At Swim, Two Boys Part 57

A little of his fine-pretty-fellow returned and he said, "Anyway, why would I want to be careful? Won't I have you to be looking over me, in your grand house too?"

You shall not, thought MacMurrough. And the lease on this house will not be renewed.

They s.h.i.+fted the sofa to Doyler's bedside. MacMurrough found rugs and pillows while Jim refilled the warming-pan at the fire-yes, fire in the room and the windows ajar, the extravagance. The boy went out with the pot and returned, maidenly, with it cleaned. Doyler was deep asleep with an interrupted, minor, snore, like a dog's.

"He'll be fine," said Jim.

"He will of course. Do you need a pajamas?"

"Do you wear pajamas?"

"No."

"I don't so."

"Goodnight then, Jim."

"Wait a moment. Wait till I'm in bed."

He was undressing. He had his s.h.i.+rt pulled out and underneath its folds MacMurrough watched his fingers unbuckle his belt. The boy watched too, as though unsure of the procedure, darting upward glances at MacMurrough. The trousers unb.u.t.toned and they slipped to the floor. He stepped out of them. His shoulder lifted, and he rubbed it along his neck and chin, before he pulled his s.h.i.+rt over his head. The drawers he had recently taken to wearing ridged at his pelvis. It was an outline MacMurrough was familiar with from time out of mind, but this was the first it had been presented proud and blooded. He pulled the string of the drawers, they slipped, and his stand sprang out.

He stood in his oval of candles.h.i.+ne, his slight blush tinting his face. He reached his hands behind his neck and stretched mightily, languorously, sumptuously. He held his stretch while his chest swelled and his nipples paled. His hands came down, and in their coming down, the G.o.d left him; and he was smiling that way he often smiled, a little wonderingly, with his bottom lip caught in his teeth.

"I won't let you go, you know."

MacMurrough nodded. "Don't catch cold now."

"I won't," he said.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Easter Monday, and another G.o.d-sent day, sky blue and the gra.s.s green, wedding bells tripping over themself to be heard, any turn you took, wedding processions trooping to their breakfasts, and the people chirpy and nodding in the streets and the streets with a closed look, but not staunchly closed, as who should say in a Sunday manner, but rather sportingly shuttered as befitted a bank holiday when shopmen, according as the maggot bit, might choose or choose not to vend their wares. Mr. Mack, no misery-moper he, had opted for holiday; and so it was among the gay citizenry of Dublin's fair city he was that morning to be found, tipping his howd'yedos like a native-born, and smiling with the full intense joy of the beaming sun above. Mind, there wasn't much of any sun in these misfortunate streets where his direction took him, away from the fas.h.i.+onable thoroughfares, nothing at all bar the shadows, keen as knives, that cut the corners. And looking up betwixt impending tenement walls and the rags of was.h.i.+ng that stretched between, he saw the sky for a pale faraway streak. Gra.s.s, you could go kick for it, green or otherwise. Terrible depressing environs to be traipsing of a spring morning.

But Mr. Mack was off to do his duty by an ailing comrade and matter a d.a.m.n the solicitudes of the journey. He pa.s.sed a tom-fiddler at a corner pitch, scratching out dance music of our own devil-may-care variety, and he added a pleasing percussion of his own when he dropped a copper in the tramp's hat. Corner-boy eyes squinted at him. Little mothers of the doorstep bounced cheery baby on their laps. Boots rolled over idle pebbles-penny-boys laid off for the holiday, penniless. The streets grew quieter, the sounds of children faded that swung from lampstands. A decently clad woman quite startled him coming out of a stables, and it was a pleasure to lift his hat to her and feel the shadowy air on the crown of his head. The tenemented buildings descended by degrees to poky lanes and humble whitewashed cottages. And sure he didn't need young Doyler's directions then, had only to look for the door in poorest repair.

"It's Fusilier Doyle," he let out before he could choke it. "I mean, 'tis Sergeant-Major Doyle. Not at all, 'tis Quartermaster-Sergeant-"

"Is it you, Mr. Mack?"

"It is, Mrs. Doyle, come to visit an ailing fusilier."

Sure he wouldn't delay, he was only pa.s.sing, but he'd have a taste of tea whatever, but not to mind that tin of milk, he'd drink it red. Oh well sure, if 'twas open, missus, go on so. He patted conscientiously each of the girls on the head while they watched his parcel that he deposited by the hearth. Was that himself inside of the curtain? It was. He'd been inside in his bed now six weeks since the giving under him of his legs. The fever had took him then. Mr. Mack nodded gravely. Would Mr. Mack have a peek inside whatever? It might cheer him out of it, seeing an old friend like. Mr. Mack would of course, he'd be happy to sit with an old comrade.

And G.o.d knows, thought Mr. Mack while he finished his tea, wouldn't it take old Doyle to sniff out a hovel likes of this. Who would credit it, this day and age, that Dublin could boast an earthen floor? Leave out now the unrendered walls, the slats of wood that did for the door. To top it all, hadn't they found a family in worse condition than themself to out-let the back room of it to. True, she kept it tidy enough. A blow of air wouldn't hurt the old conk, however.

He stooped in under the rag that hung for a curtain. His old comrade made no sound or movement. Well he did, but that was only his breathing, very short-coming and laborious, more rattle than breath. He lay with his head sideways. His eyes were open and the one eye that showed seemed huge in his face, sunken, the way it saw from deep inside. Uncanny really, what you'd call unearthly. A hand lay out of the bedding, ma.s.sive-looking by comparison with the spindle of his arm. The relics of a man, no more.

Mr. Mack bent down and said some words. Now the eye stirred. He didn't know was he recognized, but something lit in that face. The hand lifted from the blanket and Mr. Mack took it in his own. Surprising heavy it weighed. The rosary beads shook on his wrist and the head nid-nodded. Some important information he had to say, it seemed the entire skin and bones must tremble to tell it. Mr. Mack put his ear to the lips. It took a while till he understood. "That's right," he said, "the Colonel gave you a cane."

The head lay back on the bedding. Mr. Mack kept hold the hand. "A malacca cane," he told him, "with a gold-embossed top, sure you remember that." The eyes still s.h.i.+fted, but it seemed to Mr. Mack the violence of the trembling had eased a touch. He patted his old pal's hand. He believed he knew what that sinking mind wished to hear, and what harm, wasn't it the good truth anyhow? He hitched his knees and sat down on the bed. He told him the tale of his cane. How Fusilier Doyle had paraded the smartest man in the battalion, by far and away the smartest. How he'd won the stick, five times he won it, five times in a row, mind. Bombay, Karachi, Quetta, not a maidan in all India but Fusilier Doyle had stood the smartest. BeG.o.d, he had that stick won so many d.a.m.ned times, men cursed their luck. Sure they'd never get nowhere with Red Doyle to the fore.

His own head nodded too now, recalling, and he looked up suddenly, saying, "Do you remember, Mick, the time-" But that old head knew nothing more than what it wished to hear, and Mr. Mack sighed, returned to his telling. How the Colonel had thought to get Doyle a stick of his own. Lieutenant-Colonel Holmes that was, an officerly gentleman. "Not any old stick neither," he told him, "but a cane. Had to send to Malacca special. Sw.a.n.kiest yoke you'd think of. Wouldn't see the better of it from here to Donegal. The better? You wouldn't see the like. A gold-topped malacca cane."

All rich it was in color and what's this they call it, mottled. Had the Bengal tiger leaping out from the k.n.o.b. Indeed Mr. Mack could picture it still, going wallop on a lazar's b.u.m or clickety-click under the awnings of the street. Clickety-clack, slinging the bat, as arm-in-arm they strolled. "It was a gold-topped malacca cane," he repeated, tapping the hand with each stress, "and a fine grand smart handsome fellow you was with it." The eyes no longer stirred. Only for a sweat that glistened on his temple, he was gone already. Mr. Mack replaced the hand on the bedding, rethreaded the beads through its fingers. He saw his own hand was trembling now. He brought a finger under his nose and sniffed.

"And your b.u.t.tons too would shame the sun. They would too. They would too."

In the room the girls were nibbling the crubeens he'd brought. They eyed him with something less than trust, the way he might be thinking of taking them back again. He had a quiet word with Mrs. Doyle inquiring, discreetly as he might, of the arrangements, and she said they had the insure paid, thank G.o.d, himself was always up to his time with that, and it was good of Mr. Mack to ask, thank you for that, he was very good altogether and the crubeens too.

He put on his hat. "You'll let me know?"

She would.

He came out in the street. The Angelus bell was ringing. He lifted his hat and crossed himself, still with a wet on his finger from the Doyles' font. He stood by a wall muttering the words. The people at the wall opposite had the look of a frieze, stopped there too and muttering their prayers. Behind rose the bleak black blocks of malt-houses, distilleries. There was a house at the corner, not overly dowdy-looking; he went in. He drank a whiskey choking and smoked the half of a cigar, coughing in stifled whoops. He stared at the rows of gla.s.ses and bottles, gauging how much capital would be tied up in stock. It was a question that often exercised him, the comparative worth of a corner-grocery's stock. He went out to the p.i.s.ser at back, and returning he saw another whiskey waiting for him. He drank it slowly, disremembering having ordered it. He felt very old. He was altogether sad.

Sad, and yet cheated too. He felt his youth to be stolen, so it was. That fellow above thieving the happy times from his past. What were they only young fellows together with never a thought in the world? By rights, they would have remained that, a thing of the memory, something fond and scarlet in the mists, you'd look behind on it and smile. But no, this fellow had to burst back in his life. Right into his shop he burst with his smilery and his clothery. You'd have to see him then and know your old pal for the chancer he'd made of himself, with his jokery and his fakery and his Dublin jackeenery. You'd have to be stepping over him in the street, the drunken gutter-singing rowdy. You'd hear it from biddies how he battered his woman and famished his care. And now this wheezing old skin, you'd have to smell him and take his hand and sit in his miserable hut and drink his germs with his miserable tea and his aimless pernickety wife. It was b.l.o.o.d.y, so it was, it was b.l.o.o.d.y. It would drive a man to drink-and Mr. Mack held out his gla.s.s to the curate-wouldn't it take him to choose a house with a freckle-faced flame-haired lad for a curate-"Put the other half in that, when you're ready. Only a nipperkin now. And a ginger beer for yourself."

He was a touch light in the head leaving that pub, and considerably lighter in his pocket, having stood treat, for some very practical reason that escaped him now, a round or was it two for the house. He had lost Doyler's street-directions but he held in his hand an infallible nod for the Irish National, though how he was expected to find his way to Fairyhouse he did not know. What time was it at all?

He came out at a crossroads, King Street said the sign. He stood at the corner. High and low he stared, puzzled to an amplush. He couldn't make it out at all. It seemed to him there were evictions up and down the street. Bedsteads coming out of the little houses, mattresses, a settee even. You'd think all the bailiffs in Ireland had suddenly descended this day. And a rum set of bailiffs they looked too, no more than boys the most of them. Out of every house they came, lugging some old goods or other and piling them in the street. Children were bawling, women were tugging at their belongings, beseeching, all manner of language, dog's abuse at the shrill of their voice. And the piles extending right across the street, sticks of furniture, any old thing. Now what sense was there in that? Only blocking the public highway.

Mr. Mack took a step towards them. The street crunched under his boot. Everywhere he looked, broken gla.s.s. Broken gla.s.s everywhere, bits of bottles and plate gla.s.s smashed. How long was this he was on the skite in that lushery? He didn't know but a riot was after taking place in the meantime. And never a constable in sight.

A cart was jolting towards the crossroads and Mr. Mack ran out. "Halt," he called. "Don't come down. There's gla.s.s in the road, she'll slip and hurt, the beast."

One of the bailiffs stepped out. He had a gun. He had a gun pulled on the carter. "This cart is commandeered," he said.

"Take the gun, take it off him," a woman shrilled. "s.h.i.+rkers, they's only cowards."

Mr. Mack said, "What's going on here?"

The woman turned to him. "They took me bed, they took me only bed they did."

"The republic will repay you, missus," said the fellow with the gun.

"What republic?" said Mr. Mack.

"Get down off that cart," said the gunman.

They took the cart. They turned it endways up with the bedsteads and mattresses. The woman was explaining to Mr. Mack, as a man of some authority in a bowler hat, that it was the bed her mother had left her, her poor mother, G.o.d rest her soul, she died in that bed.

The carter's cob whisked its tail. The carter looked round the circle of people. "Ye saw that. Ye won't deny it. He had a gun on me."

"Daylight robbery," said a man at the door of his shop.

"Ye'll back me up. He had a gun."

Suddenly, down the street, came the sound of gunfire. Holy Mother of G.o.d! Screaming and shoving, the people scattered, Mr. Mack with them, dodging into doorways. Mr. Mack peeked out: nothing in the road save three girls who stood in a row with their ap.r.o.ns. .h.i.tched up at their mouths, gaping, and a curious weazen man who hopped about-he had lost a boot-hopped about, bleeding from the gla.s.s and dodging bullets the same time. Making an extraordinary stookawn of himself for there were no bullets to dodge. Nothing at all was happening, and gingerly following the lead of the bolder cla.s.s of urchin, Mr. Mack came out in the street again. Another crackle of musketry and they were all scarpering anew, but the fire was sustained now, and clearly from down by the river; way down by the Four Courts, Mr. Mack heard. He had received a fierce dig in the ribs and he was looking about for the culprit, saying "Now now" with his finger raised, when a cry went up. Lancers! The Lancers! The Lancers is coming! Some dashed ahead only to hurry back, rejoining the ma.s.s that generally surged forward, sweeping Mr. Mack along. "Now we'll see the fun," said a man in his ear. "The Lancers is the boyos will sort them blackguards."

But that musketry came from no Lancer's carbine. Mr. Mack recognized that barking discharge, inconceivable though it was in the streets of Dublin. Mausers without a doubt, great blunderbussy yokes of things the Boers had always favored. But what would the Boers be doing in Dublin? A hurry of hooves ahead; a screaming avenue formed in the crowd; terror big in its eyes, a riderless horse bolted through.

Up side streets surged the crowd, searching, anywhere, to center its alarm. Dumbly Mr. Mack was carried along. His head he found was somewhat obfusticated in drink: he could form no very clear understanding of what was happening and the natural malignity of streets worked on him so that he had no notion at all where he was in this maze of back alleys and cuts. Horse-clops echoed everywhere, many many horse, or a few gone galloping wild. The Boer War Mausers growled still, and it would scarce surprise him now if de Wet himself appeared at the head of a commando-wasn't it always whispered de Wet was none but Parnell returned?

But who came in the end was only two bewildered troopers. They hunched over their mounts, evidently lost, and the mounts, their reins trailing, snorted and blew. Someone shouted the rebels were at the barricade. And yes, it did look like a barricade, now Mr. Mack came to regard it. The Lancers fired quick cracks off their carbines. "There's a child down!" someone shouted. Mother of G.o.d, we'll all be slaughtered. The barricade returned a broken bl.u.s.tering volley. Chunks of masonry showered off the walls. The crowd had scattered, losing Mr. Mack his hat. The two horses bucked and tossed, going at a strange diagonal gait, sparks firing off the cobbles, till they reared wildly, bucketed up another side street. "A child is down!" the call kept going round. Mr. Mack darted out to retrieve his hat. And the crowd, that stupid poking gawping ma.s.s, heaved behind him again, pushed him down once more to the barricade, breached the rickety thing and flooded through, tumbling it down behind them. Mr. Mack glimpsed a face bloodied below, not a child's thank G.o.d, trampled over.

A group of men from the barricade-some had green sort of uniforms on them-were advancing with rifles up the farther street.

"Who are they supposed to be?" said Mr. Mack.

"Them're the Sinn Feiners," said his neighbor.

"Oh, they're Sinn Feiners," said Mr. Mack, peering the better to see these queer near-fabled specimens.

"They'll be thinking to cut the troopers off at the corner."

Mr. Mack saw them kneel and ready their aim. He crossed himself. "If them fellows know to shoot at all them Lancers'll be slaughtered," said his neighbor, "King's men and all." Mother of G.o.d, we'll all be slaughtered. Some in the crowd yelled a warning, but no horseman would hope to hear above those cobbles. The troopers came. The rebel guns fired. Snarling they fired. The troopers slumped from their saddles, thumped in the road.

The people stood stunned. Murderers! someone called, but the cry was not taken up. Stunned, disbelieving, appalled-and fearful. Slowly the people moved back, separating from the deed-doers. A Sinn Feiner lad ran down the road waving a trooper's lance. In the quiet of the fading hooves he waved it. He had a flag attached. A queer flag, in equal divisions, green white and orange. He lodged the lance in a manhole plate in the middle of the street, and there the flag flew, green white and orange. "Murderers, murderers," came that voice again, all alone in the quiet. The lad's face flushed with a ferocious courage. He raised his rifle and fired in the air. Only then did his comrades cheer, and they too fired off their guns, that furious joy of blooding.

Mr. Mack turned and blundered through the crowd. He blundered by the dead child and the woman who Murderers! Murderers! wailed. Along the lively inquisitive streets he lurched. He must find his tram. He must be home.

Nelson's Pillar fingered from out the housetops. He fixed its direction in his eye, and for once his eye did not deceive his feet. Indeed, a hard push and a sc.r.a.pe it would be, avoiding O'Connell Street that holiday afternoon. Every tenement, every fever-nest, every rookery in Dublin was spilling its contents in the road and it seemed to Mr. Mack all slumdom must reel its way to his tram-stop. Every shawlie and shabaroon, every larrikin and scut, every s.l.u.t, daggle-tail, trollop and streel, frowsy old bowsies and loitering corner-boy sprawlers in caps, every farthing-face and ha'penny-boy, every gutty, gouger, louser, glugger, nudger, sharper, shloother, head, every wh.o.r.e's melt of them, mister-me-friend and go-by-the-wall, the dogs in the street themself-all rascaldom was making for Mr. Mack's tram-stop; and he must pinch and shove to gain any headway at all.

At last he stood on the Pillar steps. The great wide splendid thoroughfare-O'Connell Street was you a Catholic, Sackville Street was you at all in the Protestant way (was it any wonder if a man went astray in this town?)-swarmed with a wild ree-raw mindless throng. Every now and then the shout would go up: Troopers! or The military! or The polis is coming! or They's shooting wild! and the crowd would stampede him by, leaving Mr. Mack to cling to the pedestal, as to a cliff, to keep any footing. Tricksters was all, hoaxsters, for no polis came, no military. Loot was master. By him sailed the most fanciful apparitions. A slum-boy in three top-hats swinging golf-clubs. Dirty-faced girls with boas and high-heeled shoes on. The mess of life veered and s.h.i.+fted. Another plate window crashed.

Across the way where the crowd thinned was the General Post Office. The Sinn Feiners held it. He could see nothing of the Sinn Feiners themself bar the muzzles of guns that poked from the windows and crouching forms behind the parapet on the roof. That same strange unaccountable flag, green white and orange, flapped above them. What on earth would Sinn Feiners want with a post office? It crossed his mind in a daft way that they, like him before, had mistook it for a bank.

Handbills were posted all about. Slap-dash affairs with shoddy s.p.a.cing and type. Something in Erse. Some further flim-flam in English. The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic. To the People of Ireland. Signed then by a poweration of names nor he nor anyone else had heard of.

The Lancers had charged here too, it was told. There was a dead horse down the way. All about the steps, flowers were strewn and trampled, where the flower-sellers' stalls had been toppled. Barricades blocked the side streets, erected of particular things: bicycles jumbled and piled in one, hunks of marble for another, bales of newsprint-the work of disparate guilds whimsically chosen. Trams had been overturned. There were no trams running. No juice, the tram-man told him. Even trains: the Sinn Feiners had dug up the lines. And no polis. No polis anywhere. Withdrawn to barracks. Every last pigeon-hearted lily-livered chicken-gutted sneak of them. It was pandemonium. It was Donnybrook Fair. It was all ballyhooly let loose.

Naming calls: and he did not dare put words to his fear. But he knew the green uniform Doyler would always be wearing; and he had seen the wish of that Sinn Feiner boy's face. Jim's age, no older. He must get home.

He lurched down the steps and plunged into the push. He shoved carelessly, in a dream nearly-he had long since lost his hat. The rebels had shot three priests in their vestments. The British had hung the Archbishop. The South was up. The West was up. The Germans had landed in Tralee. Carson was marching on Dublin with forty thousand Orangemen. The Lord Lieutenant was raising the Curragh. The Lord Lieutenant was dead.

The unaccustomed whiskey dulled his intelligence. He felt the golden s.h.i.+ne of the sun that had not diminished all afternoon: it seemed a timeless day. And it was tiring, all this excitement and the rumors that bandied about, the all of it a strain on his dignity. He looked at the grinning chomping children's faces. Down this end it was the sweet shops that had been looted, and each slum-boy and girl had a sudden rich child's Lenten h.o.a.rd.

The Liffey breeze revived him a somewhat, and he asked of a respectable man in spats was there any news of Kingstown, was it held for the King yet? To be told the German High Seas fleet was this moment sh.e.l.ling the harbor. Zeppelins were traveling up the Wicklow coast and two U-boats had been spotted in the mouth of the Liffey. Mr. Mack nodded his head. But worse news than this, the rebels had fired on the old gentlemen of the Georgius Rex. The Georgius Rex, Mr. Mack repeated. Mown down in the street they were. Marching home off an exercise, down by the ca.n.a.l this was: murdered. This was shocking altogether, and Mr. Mack said, "I only thought to join them myself. Matter of weeks back, I'm only waiting to hear." The gentleman viewed him, and under his lidded gaze Mr. Mack was acutely aware of his hatless undress and the drink on his breath. "Indeed," said the gentleman. And the poor Pope has committed suicide, a young lady added in all earnestness.

Mr. Mack went with the tram-lines, following where the shamrock tram-stops led. The general confluence was against him, but enough were walking his direction for him not to feel entirely lunatic. Musketry could still be heard. Nothing dangerous or anything, only spurts of it that he took to be the military. Mausers growled then in response, two or three streets away always. At the ca.n.a.l he spoke with a whey-faced man, who gripped a child by the wrist and pointed out the different houses held by the rebels. They had shot at a man in his own motor. In his own motor they had shot at him. And was it here they killed the Georgius Rex? asked Mr. Mack. The whey-faced man didn't know about that, indeed by his quizzical look he found Mr. Mack disappointing. His own motor, he repeated. Shot at a man in his very own motor. "And this gallows here"-pulling the boy round-"was seen to be talking to them."

"Did you talk with the Sinn Feiners now?" asked Mr. Mack. The boy wore a crabby adult expression that disguised a little the hurt of the man's grip. "Don't you know that's aiding and abetting the King's enemies?"

"But it's Mr. Ronan from the two-pair back," the boy insisted in a squeaking breaking voice.

"You're only digging your grave," the whey-faced man told him. "I'm waiting on a constable coming by for to take him in charge."

BeG.o.d, you'll be waiting, thought Mr. Mack. Then of all people, strolling along the ca.n.a.l, his shadow rolling on the low ca.n.a.l wall, came Father O'Toiler. "Father, Father," called Mr. Mack advancing across the bridge. He felt exposed there with the Sinn Feiners watching from the houses, and concerned for the curate's dignity, he said, "Holy be, is it safe at all, your reverence?"

"Safe?" repeated the priest. "As to that, Mr. Mack, we are not out of the woods yet, not by a chalk long as my ashplant here. A day delayed, nevertheless a start has been made which is half the answer and I believe we may venture a small halloo."

"Oh indeed," said Mr. Mack, "h.e.l.lo." A curious gruntling noise the priest was making, not at all dissimilar to a certain domestic animal, and an expression slipped about his face that might conceivably be smiling-a transformation of his habitual austerity shocking as any of the day's events.

"Safe, that is, for any Irishman," he said.

He stepped along, and Mr. Mack stepped beside and a little behind him, along the tended imperturbable terraced street. The lawns in the gardens had been mown; a slight tingling sensation irritated Mr. Mack's nose. Last week's blossom drifted in the gutters, this week's fluttered above them. Mr. Mack hemmed. He did not wish to importune his reverence, but his reverence would understand it was his son he was worried for. Was there anything with the flute band in this terrible business? The Father would understand he did not mean to be casting astertions of any type or any sort. The Father had only the boys' best interest at heart. But boys would often be getting the wrong end of the stick. The Father would understand he spoke as a father himself. It was with a parent's concern he spoke, all considerations aside.

"Mr. Mack," the priest replied, "if but one of my boys be out this glorious day, my labor with that band is well done."

"But Father dear, you cannot intend what you say. These are ruffians. There's talk of Larkinites with them-Germans, I don't know what else. It's murder and mayhem it is. And there's worse will come of it, I know that, I know."

There were no Germans, the curate was pleased to inform him, Germany being second only to England for the cradle of heresy. And what Larkinites there were were not Larkinites now, but good brave Catholic sons of Ireland, who in this final hour had repented their former impieties. Together they stood now, the staunch and the prodigal returned, as the Army of the Irish Republic. Mr. Mack might remark the republican flag which was a third of it orange in generous acknowledgment to the Protestant north. Mr. Mack might consider that generosity misplaced and an unfortunate lapse in so Catholic a cause. But Father O'Toiler would a.s.sure him that a little Irish weather would soon fade that orange to Vatican yellow. For Mr. Mack was to consider this was indeed a Catholic rising and therefore a blessed one too. Holy Mother Church, despairing at last of the English recanting, turned to her first-loved children. The Saxon tide must trouble no more the sacred sh.o.r.e. Again must Ireland rise, isle of saints and scholars, to s.h.i.+ne a lamp among the nations. And her spiritual empire, that empire of the soul, which stretched to the world's imagined corners, wherever had preached her missionary sons or wandered in exile her children lamenting, this empire she would lay at the feet of the Cross, the humblest fief, and the jewel in the crown, of the Holy Father of the Holy See.

"But the people," said Mr. Mack, "they're not for this carry-on at all."

The Irish people, Father O'Toiler a.s.sured him, most happily a.s.sured him, had not the right to be wrong. The people might quibble and fiddle with Home Rule. But it was written: "the Erne shall rise rude in torrents and the hills be rent and the sea in red waves shall roll." And it was scarcely to be supposed the poet of the Roisin Dubh had in mind the coming of a shoneen talking-house, a gombeen legislature scrounged and cadged for by whiskey-swilling fixers in the imperial Parliament across the sea. No, the curate continued, drawing breath and swinging his ashplant before him, freedom was never to be given or argued for: it might only be taken. And so it was, in fulfillment of the prophecies, the few Irish men and boys had risen this day.

"Blood and death and tears," he said. "Who don't fall in battle will hang from the Saxon tree. Many the mother will mourn and many the hearth will be lonely. And they will be reviled, Mr. Mack, as was Our Savior. But Ireland will rise again, as did Our Lord. She will waken and look upon herself as one from a dream. And she will wonder at the magnificence of her sons. Pray, Mr. Mack, pray G.o.d your son may so be exalted as with these joyful martyrs to die. For already in heaven the saints prepare the welcoming feast.

"And now, Mr. Mack, I believe I must leave you. I am on a mission of mercy to the sisters at St. Mary's. I was at Boland's mills with Commandant de Valera, a rigorous man and pious, and would you believe we ran plumb out of the Holy Sacrament."

It would scarce have surprised Mr. Mack now if the priest had lifted his frock-coat and floated across the road, so strange and elated his countenance. Mr. Mack shook his head; and he was shaking it still when he traipsed at last into Kingstown. The sleepy town was sleepy yet. Invalids and convalescents pushed in their chairs. Weary children walked with balloons. The mailboat siren wailed, dead to its time by the Findlater's clock. Constables stood their point immemorial. The gunfire, wild rumors, all that riot and rumpus lay far behind, a rumor itself. Perhaps there was more of a crowd in the streets than was normal, and they remonstrating against the trains and the trams, the qualified things, never on time and the least sign of trouble, banjaxed. Respectable people; and their indignation worked on Mr. Mack till he wondered might it not be true, that it was all a little local madness, nothing strange in Ireland, every second week sure, hotheads and firebrands, demonstrations in the streets, parading with arms, an imitation of violence, a longing even, but never realized, shrunk from at the brink.

Then at the cab-rank he watched two gentlemen come to blows, bidding for the sole jarvey. And it was eerie the streets with so little traffic, only people walking, trudging, their jaded faces; entire families, well-to-do and with their maids some of them, who had been bathing at Killiney or taking the ozone down in Bray. He felt the truth had not made up its mind: the signs were contrary everywhere.

At the People's Park, would you credit it, that runt of a newsboy latched on to him, and he was d.o.g.g.i.ng Mr. Mack all along Glasthule Road, piping out his little news or his want of news, making a holy show of Mr. Mack in the street. Until Mr. Mack turned, flailing at him, not intending to strike, but striking nonetheless his nails on his lip so that it bled.

It bled, and Mr. Mack said, "Oh dear me, no." The boy took no more regard of his cut than of a fly, and he was still piping away his idiotic questions. Mr. Mack had his handkerchief out, and he wet the corner to dab it on the boy's chin. "You're not hurt," he told him.

"But mister, what about the papers, mister?"

"Well, what about them?" said Mr. Mack, still dabbing.

"The even papers. What's happened the even papers, mister?"

"There are no evening papers," Mr. Mack explained. "Don't you know now there's a rising in Dublin?"

"But what am I to sell so?"

"You won't be selling anything sure."