Fermoy

“ When Logie and Ferrier had posted a handful of men in the empty fort, they went on towards the barque’s moorings followed by the rest, and leaving a few to guard the mouth of each street that opened on the quay. The whole world was abed behind the darkened windows and the grim stone walls that brooded like blind faces over the stealthy band passing below. When they reached the spot where the ferry-boat lay that plied between Montrose and the south shore of the strait, two men went down to the landing-stage, and, detaching her chains, got her ready to push off. ”

“ The good baker was smiling at the heroic enthusiasm of his pretty wife when the peal of a large bell was heard from a distance. Fergan, his family and neighbors, listened to the sonorous and prolonged sound with a tremor of joy.
"Oh, my friends!" said Fergan with emotion, "do you hear it sound for the first time from the belfry of our Commune? Do you hear it? To-day it summons us to a feast; to-morrow it will call us to the meeting of the council where we attend to the business of the city; some day it will give us the signal for battle. A belfry of the people! ”

“ My heart is broken for you, boy!
Then came Fiannamail, the son of Fergus Forderg, to the castle, and three times fifty was the number of the warriors that were with him. And a herald who preceded him gave to Ferb the news of his coming, and to Fiannamail he brought back a sad message to tell him of the deeds which had been done. Fiannamail immediately flew into a rage, and sought eagerly for tidings of where Conor was to be found, and he and Ferb between them made this song:—
VIII
Ferb. ”

“ Painters in those days had not the standing in society that they have now, but the voice and manner were unmistakably those of a man of breeding. Even his freedom was not the upstart licence of one trying to assert himself, but the easy expression of a roving imagination.
“I should introduce myself too,” said Logie. “I am Captain James Logie, Lord Balnillo’s brother. But we must rescue your—your—baggage. Where is your postilion?”
Flemington held up the lantern again, and its rays fell upon a man holding the two horses which were standing together under a tree. James went towards them. ”

“ Night fell on the barn at last. Wattie slept sound, with the yellow cur’s muzzle against his shoulder; but he awoke towards midnight, for Archie’s feverish voice was coming from the corner in which he lay. He inclined his ear, [Pg 202] attracted by the recurrent name of Logie which ran through the disconnected babblings, rising again and again like some half-drowned object carried along a swift stream. The darkness made every word seem more distinct.
“Listen to me!” cried Flemington. “Logie! Logie! you do not understand . . . it is safe . . . it is burnt! ”

“ He sat wondering how he could have got on without James.
“See,” said Logie, pushing the paper to him, “here lies the Venture off Ferryden, at the south side of the river, and here is Inchbrayock Island. That English captain is a fool, or he would have landed some men there. You and I will land on it, Ferrier. And now,” he went on, “the man is twice a fool, for, though he has taken the guns from the fort and put them on board one of the unrigged ships, he has left her beside the quay. ”

“ As if by magic the youth and glow faded out of the face on the pillow. As she sat up, clutching her nightgown to her breast, she looked suddenly pinched and old. "What do you mean, Pinky! Father—but he isn't sick. He—"
"Not sick. I don't mean sick exactly. But sort of worn out. That furnace. He's sick and tired of the thing; that's what he said to Fred. He needs a change. He ought to retire and enjoy life. He could. This house is killing both of you. Why in the world don't you close it up, or sell it, and come to New York?" ”

“ A woman—a High Prairie farmer’s wife—driving to market like a man! Alone at night in the market place—or at best in one of the cheap rooming houses! By Sunday somehow, mysteriously, the news had filtered through the district. High Prairie attended the Dutch Reformed church with a question hot on its tongue and Selina did not attend the morning services. A fine state of things, and she a widow of a week! High Prairie called at the DeJong farm on Sunday afternoon and was told that the widow was over in the wet west sixteen, poking about with the boy Dirk at her heels. ”

“ James and Ferrier ran forward as the animal struggled to its feet, unhurt; it tore past the men, who had broken their line as they watched the fall. The three horses made off between the trees, and Logie approached the beggar. He lay crushed and mangled, as quiet as the dead troopers on the ground.
There was no mistaking Wattie’s rigid stillness, and as James and Ferrier, with the red-bearded [Pg 296] man, approached him, they knew that he would never rise to blow his pipes nor to fill the air with his voice again. ”

“ Masculine High Prairie, meeting Pervus DeJong on the road, greeted him with: “Well, DeJong, you been giving the Widow Paarlenberg any good advice here lately about growing?”
It had been a particularly bad season for his fields. As High Prairie poked a sly thumb into his ribs thus she realized that he had been duped by the wily widow. A slow Dutch wrath rose in him against her; a male resentment at being manipulated by a woman. ”

“ But Ferrier went on with his own train of thought. He was a slower man than Logie, but if he lacked his fire, he lacked none of his resolution.
“You are right,” he said. “A man is a fool who leaves what he has captured on the farther side of the river, who thinks, having taken his enemy’s guns from a fort, that he can let it stand empty. He has done these follies because he knows that there are no troops in Montrose.”
“Ay, but there are troops in Brechin!” burst out James.
“There are troops in Brechin,” repeated [Pg 71] Ferrier slowly, “and they must be got quietly into the town. ”

“ On the very next evening Chippet and I had our first meal in the house of the Flemings. Because I am a realistic novelist, there is nothing, I suppose, in this modern world of ours that can possibly surprise me. The Flemings' house, Mr. Fleming, the numerous little Flemings, and the great Mrs. Farbman herself, were all exactly as I had expected them. There is something to me strangely depressing about Golders Green, and the Flemings' house would have been depressing anywhere. ”

“ There was no more about Logie, and Wattie could only make out the word ‘Ardguys,’ which he knew as the name of a place beyond Forfar; and as he had discovered in Brechin that Flemington lived somewhere in those parts, he guessed that his thoughts were roving about his home. His breathing grew less laboured, and the watcher could hear at last that he slept. The moon dropped, and with her going the crevices lost their greyness and the barn grew black. The beggar, who was a healthy sleeper, laid himself down again, and in the middle of his cogitations passed into oblivion. ”

“ He fell to thinking of other things: of his host, with his thin, neat legs and velvet coat; of that ‘riding the circuit’ upon which the old man [Pg 74] valued himself so much. In his mind’s eye he figured him astride of his floundering nag at the edge of some uninviting bog in an access of precise dismay. That was how he would have wished to paint him. His powers of detachment were such that he became fascinated by the idea, and awoke from it with a start to hear the footsteps of Logie and Ferrier coming down the stairway opposite. ”

“ Logie had come round the little table and stood by his friend, waiting for him to speak.
“I will go with you,” said Ferrier. “We can part below Balnillo, and I, too, will go back to Brechin by the river. I must know every step before I attempt to bring them in the dark. There must be no delays when the time comes.”
James drew a long sigh of relief. He had never doubted his companion’s zeal, but his heart had been on fire with the project he carried in it, and Ferrier’s complete acceptance of it was balm to his spirit. He was a man who spared himself nothing, mentally or physically. ”

“ The yellow cur and his companions toiled along at their steady trot, their red tongues hanging. The broadside from the French ship rang inland, and the beggar groaned, urging them with curses and chosen abuse. His intimate knowledge of the neighbourhood led him to steer for the identical spot on which Flemington, crouched in his whin-bush, had looked down on the affray, and he hoped devoutly that he might reach that point of vantage while there was still something to be seen from it. Silence had settled on the strait once more. ”

“ Madam Flemington had never reopened the subject of James Logie with Archie. In her wisdom she had left well alone. Installed in her little lodging in Hyndford’s Close, with her woman [Pg 257] Mysie, she had made up her mind to remain where she was. There was much to keep her in Edinburgh, and she could not bring herself to leave the centre of information and to bury herself again in the old white house among the ash-trees, whilst every post and every horseman brought word of some new turn in the country’s fortunes. ”

“ A middle-class, respected, moderately well-to-do person himself, Hermie, with ten thousand dollars saved at thirty-five and just about to invest it in business in the thriving city of Indianapolis. A solid young man, Horace Winter said. Not much given to talk. That indicated depth and thinking. Thrifty and far-sighted, as witness the good ten thousand in cash. Kind. Old enough, with his additional fifteen years, to balance the lively Hannah who was considered rather flighty and too prone to find fun in things that others considered serious. ”

“ Voorhees had not been minded to keep house too scrupulously for a man who would be unlikely to know whether or not it was clean. Pervus lighted the lamps. There was a fire in the kitchen stove. It made the house seem stuffy on this mild May night. Selina thought that her own little bedroom at the Pools’, no longer hers, must be deliciously cool and still with the breeze fanning fresh from the west. Pervus was putting the horse into the barn. The bedroom was off the sitting room. ”

“ He held it to be dishonourable that any man at all in the world should come with numbers no greater than his own and take the house where he was; therefore he and his warriors chased the Fomorians, and they drove them from the palace. In that hour the hand of Mani was not the hand of a healer, for nine of the men of the Fomorians fell at his first attack. And then to the front of the fight came the pirate of Greater Asia—even Fabric of the venomous tooth ”

“ I stood on the firm land!
The Hermit stepped forth from the boat,
And scarcely he could stand.
[The ancient Mariner earnestly entreateth the Hermit to shrieve him; and the penance of life falls on him.]
"O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!"
The Hermit crossed his brow.
"Say quick," quoth he, "I bid thee say—
What manner of man art thou?" ”

“ Dirk was grateful. Her notes were always copious, perfect. She never hesitated to let him copy them. They got in the way of walking out of the classroom together, across the campus. She told him something of herself.
“Your people farmers!” Surprised, she looked at his well-cut clothes, his slim, strong, unmarked hands, his smart shoes and cap. “Why, so are mine. Iowa.” She pronounced it Ioway. “I lived on the farm all my life till I was twenty-seven. ”

“ I left the Scots Brigade and took service with Russia, and I joined Peter Lacy, who was on his way to fight in Poland. Fighting was all I wanted, and God knows I had it. I did not want to be killed, but to kill. Then I grew weary of that, but I still stayed with Lacy, and followed him to fight the Turks. We outlive trouble in time, Flemington; we outlive it, though we cannot outlive memory. We outlast it—that is a better word. ”

“ The grocers who catered to the well-to-do north-side families and those in the neighbourhood of fashionable Prairie Avenue on the south bought of him.
Now, in his doorway, he eyed the spare little figure that appeared before him all in rusty black, with its strained anxious face, its great deep-sunk eyes.
“DeJong, eh? Sorry to hear about your loss, ma’am. Pervus was a fine lad. No great shakes at truck farming, though. His widow, h’m? Hm.” Here, he saw, was no dull-witted farm woman; no stolid Dutch woman truckster. He went out to her wagon, tweaked the boy’s brown cheek. ”

“ Another apparent evidence of date, which Windisch notes in his preface, is the higher literary quality of the Connaught version. Both versions are apparently, at least, as old as the tenth century, but the Ulster or ballad version and the Egerton one, which in the main agrees with it, tell the story baldly; while the Connaught story-teller seems to have amplified several suggestions in the original tale: in the laments of Nuagel over Gerg, and of Ferb over Mani, also in the dramatic dialogues between Ferb and the two Connaught heroes, Fiannamail and Donnell the Red, much power is shown. ”

“ Well, Fergus and the duenna, Francesca, attended to the details. And one night they fetched me a long black cloak with a high collar, and led me to the house at midnight. I stood by the window in the patio until I heard a voice as soft and sweet as an angel’s whisper on the other side of the bars. I could see only a faint, white clad shape inside; and, true to Fergus, I pulled the collar of my cloak high up, for it was July in the wet season, and the nights were chilly. And, smothering a laugh as I thought of the tongue-tied Fergus, I began to talk. ”

“ FERMOR, FARMER, or FERMOUR, Sir WILLIAM (1623?–1661) , royalist, was the eldest son of Sir Hatton Fermor, knt., of Easton Neston, Northamptonshire, by his second wife, Anna, daughter of Sir William Cokayne [q. v.] , lord mayor of London. Sir Hatton Fermor, the great-grandson of Richard Fermor [q. v.] ”