, and swords flashed and screeched as they rushed to light out of the scabbards, and the vast chamber glittered with shaking bronze and shone with the eyeballs of angry men, and rang with shouts of defiance and quick fierce words of command. For the Red Branch embattled themselves on one side of the chamber and the smiths upon the other, burning with unquenchable wrath, earth-born. ”

“ His countenance was long, broad above and narrow below, his nose eminent, his beard bipartite, curling and auburn in hue, his form without any blemish or imperfection.
Cuculain came forth from the palace. He wore that day a short mantle of pale-red silk bordered with white thread and fastened on the breast with a small brooch like a wheel of silver. The hues upon that silk were never the same. His tunic of fine linen was girt at the waist with a leathern zone, stained to the resemblance of the wild-briar rose. It descended to but did not pass his beautiful knees, falling into many plaits. ”

“ London is the headquarters of the intellectualism and of the literary and historical culture of the Empire. It is the sole dispenser of fame. It alone influences the mind of the country and guides thought and sentiment. It can make and mar reputations. What it scorns or ignores, the world, too, ignores and scorns. How then has the native literature of Ireland been treated by the representatives of English scholarship and literary culture? Mr. Carlyle is the first man of letters of the day, his the highest name as a critic upon, and historian of, the past life of Europe. ”

“ The early History of Ireland clings around and grows out of the Irish barrows until, with almost the universality of that primeval forest from which Ireland took one of its ancient names, the whole isle and all within it was clothed with a nobler raiment, invisible, but not the less real, of a full and luxuriant history, from whose presence, all-embracing, no part was free. ”

“ The fifer, in revenge, declared he was only humbugging the Squire.
Hereupon O'Grady, seizing the unfortunate trumpeter, gave him a more sublime kicking than ever fell to the lot of even piper or fiddler, whose pay [21] is proverbially oftener in that article than the coin of the realm.
Having tired himself, and considerably rubbed down the toe of his boot with his gentlemanly exercise, O'Grady dragged the trumpeter to the ditch, and rolled him into it, there to cool the fever which burned in his seat of honour. ”

“ A vast murmur rose from the assembly, for like distant thunder or the far-off murmuring of agitated waters was the continuous hum of their blended conversation and laughter, while, ever and anon, cleaving the many-tongued confusion, uprose friendly voices, clearer and stronger than battle-trumpets, when one hero challenged another to drink, wishing him victory and success, and his words rang round the hollow dome. ”

“ O'Grady swallowed a curse when he remembered he was a clergyman. "The enemy's camp—not his principles! Oh, Bermingham, Bermingham,—Brimmagem, Brummagem, Sheffield, Wolverhampton—Murther! Any one else? Was Durfy there?"
"No," said Furlong; "but there was an odd pe'son, whose name wymes to his—as you seem fond of wymes, Mister O'Gwady."
"What!" said O'Grady, quickly, and fixing his eyes on Furlong; "Murphy?"
"Yes. Miste' Muffy."
O'Grady gave a more doleful whistle than before, and banging the spoon faster than ever, exclaimed again, "Murphy!—then I'll tell you what it is ”

“ He crossed the Plain of the Hurlings and the Plain of the Assemblies and the open country and the great waste moor, going on to Dun-Culain. Culain’s new hound cowered low when he saw him. The boy sprang over moat and rampart at one bound and burst open the doors of the smith’s house, breaking the bar. The noise of the riven beam was like the brattling of thunder.
“That is an unusual way to enter a man’s house,” said Culain. He and his people were at supper.
“It is,” said Setanta. “Things more unusual will happen this night. Give me bridles that will hold the strongest horses.” ”

“ A noble literature indeed it is, having too this strange interest, that though mainly characterised by a great plainness and simplicity of thought, and, in the earlier stages, of expression, we feel, oftentimes, a sudden weirdness, a strange glamour shoots across the poem when the tale seems to open for a moment into mysterious depths, druidic secrets veiled by time, unsunned caves of thought, indicating a still deeper range of feeling, a still lower and wider reach of imagination. ”

“ We might say of Red Hugh and indeed of all O’Grady’s heroes that they are the spiritual progeny of Cuculain. From Red Hugh down to the boys who have such enchanting adventures in “Lost on Du Corrig” and “The Chain of Gold” they have all a natural and hardy purity of mind, a beautiful simplicity of character, and one can imagine them all in an hour of need, being faithful to any trust like the darling of the Red Branch. These shining lads never grew up amid books. They are as much children of nature as the Lucy of Wordsworth’s poetry. ”

“ The show of hands was declared to be in favour of Egan, whereupon a poll was demanded on the part of Scatterbrain, after which every one began to move from the court-house.
O'Grady, in very ill-humour, was endeavouring to shove past a herculean fellow, rather ragged and very saucy, who did not seem inclined to give place to the savage elbowing of the Squire.
"What brings such a ragged rascal as you here?" said O'Grady, brutally; "you're not an elector." ”

“ For the war-steeds of the Ultonians neighed loudly in their stables, and from the Tec Brac, the Speckled House of the Red Branch, rose a clangour of brass, the roar of the shield called Ocean, and the booming of the Gate-of-Battle, and the singing of swords long silent, and the brazen thunder of the revolution of wheels; and he saw strange forms and faces in the air, and the steady sun dancing in the heavens, and a man standing beside the stranger whose face was like the sun. The son of Amargin saw and heard all, for he was a seer and a prophet no less than a warrior. ”