Mulvaney

“ The week drew to a close and Mulvaney did not return. He, his royal palanquin, and his six attendants, had vanished into air. A very large and very tipsy soldier, his feet sticking out of the litter of a reigning princess, is not a thing to travel along the ways without comment. Yet no man of all the country round had seen any such wonder. He was, and he was not; and Learoyd suggested the immediate smashment of Dearsley as a sacrifice to his ghost. Ortheris insisted that all was well, and in the light of past experience his hopes seemed reasonable. ”

“ Mulvaney, Cornelia Mary, and Sally remembered the stories they had heard, stories that had kept the house empty so many years.
"It must—must be imagination," declared Cornelia Mary, whose lower teeth seemed trying to break her upper teeth.
"We've all got ears," remonstrated Chinky.
"It's Stubbins," insisted Mrs. Mulvaney, "and I'll give it to him for being so smart and not answering Hannah."
Upstairs went Mrs. Mulvaney, but she came down faster than she went up. "It beats all," she declared, "there ain't nobody in the house but us—and do you hear that noise again? ”

“ Twilight came to the valley. Gloom rushed in to fill the corners of every room in the old house.
Mulvaney stood erect at last and groped his way to the lamp he had observed earlier on the dining table. He struck a light and held it to the oily wick.
Odd people—an odd place. He resented Bock Martin—the way he had looked at Joan. He saw the girl's lovely young face in his imagination. ”

“ Most—if not all—of the town's population was gathered in the square in front of the general store. Mulvaney braked the dusty car to a halt near the tail of a bay mare tied to the hitching rack. The mare's flanks were covered with dust and sweat. The animal was winded as if from a hard ride.
Mulvaney squinted through the insect-spotted windshield at the group facing them.
Sullen expressions were there. Some of the women were fierce in their looks, as though resenting his intrusion into their town. The female of the species has the more protective nature, he thought. ”

“ Mulvaney came out of a revery—he was lying down—and flourished his heels in the air. "You're a man, Learoyd," said he, critically, "but you've only fought wid men, an' that's an ivry-day expayrience; but I've stud up to a ghost, an' that was not an ivry-day expayrience." ”

“ It was easy to say his verse was meretriciously catchy, but its cleverness, the bite of its irony and humor were indisputable; that his Anglo-Indian stories were marred by vulgarities and crudities of characterization; that the riotous humors of Mulvaney and his soldier-chums showed nothing but a boisterous, schoolboyish sense of fun; but there was no denying the originality of mind, the abounding genius that was experimentally at work in all these things. ”

“ A sterner man would have been tongue-tied. Mulvaney was completely stopped.
In spite of her sudden, wolfish ferocity, he felt that her attitude was not meant for him. Somehow, he realized vaguely that she directed it at the cowboy they had left sitting his paint pony by the roadside.
The question Mulvaney had been about to ask her was stilled on his tongue. Chance was, she couldn’t help anyway. Better to wait until he got to Wereville and make his inquiries there. Then he thought of the grim figure the cowboy had made after his initial gesture of friendliness. ”

“ Kipling, with all his off-handedness, is a master; for we are held not so much by the greater or less oddity of the particular yarn—sometimes it is scarcely a yarn at all, but something much less artificial—as by the robust attitude of the narrator, who never arranges or glosses or falsifies, but makes straight for the common and the characteristic. I have mentioned the great esteem in which I hold Mulvaney—surely a charming man and one qualified to adorn a higher sphere. Mulvaney is a creation to be proud of, and his two comrades stand as firm on their legs. ”

“ He helped himself to a fresh peg, and sighed furiously.
"Let your beard grow, Mulvaney," said I, "and then you won't be troubled with those notions. You'll be a real civilian."
Dinah Shadd had told me in the drawing-room of her desire to coax Mulvaney into letting his beard grow. "Twas so civilian-like," said poor Dinah, who hated her husband's hankering for his old life.
"Dinah Shadd, you're a dishgrace to an honust, clane-scraped man!" said Mulvaney, without replying to me. ”

“ We are poor men, and we know nothing.’
Such is the simplest version of the simplest story connected with the descent upon Dearsley. From the lips of the coolies I received it. Dearsley himself was in no condition to say anything, and Mulvaney preserved a massive silence, broken only by the occasional licking of the lips. He had seen a fight so gorgeous that even his power of speech was taken from him. I respected that reserve until, three days after the affair, I discovered in a disused stable in my quarters a palanquin of unchastened splendour—evidently in past days the litter of a queen. ”

“ Isaac Turner. "I feel as if I had known the Mulvaneys all my life. Talk about them, of course you may. Is Mrs. Mulvaney a nice looking woman?"
"Dear me, no," laughed Sally, playing with the soapsuds in the dishpan. ”

“ Mulvaney spared it another quick glance, and the feeling it inspired in him increased. He shrugged and avoided looking at it, turning his attention to the valley.
A quarter of a mile ahead, a small aggregation of houses glinted in the rays of the westering sun. Details were hidden in the foliage of the many trees that sheltered the town.
"Wereville," the girl said. "It isn't much—only a dozen or so houses—a general store—a blacksmith shop—population sixty-three." ”

“ When we three were comfortably settled under the big sisham in front of the bungalow, and the first rush of questions and answers about Privates Ortheris and Learoyd and old times and places had died away, Mulvaney said, reflectively—"Glory be there's no p'rade to-morrow, an' no bun-headed Corp'ril-bhoy to give you his lip. An' yit I don't know. Tis harrd to be something ye niver were an' niver meant to be, an' all the ould days shut up along wid your papers. Eyah! I'm growin' rusty, an' 'tis the will av God that a man mustn't serve his Quane for time an' all." ”

“ Mulvaney never referred to the fact that Mr. Mulvaney was a drunkard,—"and somehow I got discouraged, and I ain't brought you young ones up right. Now I feel glad and thankful we've got enough to eat and wear and a good house to live in, but it's too late for tablecloths."
"Why?"
"Because, Hannah, Stubbins wouldn't know no more how to act up against a tablecloth than one of his own pigs."
"We could learn," ventured Chinky.
Hannah took courage. "Listen, ma," said she, "Miss Randall says she never saw such [Pg 75] bright children as we are. ”

“ Therefore they flourished, sharing their drinks, their tobacco, and their money; good luck and evil; battle and the chances of death; life and the chances of happiness from Calicut in southern, to Peshawur in northern India.
Through no merit of my own it was my good fortune to be in a measure admitted to their friendship—frankly by Mulvaney from the beginning, sullenly and with reluctance by Learoyd, and suspiciously by Ortheris, who held to it that no man not in the Army could fraternize with a red-coat. "Like to like," said he. "I'm a bloomin' sodger—he's a bloomin' civilian. ”

“ Whatever he knows of his weaknesses, Mulvaney is entirely ignorant of his strength. ”

“ And Mulvaney went; cursing his allies with Irish fluency and barrack-room point.
"Take note," said he, when he had won his holiday, and appeared dressed in his roughest clothes with the only other regimental fowling piece in his hand. "Take note, Jock, an' you Orth'ris, I am goin' in the face av my own will—all for to please you. I misdoubt anythin' will come av permiscuous huntin' afther peacockses in a desolit lan'; an' I know that I will lie down an' die wid thirrrst. Me catch peacockses for you, ye lazy scutts—an' be sacrificed by the peasanthry—Ugh!" ”

“ Talkin' av that, have ye iver fallen in love, sorr?"
I preserved the silence of the damned. Mulvaney continued:
"Thin I will assume that ye have not. I did. In the days av my youth, as I have more than wanst told you, I was a man that filled the eye an' delighted the sowl av women. Niver man was hated as I have been. ”

“ Johnnie, Mike, come here. You seem to have forgotten this boy's name."
"He ain't never had no name," declared Johnnie, dodging behind Chinky to escape the spanking he seemed to expect when his mother looked at him as she did at that moment.
"You donkeys!" exclaimed Mrs. Mulvaney. "Dust out your ears now and you'll hear something. Stubbins's real name is Moses Aaron Mulvaney. Do you hear, Stubbins? Your meetin'-house name is Moses. When you start school, your name is Moses. When a man asks who you are, answer Moses. Do you understand?" ”

“ But somewhere must be one who is not.... And so my quest must go on. Again—farewell...."
Once more she was slipping from him. And once more he could do nothing. Despite his frantic, violent inner struggle, he could make no sound or movement, could give no slightest indication of the purpose that drove him. He was imprisoned within a cage of flesh as unresponsive and immovable as stone.
She turned to Mulvaney ... held the crystal globe to him. Its pulsing quickened, it brightened. And Mulvaney fell, limp—empty.
Watching through his despair, Bryan saw Leeta stand hesitating. ”

“ Mulvaney, the Irish giant, who has been the "grizzled, tender, and very wise Ulysses" to successive generations of young and foolish recruits, is a great creation. He is the father of the craft of arms to his associates; he has served with various regiments from Bermuda to Halifax; he is "old in war, scarred, reckless, resourceful, and in his pious hours an unequalled soldier." ”

“ I said bitterly, watching Mulvaney trying to come to attention by spasms.
"In saecula saeculorum," said the Devil, bowing his head; "and you needn't kick, my dear fellow, because they will concern no one but yourself by the time you whistle up to the door. Stop reviling me and uncover. Here's the Master!"
Uncover! I would have dropped on my knees, had not the Devil prevented me, at sight [Pg 357] of the portly form of Maitre François Rabelais, some time Curé of Meudon. He wore a smoke-stained apron of the colours of Gargantua. ”

“ Mulvaney had taught personal cleanliness and efficiency as the first articles of his companions' creed. "A dhirty man," he was used to say, in the speech of his kind, "goes to Clink for a weakness in the knees, an' is coort-martialled for a pair av socks missin'; but a clane man, such as is an ornament to his service—a man whose buttons are gold, whose coat is wax upon him, an' whose 'coutrements are widout a speck—that man may, spakin' in reason, do fwhat he likes an' dhrink from day to divil. That's the pride av bein' dacint." ”

“ He does not so readily come to believe in a "civilian," but, when he does, he believes implicitly and like a dog. I had had the honor of the friendship of Private Ortheris, at intervals, for more than three years, and we had dealt with each other as man by man, Consequently, he considered that all my words were true, and not spoken lightly.
Mulvaney and I left him in the high grass near the river-bank, and went away, still keeping to the high grass, toward my horse. ”

“ Even Ortheris's heart sank at the end of the seventh day, for half the regiment were out scouring the country-side, and Learoyd had been forced to fight two men who hinted openly that Mulvaney had deserted. To do him justice, the colonel laughed at the notion, even when it was put forward by his much-trusted adjutant.
'Mulvaney would as soon think of deserting as you would,' said he. 'No; he's either fallen into a mischief among the villagers—and yet that isn't likely, for he'd blarney himself out of the Pit ”

“ His eye caught sight of a familiar figure in blue denim, loafing in the foreground. Jim—the man at the gate. A short-cut, Mulvaney thought fleetingly. Jim had taken advantage of it to ride ahead and warn the villagers of their coming.
The girl opened her door with a shrill screech of metal and got out. The crowd kept silent. An elderly man stepped forward and the girl greeted him.
"I'm back, Dad."
"Joan! Who's that feller with you?"
She explained rapidly as Mulvaney got out beside her. Then she caught sight of the man who had ridden the mare from the gate. She stopped abruptly. ”

“ Then the Reverend cuts in, seein' as Jesse were losin' his temper, an' they fair beat me among them. But it were 'Liza, as looked an' said naught, as did more than either o' their tongues, an' soa I concluded to get converted."
"Fwhat?" shouted Mulvaney. Then, checking himself, he said softly, "Let be! Let be! Sure the Blessed Virgin is the mother of all religion an' most women; an' there's a dale av piety in a girl if the men would only let ut stay there. I'd ha' been converted myself under the circumstances."
"Nay, but," pursued Learoyd with a blush, "I meaned it." ”

“ It is no superficial idler among men who has taken down the strange notes on military hysteria which inspire The Madness of Ortheris and In the Matter of a Private, while the skill with which the battered giant Mulvaney, who has been a corporal and then has been reduced for misconduct, who to the ordinary view and in the eyes of all but the wisest of his officers is a dissipated blackguard, is made to display the rapidity, wit, resource, and high moral feeling which he really possesses, is extraordinary. ”