The Quiet Man and Other Stories E-Book

Maurice Walsh

• Herausgeber: Reading Essentials
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

In the 1930s, Irish novelist Maurice Walsh placed the moors and mountains of Ireland firmly on the literary map with this celebrated collection of stories under the title Green Rushes, here re-titled The Quiet Man and Other Stories. Since then, readers have continued to be charmed by these accounts of his characters in 1920s rural Ireland as the themes of nationalism, human dignity, honour, and love are given full play. Made famous by John Ford's Oscar-winning film The Quiet Man, starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, these remain humorous and poignant tales set against a backdrop of politics, intrigue, and Irish civil war and unrest.

Leseprobe

The Quiet Man and Other Stories (originally published as Green Rushes)

by Maurice Walsh

First published in 1933 and 1935

This edition published by Reading Essentials

Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

THE QUIET MAN AND OTHER STORIES 

(originally published as Green Rushes)

Introduction

SIX men and four girls spent a night of June, during the Black-and-Tan war, at the Anglers’ Hotel above Lough Aonach in a certain mountainous district of southwestern Ireland, and something of their life stories, strangely intermingled, is told in the following pages.

The six men were:

Hugh Forbes, “The Small Dark Man,” ex-British officer, and famous guerilla leader of a Flying Column of the I.R.A. (Irish Republican Army);

Michael Flynn, his second in command, known as “Mickeen Oge Flynn,” unconditional republican, celibate by inclination, half priest by training;

Owen Jordan, doctor to the Flying Column, Irish-American and son of a Fenian;

Paddy Bawn Enright, ex-prize fighter, known as “The Quiet Man” because he hoped to end his days in “a quiet small little place on a hillside,” and was more likely to finish them in a Black-and-Tan ambush;

Sean Glynn, gentleman farmer, and intelligence officer to the I.R.A.; and

Archibald MacDonald, a Highlandman, captain in the Seaforth Highlanders, an old friend of Sean Glynn’s, inveterate angler, and a prisoner to the Flying Column because of that failing.

The girls were:

Margaid MacDonald, sister to Captain MacDonald, and a prisoner with him;

Joan Hyland, a young Irish girl, sweetheart to Sean Glynn;

Kate O’Brien, niece of a British major-general and as fervid a republican as Mickeen Oge Flynn; and

Nuala Kierley, secret-service agent to the I.R.A., broken in the cause.

The love story of Hugh Forbes is told in another book, “The Small Dark Man.” How the others fell victim to the Matriarchy—in whose Serfdom all men are—is told here.

PART ONE “Then Came the Captain’s Daughter”

“Then came the Captain’s daughter, the Captain of the Yeos,

Saying, ‘Brave United Irishman, we’ll ne’er again be foes;

A thousand pounds I’ll give to thee, and fly from home with me;

I’ll dress myself in man’s attire and fight for liberty.’”

Chapter I

I

IT was a fine morning that morning, and I was feeling fine too. Fine but tired—too tired even to smoke.

I propped my weathered rifle against the drystone wall, leaned elbows on the coping stones, and let my eyes wander lazily down and across this valley that I had not seen before. A pleasant valley below stone-ribbed, arid brown slopes of heather, and, somehow, though six thousand miles away, it reminded me of a sheltered fold in the stony ridges behind San Lorenzo where I had once shot an Arizona white-tailed deer of nine points. I sighed in a rather agreeable melancholy. Would I ever see New Mexico again—its austere peaks, its distances, its colors? Any day, now, a Black-and-Tan bullet might find me; and my head would sink on the stock of my rifle—as I had seen heads sink—and my soul go winging six thousand miles, if I had any soul to wing.

From the open kitchen door behind me, across the little fruit garden, came the deep murmur of men’s voices and an occasional high-pitched, southern Irish laugh. The remnant of the Flying Column was having its breakfast in there, and the odor of bacon and eggs made my mouth water. In ten minutes or so Mickeen Oge Flynn would be out to relieve me, but, at that, I was not feeling so very hungry after the long night march. Every tension had slacked down comfortably, and the only desire that abided was the desire to sleep: to sleep, and to wake up sleepily, and sleepily to watch life slide by softly—for a time. And I was not sorry for myself any more.

A pleasant May morning, with a soft flow of air breathing sweetness from the hawthorn and setting little white clouds drifting over the bald head of Leaccamore Mountain across the valley; and, though the blackbirds were silent, the larks were asoar and singing; and, as an undertone to the larks’ high song, there came up the green slope the drawn-out murmur of water running over shallows—a sleepy, slow, ruminative half-chuckle-half-sigh aloof with a gentle lonesomeness in tune with a quiet mood.

There would be fish in water like that, I considered lazily: speckled trout gormandizing on the May fly, or, maybe, a clean-run salmon up from Shannon River. I could see wide pools between clumps of hazel in the valley bottom, and the young sun made bright wimplings down the long shallows. A small interest came alive in me. Myself—but I would have one good sleep first—myself and Big Paudh Moran would, like enough, be trying a cast or two in the heel of the evening.

A stoutish short man, wearing a black coat and a bowler hat, climbed over a clay fence a hundred yards below, and walked up the slope towards me. He did not look dangerous, but in our deadly game one could never be sure; so I whistled two sharp notes and slipped hand to the warm flat butt under oxter.

“Morrow, sir!” he saluted loudly a safe distance out. “A fine morning, thank God!”

“It is,” I agreed. “Anything else on your mind?”

“No—well, yes, sir! I came out to see—” he hesitated—“I came out to see Sean Glynn.”

Sean Glynn of Leaccabuie was the upland farmer who was giving the Flying Column its breakfast this morning; one of our own, a friendly man, and any man coming to see him might be friendly too. Whoever he was, he was not of the fighting line, for there was no tan on his round, smooth-shaven, perspiring face, and he wore the shopman’s clothes—not the belted trench coat and felt hat of the columns. Only one man of us insisted on wearing a bowler hat: Matt Tobin, the thresher, and he wore it because, he said, it brought him luck. It had two bullet-holes through it.

A voice spoke behind me: “All right, Doctor!” Sean Glynn came down the path between the berry bushes. “You’re welcome, John. Come away up.”

The townsman came to the hand-gate in the wall, his side-glance aware of me. “Commandant Forbes I’m looking for,” he said. “There’s an urgent thing I have to tell him.”

I looked at Sean, and Sean nodded. “You knew where to look, John. Hugh Forbes is having his breakfast. Come away in.”

He preceded the visitor to the kitchen door, called his name through, and came back to my side at the wall.

“John Molouney—keeps a pub at Castletown, eight miles over the shoulder there,” he told me. “One of my intelligence squad, and as sound a man as ever drew breath.”

Sean Glynn was a young man and dark, with a college education and no side, a man of gay and gallant spirit. He was our chief intelligence officer in the south. Farming many acres in the valley bottom, sheep-grazing all the moors behind us, he had obvious business interests in every market town in Munster; and there he gleaned information in his own quiet way, and kept the lines of communication open between the Flying Columns and Dublin headquarters.

His voice took on weight now. “ ’Twas no small thing brought John Molouney over Leaccamore so early in the morning.”

“Pity he came, then,” I grumbled. “We are not in this place for big things, but for a rest only.”

“God send it to ye!” wished Sean Glynn, a shade derisively. Rest was one of the things rarely vouchsafed to the Flying Columns.

I yawned deeply. “That a fishing river down there?”

“That’s the Ullachowen.” The quiet pride in his voice made the answer adequate. “See that pool—the crooked one with the blackthorn at the elbow? Only last week my friend, Captain Archie MacDonald, landed a twenty-pounder at the tail of it. He commands the English garrison at Castletown—Seaforth Highlanders.”

“And a friend of yours?”

“Even so, though he is one of the enemy.”

“And with a company of his kilts to guard him while he fished?”

“Devil the one—except his sister, and she gaffed the salmon as neat as ninepence.”

“Glory be to all the patient little gods of fishing!” I gave praise, “for this happy valley, where an officer of the enemy may catch twenty-pounders with no one to guard him but his sister. Is she a friend of yours, too?”

He shook his dark head and grinned at me. “She has red hair, but she is a darling girl all the same, and her brother a decent man. Actually he is one of my oldest friends. You know, I lived in Scotland for fifteen years, where my dad was in the revenue service, and Archie MacDonald and I were through Edinburgh Varsity together. I like him—he’s quiet, and hates this damned war.”

“Does he know you’re in it—you black spy?”

“Not from me. He is not easily fooled, but he says nothing.”

“Foolish of him to bring a girl here.”

“My fault. He asked me if it was safe, and I said it was. He is liked in Castletown and holds the scales even. His Highlanders haven’t put a wet finger on man, woman, chick or child—except, it might be, a bit of courting amongst the girls.”

“ ’Tis a way girls and Highlanders have,” said I.

Mickeen Oge Flynn, our second in command, came out to relieve me then, and cocked his sardonic blue eye at me.

“Hugh Forbes has a pleasant bit of news for you, Owen.”

“To hell with his news!” I said, and went in to breakfast with Sean.

II

Some of the boys were still at the long white-boarded table; others, aslouch on the rush-seated chairs, smoked comfortably; and Big Paudh Moran sat on the flagged floor, his back to the lime-washed wall, and nursed my canvas-covered fishing-rod.

“You big ape!” I snatched the rod and pinned him with the butt. “The next time I catch your broken paws on it I’ll shove it down your yellow thrapple.”

“Jasus, Owen Jordan!” his great hands deprecatory. “Sure I was only keeping it out o’ harm’s way.”

“Some bastard might step on it, sure enough,” said Paddy Bawn Enright.

Paddy Bawn was he whom we called the Quiet Man: smallish, with a trick of hunching one shoulder, and the steadfast eyes of the fighting man below craggy brows. He had spent fifteen hectic years in the States, had been one of the best welterweights of his time, and had returned home to Kerry to seek peace on a few hillside acres; and the peace he was likely to find was the final peace of death—death in a Black-and-Tan ambush.

Stout Johanna Dillane, Sean Glynn’s housekeeper—Sean was not married—bending over a bastable oven set on the embers of the peat fire, spoke in the soft Munster voice.

“Sit in to your breakfast, mo grah geal an’ lave be.” She laid a plate of bacon and eggs at my elbow and reached for her brown teapot.

As I ate I kept my precious rod in the crook of a knee. And I kept casting side glances at Commandant Hugh Forbes, our famous Small Dark Man. He was sitting at one side of the big inglenook, his chair on two legs, and, as ever, his ancient felt hat was pulled aslant over his eyes. I could see only the tip of his eagle nose, the line of his mouth that was at once sensitive and grim above the broad chin. He was not smoking, so I knew there was something on his mind. The messenger from Castletown sat on his far side, sipping steaming hot tea from a mug, his brow still warm.

“John Molouney here brought us a trifle o’ news, Oweneen.” Hugh Forbes’s deep voice was no more than a murmur, his lips barely moved, his head did not move at all.

I did not like the way he called me Oweneen—little Owen. There was not a man of us who was not taller than he was—and years older, too—but, when he was minded to put a hard task on us, he used the affectionate diminutives he would use to children, us his own beloved little ones. He was one of the very greatest guerilla leaders in all that upheaved and tortured land.

“A trifle of news, Oweneen Jordan,” he said again.

“Keep it to yourself, da,” said I, and refilled my mouth. I feared that news.

“You’ll hear it, son.”

But I did not hear it for yet awhile.

The shrill of two sharp whistles came from the rear of the house, and every one of us stiffened where we sat, except Sean Glynn, who started to his feet and hurried outside; and Johanna Dillane drew in her breath and exhaled it in a moan that had a cadence of fear and patience.

Sean was back in less than a minute. “No danger,” he said quickly, yet his voice held anxiety. “Captain MacDonald of the Seaforths and his sister. They come up for the fishing nearly every week.”

Hugh Forbes was on his bowed legs. “How far off?”

“Coming in off the highroad—ten minutes.”

“Ever come in the house?”

“Often, for a cup of tea and a talk, but not in the mornings. There’s room for ye all in the loft—”

“If we don’t want a swarm about your ears. Right! Out with you, Paddy Bawn, and warn the outposts to hole up in the hayshed. Come, boys!” His eyes rested on me. “Go on with your breakfast, Owen—a friend of the family up for the day’s fishing.” He grimaced and swore warmly. “Damn Archie MacDonald! There was never anything in his head except fishing.”

“You know him?” I wondered.

“Fine that. We were drunk together in Cairo and climbed the great Pyramid on our ears. You’ve met—but no! He was never on the Salonika front.”

It was on the Salonika front I first met Hugh Forbes, that time the Tenth Irish Division guarded the retreat down the Vardar Valley and I did thirty-six straight hours with the wounded. And, now, we were no longer Allied officers, and Captain MacDonald was an enemy.

In three minutes the kitchen was empty except for Johanna Dillane and myself. She was hurriedly removing the last traces of the extra breakfasts, and I went on eating slowly and with no appetite.

The sound of voices came round the side of the house and proceeded across the kitchen garden to the gate in the drystone wall. A man’s voice, a woman’s, and Sean Glynn’s—pleasant voices all. I found myself thinking that the educated English accent was a patently cultivated one, not like these, which had a softly pleasant draw. I could hear every word.

“You are up early, Archie—and wasting your time?”

“Not a promising day—for the fishing, I mean. All right for you chaw-bacons.”

“It will cloud up after the turn of the day,” promised the Irishman, who knew it would not.

“Thought I’d give it a whirl, anyway. I may not have many more opportunities.”

“Sorry to hear that, old man. Clearing out?”

“I am. But there are still a few fish in the Scottish waters where I’m going—you remember them, Sean—and no risk from you darn Sinn Feiners.” And then in a voice carelessly suggestive. “And, by the way, Hugh Forbes and his column are reported—only a Castletown rumor—somewhere in the hills, Glounagrianaan or here.”

“What would bring him up here?” Sean was skeptical.

“Mischief; what else? If you do see him—oh, yes! you may see him, my quiet fellow—tell him I hope to punch his silly black head and drink one last drink with him before the handcuffs snap.”

“Well, oh, well, soldier man!” Sean was not to be drawn one least inch.

I grinned to myself. No doubt at all but Hugh Forbes would be ready for that last drink, but this Highland officer would need to be the very hell of a good man to punch our small dark man’s head—drunk or sober.

“I would just love to meet the great Hugh Forbes.” That was the lady speaking.

“I’ll warn him against you—if I see him,” said Sean playfully. “They say he’s fond of red hair, Margaid. Ay! red as ever was. Isn’t it, Archie?”

And I smiled at that, too. At the moment the great Hugh would be looking at her through a chink in the loft lattice. And why not take a peep myself? I leaned across the table and lifted a corner of the window-curtain.

The man was tall, lean-faced, weather-brown, enduring, wearing heather tweeds and a two-peaked deer-stalker; a big fishing creel on his hip and, under his arm, a trouting rod that, I judged, would set up to twelve feet—length enough for a whale. His sister, back turned, was a slender slip of a girl in riding-breeches and knee-boots.

I had an uncanny feeling then. Suddenly I felt remote and lonely. This was a sheltered woman, and I was looking at her out of another dimension in which a terrible ideal of freedom drove us through days and nights of fear. This woman I would never know, this woman would never know me; for I was shut off from the ordinary ways of life, and there was nothing to do but fight unyielding to an end.

I suppose it was the intentness of my gaze that made her turn round to face the house, and brought her eyes directly to the lifted corner of the window-curtain. She seemed to be looking right into my eyes. Hers was the narrow type of face, broad in the brow, long in the chin, with very little color below the clear skin. Her eyes were either very dark or had very dark lashes, and a band of dark red hair showed under a tweed hat that carried a twist of flies.

“Elizabeth Queen, alive in the flesh,” I murmured to myself.

She turned away slowly, and I let the curtain drift into place. A few more words, a parting salute, and the thump of Sean Glynn’s farm boots coming up the path. Soldier, girl and Sinn Fein farmer had talked to each other in a tone of easy friendship.

Hugh Forbes and John Molouney came back to their seats in the inglenook. Sean Glynn and Mickeen Oge Flynn came in from outside; Paddy Bawn Enright sat on a corner of the table, one shoulder hunched up in that way he had; Big Paudh Moran slumped in a chair, his ox eyes fixed on me and on my rod; most of the others stayed in the loft to sleep, or moved across the yard to a cozy nest in what was left of the winter’s hay.

Slowly I filled a pipe and waited.

Hugh Forbes rubbed his neck. “A nice bit of a girl,” he suggested ruminatively.

“She has red hair, and she’s Highland,” said Mickeen Oge Flynn, “and she wants to meet the great Hugh Forbes—save the mark! What about it?”

“A sensible girl.”

In moments of relaxation Hugh had been used to express his intention of seeking Scotland and a red-haired wife when peace came—if peace ever came. Only a quaint fancy, we knew, a bit of make-believe to keep him and us in touch with ordinary things. But, this day, strangely enough, a woman out of Scotland with red hair had almost stepped in amongst us.

“Well, well!” he murmured and, clicking finger and thumb, turned to me. “We’ll leave MacDonald be for the present—and his sister too. You heard what he said?”

“I did. Some day someone will punch your silly black head.”

“He confirmed John Molouney’s news. Not good news, Owen, my son. The Seaforths are leaving Castletown.”

“Some of the girls will be sorry,” said I, match to pipe, “and I’ll have the fishing all to myself.”

Big Paudh Moran opened his mouth and shut it before Hugh’s gesture.

“They are being relieved by five lorry-loads of Black-and-Tans.”

“What odds? We did not come up here to fight the Tans?” But already a depressing doubt was in my mind.

The British Military Police were nicknamed the “Black-and-Tans” because of their uniform—black-blue tunic and khaki trews—and they possessed all the virulent fighting qualities of a black-and-tan terrier gone sour.

“We will not fight until the board is set for us,” said Hugh mildly, “and this bunch of Tans has a lively way of doing that. They burned Ballaghford in mid-January of a snowy morning.”

“The one town in Ireland improved by a bit of burning.”

“And shot up Kilduff on Good Friday.”

“And were themselves shot up a mile outside it, and lost five men.”

“And only last month they got Paddy Pat Walsh and four of his men resting at Scartleys.”

I had no reply to that. Paddy Pat Walsh was the heart o’ corn and his four men true steel, and they had been trapped and shot, no arms in their hands.

“Well?”

“Nothing!” said I, and puffed deeply at my pipe.

What hope of rest had we now, and we so tired? After three months of the hardest guerilla campaigning—ambush, sally, get-away, and night-jumps of forty miles—our leader, Hugh Forbes, had pulled what was left of us, twenty fighting men, right out of the war area into the quietness of these hills. Wise in war, he knew when men had had enough. We had been getting careless, reckless, selling lives too easily, and Hugh had said: “All a matter of nerves, children. There are so few of us against so many we dare not die too easily.” And then his deep voice had grown wistful. “It is so easy to die, and be done with it all.”

And here we were now, hoping for a quiet month amongst the hill farmers; fishing a little, sleeping deeply, gathering a fresh store of munitions, experimenting with land-mines cunningly contrived out of railway buffers, girding ourselves for a fresh sally to the endless and careful fighting that might last not only our lives but the lives of children still at breast. . . . That is how we in the south viewed that war. It would go on and on and on against a foe terrible in his steadfastness until we were dead—or until we were free. . . .

Hugh Forbes was talking at me with suspicious mildness.

“We were talking it over before you came in, and—well! one of us will have to go down and look the Tans over.”

“And establish lines of communication,” amplified Mickeen Oge Flynn, who never beat about any bush. “Tie all our knots for us and, like enough, get a bullet in his belly before he’s done.”

I looked sideways at Sean Glynn. He was our intelligence officer and the man for the work. He shook his head.

“Sorry, Doc! I’m off to Dublin tomorrow. Headquarters work—and no safer—but I’d gladly exchange with you.” He frowned. “I have to set a woman—of my own blood too—at a man to get at another man and a traitor—whoever he may be.” There was something deadly in his quietness.

Hugh smiled at me, that devilish half-wistful smile of his that got round a man.

“We thought you might volunteer for Castletown—maybe?”

A mouthful of smoke stung my throat, but I swore as I strangled, and gestured furiously round the room.

“I haven’t asked them, son. They’re mostly from this side of the country, and marked men at that. Let a spy put an eye on one of them in Castletown and—” Again he flicked his finger and thumb. “Look at it this way, now! You are a stranger in this territory and, though you possess all the qualities, except the good ones, of a spavined mule, you sport a mild front—like most of you Yankees: a sort of hang-dog, youthful, half-clerical austerity, for all that you are a seasoned old sawbones. If we borrowed a black coat and a Roman collar from Father Ryan, devil a Tan would look crooked at you.”

I pointed a thumb at Mickeen Oge Flynn. He had the lean somber face of an ascetic, and, before the cold fire of his patriotism had driven him out to war, had spent three years reading Divinity at Maynooth College.

“I don’t mind,” he said quietly. “I’ll go.” He was more intensely republican than Hugh Forbes himself, and was afraid of nothing in this world or the next.

“You’ve a face would hang a dog in Castletown,” Hugh told him. “You’ll go, Owen?”

“I will not,” said I firmly.

“You’ll have your reasons?” He was milder than ever.

“I have. I’m going fishing.”

They all laughed at me except Big Paudh Moran and Hugh Forbes.

“A fair half-reason. Let’s have the other half.”

“I’m afraid.”

And again they laughed at me.

“No reason at all, small son. Fear is part of our life.”

“But I’m a coward at heart, and would let you down in a tight corner.”

“We’ll risk that. What else?”

“I’ll tell you, pig-head. Who instituted the rest places for the spent columns?”

“We did.”

“You did. And this is one of them. Look, now! Start trouble here and Castletown has flaming roofs. Ambush the Tans on the hill road, and, in reprisal, this house and every farmhouse along the rim of the valley goes up in smoke. There’s reason for you. And we’ll say nothing about the shape we’re in.”

“All that is on my mind, Owen, and heavy on it; but,” and his voice hardened, “we will do our work where we can and how, and, when the time comes, no place—or man—can shirk the sacrifice. You’ll go?”

“An order?”

“No, this is a volunteer’s job, and you may well be afraid. You’ll have no arms on you, and your life will be on your sleeve for any Tan to pluck.”

I pushed back my chair and lifted to my feet. “All right! I’ll go on one condition.”

“One condition?” He threw back his head. His voice was stern.

“One condition.” I was as stern as he was. “If you guarantee to flay Paudh Moran alive the moment he breaks the only greenheart tip I have left.”

Something softly lustrous lit behind the dark eyes. “That puts you one up on me, Yankee. Right! The guarantee is given.”

“Skinned I will be, too, be Jasus!” lamented Big Paudh.

I glared into the big lad’s face resentfully, but his ox eyes were mildly beseeching, and his round cheeks twitched.

“There! You’d find where it was hidden in any case.” I thrust the rod into his hands, and his great palms caressed the canvas cover.

“Jasus, Owen! I’ll be mendin’ it.”

“A coupla flies now—and a bit of a minnow,” suggested Paddy Bawn, the Quiet Man.

It was too late to take back the rod, and, in the end, they had my cast box, and fly book too.

Chapter II

I

I LEANED elbow on the high, zinc-covered counter of John Molouney’s bar, and drank my tankard of brown stout slowly and with satisfaction. Everything was fine now, and I hadn’t a taut nerve in my whole body. For my work was done to the last tight hitch, and I was going back to the column at Leaccabuie within an hour. I had such a feeling of well-being that I should have known it portended an unpleasant few minutes.

Fifteen days in the jaws of Castletown, and no breath of suspicion had ever blown on me. But, indeed, the very least breath would have blown me sky high. Danger, there had been, but danger just round the corner; and one man, though he did not know it, helped to hold that corner for me: Captain MacDonald of the Seaforths, the fisherman of the Ullachowen. He still remained in Castletown with half a company of his Highlanders, and the soldiers, ever on good terms with the citizens, would not stand for any rough work by the new Military Police.

So we leaned over the counter—John Molouney, two other trusty men of the town and myself—and went over the final knots of our secret lines. No movement, no rumor, but would be known to our column within three hours; and at the given word trees would be felled, culverts blown up, telephone lines cut, the quarry isolated for the final bay. All was set, and I was free until that final issue was joined.

I remember that as we leaned there together I was feeling sorry for these three men of Castletown who took their lives in their hands day after day in order that the Flying Columns might operate effectively.

And then danger jumped us.

“Put them up—up with them!” The harsh alien voice snapped.

Our hands went up like one man. We were trained to get our hands up quickly or into action quickly.

“About turn—jeldy, now!”

We came about, but we were careful not to do it drill fashion.

A big man in the uniform of the Military Police—khaki slacks, blue tunic, Glengarry bonnet—filled the doorway. He poised a long-barreled revolver level with his shoulder, and, like the head of a snake, the high-sighted muzzle moved swayingly from side to side.

“Committee-meeting heads together—eh? Staff murder meeting—what?”

“Not at all, sir!” protested John Molouney warmly. “Only a story I was telling.”

“You Sinn Feiners are good at that. Come outside! You too, Molouney! Come on, you . . . ! Keep your hands up!”

He backed out, a little uncertain on his feet, and we followed. My uncontrollable heart was beating high up in my breast. If this was an organized raid and not the usual bit of rough horseplay, I was as good as dead. Outside he lined us up, our backs to the window and our buttocks against the projecting wooden bar that protected the plate-glass. A quick glance up and down the street showed me a citizen here and there dodging into doorways and two other Black-and-Tans lounging and laughing on the side pavement not twenty paces away. It might be just horseplay, after all.

Across the street, on the steps of the only hotel in Castletown, stood a tall man in the undress uniform of a Highland regiment, and, at his side, a slender young woman in gray.

I considered the man who held us. A tall blue-chinned fellow, with hollow dead-white cheeks, and eyes blazing a black devil. He was half-drunk, and his nerves more than half-shot—a man on the brink of a blow-up. I understood that man. I knew the insides of him, for I was as like him as peas in a pod: tall and black and strung, and I knew that I had nerves.

That man, set to subdue a people not easily subduable, had been subject to months of constant strain. There was nothing of the traditional ebullience about this people, no wild flare and quick quenching. It was a people quietly inimical, wearing submissiveness as a mask, bearing abuse calmly, biding its own time, choosing the ground on which it would fight, and then fighting carefully, wilily, toughly—not dying easily like the brown races. The strain of waiting, the strain of watching, the deadly explosiveness below the deadly calm, had brought this man to the breaking-point. At this moment he felt in his bones that we were four Sinn Feiners hands-up before him, and he knew that nothing he could do would force an admission or an explosion from us. That was our code. He would risk his life to make one of us explode into action.

“We are watching you, Molouney,” he warned, “and we’ll get you—good and hard.”

He faced me closely. “You’ve been going round with him. Who are you?”

John Molouney at my side answered for me. “Me cousin, sir, a clerical student out of Maynooth.”

“Shut up, you ——” The back of his hand smashed on my friend’s mouth, and John merely blinked and lifted his hands a little higher.

“A —— Shinner, you?” He persisted in using one repellent adjective.

I remained silent.

“No dumb insolence, —— you!” The word could be used as a verb too. “You are a Shinner?”

“Not guilty.”

“You —— liar!”

He thrust the muzzle of his weapon against my shut mouth, so that the flesh ground against my teeth and blood tasted salt on my tongue.

In his half-drunken state I might have wrenched the gun from him. I had the will to do so, the angry urge atremble on the verge of action. And, having done so, I might, on the odd chance, fight myself clear of the town; but these three good men lined up with me would be dead within the minute. So I held my hands firmly above my head and kept my fingers from crooking.

Over the Black-and-Tan’s shoulder I saw the Highland officer step down to street-level from the hotel porch.

“A —— Shinner, that’s what you are.” Probably he sensed what was in my mind, and kept on baiting me. “A clerical student drinking beer in a —— pub! More like a —— Yank to me! One of Forbes’s spies—what? You shoot in the back, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Bah! You —— Irish liar!”

The last shred of his control snapped suddenly, and he struck me a drawing blow on the side of the head with the long barrel of his gun. The felt of the black clerical hat broke the force, but a sharp pang stabbed my temple, and a blackness leaped across my sight and was gone.

To prevent my knees buckling I brought hands down to the wooden bar at my back.

“Hands up, you ——!”

“Easy, all!”

II

The voice was quiet and authoritative.

The Black-and-Tan whirled on his heel, weapon lifted, and found himself face to face with the Highland officer, Captain MacDonald, the fisherman of the Ullachowen.

“What’s this, Garner?”

“Shinners—I.R.A. killers, Captain.”

“You know?”

“Whispering, heads together—in there—”

“That all?”

“Molouney is under suspicion—and this fellow—”

The officer was close to him now. “You’re drunk, man. You can’t treat men this way.”

“The—”

“Not while I command.”

His voice was still quiet, but I could sense the hot Scots devil behind it.

“I will deal with this, Garner.”

“They’ll plug you in the back.”

“They have had many opportunities. Go back to barracks! Do you hear? I’m in command here. Go!”

Possibly, this man Garner was a decent enough citizen in ordinary life—law-abiding, and weak too. He could not stand up to the held strength in the soldier’s tone and bearing. He hesitated, then his shoulders slumped, and as he turned away, his gun fumbling into thigh-holster, his face was abased and the madness out of his eyes.

His two companion Black-and-Tans treated him with laughing contempt. For a little while they stood and watched us, intently, dangerously, storing us away in their memories; then swung in line and marched quickly up-street towards their barracks.

Captain MacDonald looked us over consideringly, a quizzical half-smile on his lean Scots face and his hand smoothing down his chin.

“Well? You fellows may be Sinn Feiners—very probably are.” His smile broadened. “Whispering, you know, is bad manners and worse policy, but scarcely a crime.” He nodded quickly. “Get under cover—and stay there.”

“Thank you, Captain,” said John Molouney, and wiped his bloody mouth.

My three friends disappeared through the saloon door, but I hesitated to take my hands off the steadying bar behind me. I felt a thin trickle down my temple.

“Ah! he got you,” said the soldier. One hand was firm on my shoulder, the other careful at my black hat. “Yes! the foresight nicked you. Damn brute! Small, but—blood enough, anyway. Come along, young reverend! I want a closer look at this.”

I cursed myself inwardly. The quicker I got away now, the better.

“Nothing at all, Captain MacDonald,” I protested, and held my shoulder against his pull.

But his firm hand took me across the street to where the young woman in gray still stood on the hotel steps.

“Puncture above the temple, Margaid,” he told her. “We’ll have a look-see.”

She was as prompt and as impersonal as her brother.

“I’ll get my outfit. Take him up to the bathroom.”

In the bathroom he threw a towel over my shoulders, bent my head over the wash-basin, and sloshed water over the side of my face from a big sponge.

“You should avoid bad company—and public houses, reverend sir,” he said ironically.

His sister came in quickly, a first-aid outfit already half-unrolled in her hands.

“That’s not the way. Leave it to me, Archie.”

She thrust a wooden-seated chair against the backs of my knees, and her fingers were light at my brow.

“Sorry to trouble—” I began.

“I like this. V.A.D. nurse for two years.”

“Likes a bit torture,” said her brother.

The careful snip-snip of scissors, the dab of iodine, the pull of plaster, the manipulation of bandage, all followed the trained technique. As a doctor I knew that. She was very close to me as I sat, and there was some faint pleasant touch of perfume all about her; and, sometimes, I saw deft fingers and, sometimes, the small sympathetic twist of a mouth. And there were golden gleams in her dark red hair.

Though she was smartly efficient, there was something excited in the dark blue eyes below the lashes that were almost black. And yet, she treated me quite impersonally, just as if I were a hurt puppy. Again I experienced that curious feeling of being remote from her and remote from her world. I did not like it. Her impersonality nettled me. That is why I spoke.

“Sorry to distress you.”

“Oh! This is nothing.”

“Your hands tremble?”

“That’s only temper.” And then she exploded on me. “Are all you Irishmen cowards?” I surely had drawn her.

“Every last one of us—same as other men.”

“Ay faith!” said her soldier brother, and chuckled. “Glad you don’t boast Christian meekness.”

That made her madder. “I would rather be shot dead than bullied like that,” she cried, and whipped bandage firm.

“I had that choice offered surely.”

“And you chose to be bullied.”

“It was not given me to choose the desirable,” said I.

“Ho-ho!” This was the soldier. “What do you mean by that, young man? Clericals don’t usually appreciate that desirability—unless they be saints.”

“A man I know,” said I, “says that death is the easiest choice to make.”

“And where did he find that out?”

“In the Great War.”

“He would know.” He smoothed his chin with a slow hand and looked at me speculatively. “I wonder who said that?”

I could have bitten my tongue off. Hugh Forbes was the man who had said it, and this man knew him; and Hugh had some pet phrases known to all his acquaintances. I rose to my feet and scrubbed my blue jowl with the towel.