I had been writing for an hour. The room was full of the extraordinary silence that accompanies a fall of snow. The scratch of the pen over the paper, the flames in the grate flapping like little blown banners; that was all I could hear. I laid down my pen, crossed the room, and drew the curtains. The snow was still falling. It was deep in the street, and every corner and crevice on the face of the building opposite held its small white burden. I watched a taxicab crawl by soundlessly and foot passengers with coat-collars round their necks, hands thrust into pockets, breasts whitened, boring head-down into the eddying fall.
The old childish picture of fairyland; but, letting the curtain fall back, I thought of Rory and Oliver.
Was the weather being cruel like this in Ireland? Were they lying out in the hills, pursuing and pursued? And who the pursuer, who pursued?
Now, indeed, for a year I had been taking an interest in the old feud, blown in those days to so hot a flame, that Dermot for many years would have liked to impose upon my notice. No need to impose it now. I could not take up a newspaper without tidings of slaughter and atrocity. We had seen “Bloody Sunday,” when fourteen British officers were shot in their beds in Dublin, and by way of reprisal machine-guns had that same day been fired into a crowd at a football match. The war had crossed to England. Warehouses blazed in Liverpool. In the environs of Manchester burning haystacks lit the night.
In the south and west of Ireland no man could close his eyes at night in the certainty that he would open them in the morning. The midnight gun-butt thudding on the door, the masked face, pistol, petrol, crowbar, bomb, the frantic rushing of lorries through the dark with cargoes of down-crouched desperate men, finger on trigger, ever alert for the down-crouched men in the ditch whose finger might be first; the swift ambush, desperate mêlée, unpitying death, and the eye of morning opening on the smoke going up from homes made desolate: these were the way of life and death in Ireland then.
For the most part, it was a nameless warfare, a warfare of nameless heroes and nameless villainies. But here and there names percolated into the newspapers, attached to the leaders of wild guerrilla bands. And so once, and then again, and then more often, appeared the name of Rory O’Riorden, a man to reckon with in the parts about Cork.
He had written once to Dermot:
“MY DEAR FATHER,—This is a restless and unsettled life, but for the most part I am in and about Ballybar. You perhaps know the reason for that and think it sentimental enough. But I have never forgotten the story you told me of how your father and my great-uncle Con were trundled on a barrow from Ballybar to Cork, their father and mother being left dead in a ditch, in the time of the great famine. This little Ballybar, then, is the place we hail from; and I took some trouble to be appointed to help the operations in those parts. I don’t know that I need this association to strengthen my arm against the bloody tyrants who are now exposing themselves in their true colours for all the world to see; but I do know that I cannot pass a cottage without thinking ‘Perhaps from that very cottage they crawled out to die’ or lie ambushed in a ditch without the thought that the parapet on which my rifle rests perhaps rested the head of those two poor people who were starved to fatten a landlord’s belly.
Well, I suppose you think that’s enough Fenian jargon, and so it is. I only wanted you to know that I am up to the neck in the good work and enjoying every day and every moment of my life. I rarely sleep in a bed, but the weather’s dry and the stars are lovely, and the boys I have with me here are all I could wish them to be. God give us Ireland soon. The dear boys deserve to live in peace in their own land under their own flag.”
Tonight, the weather would not be dry and the stars would not be lovely. I paced the room, thinking of Rory, transferring the scene here to the countryside of Cork, imagining an immobile figure, with snow on the drawn-down peak of his cap, standing in the sheltering angle of a building, a cold revolver held in a cold hand. Waiting for the rumble of the expected lorry, knowing that the man out there, lying in the snow with his ear to the ground, would catch its farthest rumour; knowing that men like himself, tough and reliable, were immobile shadows behind tree and telegraph post and barn-end; hearing then the rumble grow to a roar, the roar to a shriek as the headlights thrust their yellow swords into the dithering snow, as the first revolvers cracked, and the sawn-through tree crashed in the lorry’s path, and a machine-gun opened its deathly stutter.
And from Dermot in his cold poor bedroom in Gibraltar Street, gloating upon the names he had carved of the Manchester Martyrs, through the incursion of Flynn and the coming of Donnelly, step by step a doomful lunatic logic seemed to run right up to this imagined moment when the firing dies down and some figures spill red upon the road and others are black running dots disappearing upon the white face of the land. Perhaps from farther back than that; perhaps to some unimagined future.
*
The telephone bell shrilled, bringing me back with a heart-thump to the moment: to nine of a snowy March night in 1921. It was young Guy Langdale. He had married Eileen in the autumn and they had a small house at Richmond. He was speaking from there in great agitation. Could I come at once? Yes, he knew it was a foul night and an unusual thing to ask; but could I pack a bag? They could give me a bed for the night.
“But what is it, man? What’s it all about? Is Eileen ill?”
“No,” he said testily. “I’d be ringing up a doctor, not you. It’s not Eileen—it’s Maggie.”
“Maggie? Is she with you? You mean Rory’s wife?”
“Yes. Rory’s dead. Now will you come?”
I put down the receiver and looked dazedly about my familiar room. Just there Maeve had stood that day, confronting Dermot.
You’ve killed Rory!... You’ve killed Rory!
God help you, Dermot, now.
*
I went by Underground from Charing Cross. The chill and hideous station, my fellow passengers steaming and smelling of damp clothes, the glimpses when we came above ground of the white and desolate country, deepened the mood of dejection in which at last I arrived at Langdale’s house.
Guy himself opened the door and led me to a small room at the back which he used as a study. I took the slippers from my bag and put them on. A scared-looking maid bore away my wet shoes and snowy overcoat.
“That girl looks frightened to death,” I said.
“I’m not surprised,” Guy answered. He poured me a drink. “It was she who opened the door. Maggie collapsed on top of her. She crossed to Holyhead on last night’s boat and travelled south today. How she managed it all I don’t know. This poor girl was alone in the house. She had no idea who Maggie was, and Maggie was in no condition to explain. She just staggered into the hall, sat in a chair, and fainted.”
Guy went on to tell me that he and Eileen had luckily returned home at that moment. They brought Maggie round and put her to bed, talking wildly. It was some time before they gathered from her broken and desperate words that Rory was dead.
“Strange creatures,” I said. “Rory himself told me how stoical she was about her father’s death. She saw him in prison just before they shot him, and they seem to have talked like a pair of Romans. And now—”
Guy looked very tired. He took a drink himself before he answered. “You know what these people are—forgive me, I’m speaking dispassionately. I’ve never seen Rory or Donnelly, and this is the first time I’ve set eyes on Maggie—you know what they are when for years they’ve been sleeping and waking for a cause. I think I can understand it. I can understand that anyone dying as Donnelly did would leave a feeling of exaltation behind him. ‘O Death, where is thy sting?’ But this time it isn’t like that. We don’t know yet what it is, but there’s something terrible on that girl’s mind. She’s haunted.”
“Had I better see her now?”
“In a moment. Let me finish. We sent for the doctor, but he was a longish time coming. She was delirious. She kept shouting ‘I betrayed him!’ and then your name began to come into it. There was a lot of babble about Essex. That’s why Eileen wanted you to come. We thought there was something she wanted to tell you, and that if you were here and she became sensible it might help. But now she’s asleep. The doctor’s been and seen to that. He says she should sleep till morning. There’s another thing. We gathered that she came to Eileen because she dared not go to Rory’s father. She couldn’t face that. So you see,” said Guy, his knuckles white as he clutched his glass, “someone has to tell O’Riorden that his son is dead.” He added after a while: “Eileen and I agreed that it would be hateful to telephone the news. And she’s in no condition to see his father. And frankly I loathe the job. Will you do it? Will you see him in the morning?”
It was on a March morning four years ago that I had rung up Dermot to tell him that Maeve was dead. I looked bleakly at young Langdale who loathed the job. Well, young fellow, you haven’t known Dermot since he was a pale lanky red-headed youth with sawdust on the fine hairs of his wrists. “All right,” I said. “I’ll tell him. Now let me see Maggie.”
There was a fire burning in the bedroom and one dim lamp. Eileen sat in an easy chair at the bed’s head, her eyes red, her face crumpled by weeping. She was leaning forward, a ball of handkerchief grasped in her hand. Maggie looked the calmer of the two, all the stress eased out of her face by sleep. There were black smudges under the eyes and the cheeks were more hollow than I remembered. Both hands were lying out over the counterpane, folded very peacefully one upon the other. She was wearing a wedding-ring.
I took Eileen by the hand, led her out on to the landing, and shut the bedroom door. “Go to bed, my dear,” I said. “It’s past eleven.”
She turned and clung to Guy and began to cry afresh.
“Get her to bed,” I said, “and go yourself. I’ll call you if Maggie needs you. I’m used to sitting up all night.”
Guy took her away, her body shaken by sobs. I went down to his study to get a book I had left there. Presently he joined me, put the decanter, a soda siphon and a tin of biscuits on a tray, and carried them up to the bedroom. Then he went, the door closed softly, and I was left alone with Maggie.
I made up the fire and sat in the easy chair by the bedside, looking at the peaceful folded hands with the wedding-ring: the ring upon the hand of the little girl who had tumbled out of the car with Rory at the gates of Heronwater so long ago. Soon every sound died in the house, and I nodded a little in my chair, and then I slept. It was two o’clock when I woke. Maggie still slept on, but she had changed her position and now lay on her side, with one hand under her cheek, her face towards me. She stirred, and smiled, and then muttered “Ach, Father!” as though deprecating some playful nonsense. Back, now, beyond her present terrors; back beyond her father’s death, in some happy return.
I watched her intently, but she did not speak or move again. I did not sleep any more, but put on my spectacles and read the book I had brought with me—brought with me, indeed, so far, for it belonged to the days of Gibraltar Street, to the youth of my friendship with Dermot. And so my mind wandered to Dermot, sleeping, no doubt, and unaware that already he was in a day of darkness.
At three o’clock I pulled back the curtain and looked out of the window. The snow no longer fell. The garden glimmered in the night, cold and pallid under a few stars. Standing there with the small warm room behind me and the inimical expanse of night reaching endlessly out, my mind murmured the words I had been reading.
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
Not the nightingales... Donnelly, Maeve, Rory... Oh, not the nightingales!
I wonder.
*
I was travelling back to Richmond with Dermot and Sheila. After a day and night of snow, the sun was shining; the sky was tenderly blue. But the roads were dreadful and so we were travelling, as I had travelled the night before, by Underground. Sheila sat between me and Dermot, not speaking, perfectly still, her gloved hands lying in her lap, her eyes fixed on the window opposite. The train ground and screeched over the rails.
There was nothing dramatic in the moment: it was just misery: black, hopeless misery. Dermot, when I called upon him, had been surprised to see me so early. He was busy at his desk, opening letters with a paper-knife.
“Why, Bill, what’s dug you out at this godless hour?”
“Rory is dead,” I said. “He has been killed in Ireland.”
The paper-knife tinkled to the smooth parquet of the floor. For a moment Dermot said nothing. He sat there examining the backs of his long white fingers extended on the desk. Then he said, as if speaking to himself: “God damn England. And God damn Ireland. And God damn every country that thinks its dreams are worth one young man’s blood.”
In my heart I said “Amen,” and say it still; but I said nothing to Dermot.
He got up stiffly and came and stood with his hands resting on my shoulders. I looked into his eyes. There were no green flecks in them now. There was only a great depth of misery.
“That leaves Eileen,” he said. “Just Eileen.”
“Yes. You’d better come and see her. I’ve been at her house all night. Maggie is there. She brought the news.”
“I must tell Sheila.”
“Yes.”
“Come with me, Bill.”
So we jolted and jerked by Underground to Hampstead, and when we reached the house he said in the hall: “Just sit here by the fire. I’ll see her alone. Can you come on with us to Richmond?”
I nodded, and he went on up the stairs.
I sat there for perhaps a quarter of an hour, and then he came back with Sheila, who was already dressed for going out. She was white and stricken. She looked at me as though to say that she would speak if she could, but she couldn’t; and so, with no word spoken, we filed out of the house.
*
Maggie was sitting up in bed. She was alone when Dermot and Sheila and I went in—sitting up with a white shawl cowled over her head, held at the breast by her thin ringed hand. She was in possession of herself; her hysteria was ended; but a world of woe looked from her grey eyes.
While Dermot and I stood just within the doorway, Rory’s mother crossed the room and kissed Rory’s widow. It was a cold perfunctory kiss, and suddenly I knew that Sheila’s heart was burning with hate for Maggie. I knew, too, that Maggie felt this. She turned upon Sheila a shy propitiating glance which seemed—to me at all events—to cry aloud in the room: “I know! I know! And I don’t even ask you to understand. I don’t blame you.”
Tears grew in her eyes, flowed out on to her cheeks. She wiped them away and said: “I mustn’t cry.”
“It doesn’t do much good,” Sheila said. “I’ve lost two children, and I know.”
“No,” said Maggie. “No good at all. I’ve lost a father and a husband. I know, too.”
She was composed after that. Eileen and Guy had come in, and we all sat round the bed. She told us of Rory’s death. “They came to a house we used sometimes. The whole place was surrounded. There was no getting away at all. They shot him down.”
Just those few bare words. She had no more to say.
“What became of—of his body?” Sheila asked.
“The boys would see him buried at Ballybar,” Maggie said. “I couldn’t stay.”
“I should have liked to attend the funeral,” Sheila said in a low voice. “Couldn’t you have telegraphed to us?”
“Oh, Mrs. O’Riorden, you wouldn’t have liked it,” Maggie burst out. “’Tis a terrible country. ’Tis half burnt to the ground and the bridges blown up and the roads with trees cut down across them. You don’t know the waste...”
Sheila muttered to herself: “The waste... I know it...” and at that the tears welled up in Maggie’s eyes again.
Dermot took her hand. “Lie down now,” he said, “and try to sleep. We’ll have another talk later.”
Eileen stayed in the room with Maggie. The rest of us went downstairs. Sheila’s eyes were hard and rebellious. That was the only visit she made to Maggie.
A few days later I called alone, and found that Maggie was up and dressed. She was well enough to be left; Eileen and Guy had gone to town. So I took her out to lunch, and then we went for a walk in Richmond Park. We had not been walking for long when she put her hand shyly on my arm and said: “Rory was very fond of you.”
“I believe he was,” I said, “and I’m glad of it.”
“Do you think I was—good enough for him?”
“I knew Rory well enough to know this: that he wouldn’t have chosen anything second-rate.”
“His mother thinks I’m a coward—that I ran away.”
“I believe she does, but I should think it’s difficult just now for Rory’s mother to be as fair as she usually is.”
Suddenly Maggie sat down on a seat and buried her face in her hands. “I did run away,” she sobbed. “I did. I did. I was a coward.”
I tried to comfort her. “My dear, who can blame you? What you told us the other day—it must have been terrible. You have been through so much, and with that at the end of it—”
“Oh, that—that was all lies. It wasn’t like that at all. It was far, far worse than that. Listen—”
*
Most of the boys worked all day long in the fields. Mick Slaney drove the butcher’s cart and Ken Conroy was at the sawmill, behind Doonan’s garden. There was a well in the garden, but some time ago a false bottom was put in, just above water-level. They kept their guns and ammunition there. Ken Conroy was a slip of a chap. He could stand in the bucket, holding the rope in his hands. Then they would lower him, and he would fetch up the guns a few at a time. They kept a tarpaulin sheet over them in the day-time. Doonan got his water from the priest’s well, and Father Farrell very well knew why.
At night the boys gathered in the barn to get their orders from Rory. They came one at a time, three minutes between each arrival. A loft ran over the extent of the barn. It was very big. All the walls were wooden, and at one end there was a false wall. The planks that made it were as old and crazy as the rest of the building. One or two of them were loose and you could squeeze through into the secret chamber that was no more than a yard wide but a good twelve yards long. One of the boys always lurked outside. When he thought it necessary, he pulled a piece of tarred string that even in daylight was invisible from a few yards’ distance against the tarred side of the barn. The pulling caused a cotton reel to dance on the table before which Rory sat. Then talk ended and the dim light was extinguished till the cotton reel rattled again.
Every man, at every meeting, had to show his gun to Rory, demonstrate its cleanliness and efficiency, check over his ammunition. This was the time, too, for bringing in cotton-wool, lint, splints, bandages, iodine, which Maggie kept with scrupulous care and cleanliness in a box at the end of the long room. She had there, too, a few elementary surgical instruments; scissors and forceps and so on; and a spirit stove and saucepan for boiling water to sterilise them and to wash wounds.
Sometimes she spent a whole day with her patients who lay on straw mattresses. Sometimes she came to cheer an hour or two of the night. Sometimes it was possible for Mick Slaney to take them, hidden under the bloody sacks in the floor of the butcher’s cart, to some place where they could get better attention than here. And Tuohy, the butcher, knew about that.
There was nobody in Ballybar who didn’t know all that was going on. And if in the day-time, when there might be strangers about, they were surly to the stocky, grey-eyed deep-shouldered young man who worked in Donohue’s grocery, there was policy in that.
A law-abiding, decent little place was Ballybar while day-light lasted; but strangely empty of young life at night. Then, one by one, at three-minute intervals, a shadow here and a shadow there detached itself from the darkness of the country night till all the shadows were hung like bats in the darkness of Rice’s loft.
Then there was no surliness to the young leader.
“Slaney!”
“Yes sir.”
Slaney laid revolver and ammunition on the table. Rory examined them carefully, approved them, pushed them back.
“We have long suspected Sir George Winter of giving information to British soldiers. Yesterday he was seen in conversation with a major of the regular army and with a captain of Auxiliaries. These men had three lorries of troops drawn up in the road outside Sir George Winter’s house. Sir George walked down his drive with them and was heard to give them directions for avoiding an ambush. He shook hands with them and said: ‘Good luck to you, boys. I wish it was your ambush and that you could wipe out some of these swine. This place is a nest of them.’”
“I suppose Pat Hickey was working in the hedge,” Slaney grinned.
Rory frowned. “Conroy!”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have heard what I said to Slaney?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, Slaney supposes things. I want this job done by a man who supposes nothing and can keep his mouth shut.”
He held out his hand, and Conroy pushed across revolver and ammunition.
“Sir George Winter will give no more information to the enemy. After dinner, he sits in a room on the ground floor, and he never bothers to draw the blinds. I suppose he thinks God Almighty is looking after him. When you have taught him better, pin this on his front door.”
Rory handed Conroy a rolled piece of paper on which was printed: “DON’T OPEN YOUR MOUTH TOO WIDE.”
“That’s all.”
Conroy saluted and went.
“The rest of you boys can go. There’s nothing else tonight.”
One by one, at intervals, the shadows detached themselves from the barn and disappeared by a dozen routes into the darkness.
Maggie and Rory faced one another across the table in the dim light. “Let’s have a look at Dan,” Rory said.
Maggie took up the lantern and they went to the end of the long chamber. Dan O’Gwyer, lying on his pallet of straw, grinned.
“Well, how’s this feller?” Rory asked.
“Ach, to hell with keepin’ me here,” said O’Gwyer. “Let me be now. I want to be hobbling about again.”
“You’ll stay here, Dan, my boy, till you’re told to go. If the wrong people see you hobbling they’ll want to know what made you hobble. Let’s see his leg, Maggie.”
Maggie unrolled the bandage, and held down the lantern for Rory to examine the bullet-wound that went through the flesh of O’Gwyer’s calf.
“That looks all right. Fix him up again. You’re going on fine, lad. Don’t think I’m keeping you here for fun. I want you, and plenty more like you.”
“I’m ready, when you say the word.”
“That’s the chap. You being well fed?”
“Ach, they’re stuffin’ my guts fit to bust. How’s Mary Clarke? She’s not about with Slaney?”
“Ach, now, don’t you be worrying about Mary Clarke. She’s a good girl and she thinks you’re a hero.”
O’Gwyer grinned. “So I am then.”
“And now I’ll read to you a bit.”
O’Gwyer settled down quietly on the straw, the pin-point of his cigarette glowing in the dusk. Rory took up a book and began to read:
Queen Maeve summoned to her to Rath-Cruhane all her captains and counsellors and tributary kings...
“He was very quiet on the way home,” Maggie said to me, “and seemed to be thinking a long way back.”
*
The next day a lorry-load of Black-and-Tans drove into Ballybar. A few stayed in the lorry; the rest clattered into Donohue’s grocery and demanded drink. Rory served them and when they had had a drink or two they began to serve themselves. The sergeant in charge asked, with no particular show of interest: “Is there a chap called Sir George Winter in these parts?”
“Yes; lives four or five miles down the road.”
“Seen anything of him lately?”
“No. I don’t get about much.”
“What sort of feller would you say he was? Is he liked about here?”
“Oh, yes; I should say so.”
“This is the nearest place to his house, isn’t it?” the sergeant persisted.
Rory considered. “Yes, it would be, unless you went across country.”
The sergeant took a pull at his drink. “News seems to travel slow round here, young feller.”
“All the wires are down,” Rory pointed out reasonably.
“You haven’t heard that Sir George was shot dead last night by some bloody skunk, have you?”
“Good Lord! That’s a bad do.”
“It’s going to be a bad do for this bloody village if we find a gun in it,” the sergeant declared savagely. “There’s one thing. Sir George shot back. I hope he hit something. Have another drink, lads, and then get on with it.”
The Black-and-Tans laid their hands on the first bottles they could reach, drank deeply, and then got up with a clatter of arms. “This place first,” the sergeant ordered.
The scum got busy. With rifle-butts they smashed and hammered. They swept bottles from shelves and stamped the broken glass underfoot as they poked at cupboard doors, pulled open drawers, scattering the contents to the floor, tried to pull up the floor itself. From a search they passed to wanton wrecking. They knocked the pictures from the walls, tore down curtains, tramped upstairs and hacked the beds to pieces. Rory accompanied them upstairs. Maggie was sitting in an easy chair in one of the bedrooms. A lout, unsteady with drink, advanced upon her. “Boys, look what I’ve got!” He laid a hand on Maggie’s shoulder, then found a painful grip on his own. He swung round to find himself gazing into Rory’s cold grey eyes.
“Maggie, get out into the street,” Rory said. When she was gone, he released his grip. “If you want to rip up the chair get on with it.”
The chair was ripped up, and in the interests of thorough search gun-butts were swung against walls, smashing down the plaster lest some hiding-place be behind.
Half the men had by now gone downstairs and were drinking what was left of the liquor. They took some bottles out to the lorry. Then the last of them staggered and stumbled out into the cold light of the dying winter day.
“Any more, Sarge? Shall we do another house?” one of them demanded.
The sergeant, none too steady himself, looked at them contemptuously. “Christ!” he said. “And we won the war! Get into the bloody lorry.”
They began to pile themselves in when Maggie, who was standing by Rory’s side, felt his hand clutch her arm with a sudden painful pressure. “O God!” he said under his breath.
Limping round the corner at the village cross-roads, unsuspecting messenger of doom to all the boys at Ballybar, came Dan O’Gwyer.
“The fool! The fool!” Rory groaned.
Too late, Dan saw that he had walked into a raid. Father Farrell’s house was there on the corner. Dan lurched towards the deep embrasure of the doorway, hoping to obliterate his fatal being. The sergeant, emptying a last bottle, let the bottle drop to the ground. “What the ’ell!” he cried. “Come on, some of you.”
Rory and Maggie moved forward with the rush of Black-and-Tans. Mick Slaney was there, too, and Ken Conroy, and most of the lads. When they came to the priest’s house, the door had been opened, and O’Gwyer stood there with Father Farrell’s arms about him. You could see right into the little hall, with the ebony crucifix on the white wall at the back. The priest’s hair was as white as the wall. From his hale, ruddy face blue eyes looked out fearlessly at the sergeant’s. The sergeant seized O’Gwyer and with one strong heave landed him sprawling in the road.
“Where did you get that bloody wound?” he demanded.
O’Gwyer lay face downwards at the cross-roads in the darkening evening and did not answer. Mary Clarke came running up from Tuohy’s where she worked, and when she saw Dan lying there she let out a great shriek. A soldier struck her across the mouth, and she fell to a quiet sobbing, with a shawl drawn over her head.
“Have a look at that wound,” the sergeant ordered.
“Pull his pants off. That’s the quickest way to get at it,” a soldier suggested; and they pulled off O’Gwyer’s trousers and left him naked from the waist. Then the bandage was savagely pulled off, causing the wound to bleed.
“Can you beat that!” said the sergeant. “That’s a bullet-wound. In there. Out there.” He jabbed with his finger at O’Gwyer’s leg. “Still bleeding.”
The Black-and-Tans stood in a circle round the prostrate man, clumping their rifle-butts restlessly into the ground. Outside them the villagers stood in a wider circle, gazing at the naked legs and the ooze of blood. And round about them all was the quiet countryside, fading swiftly to dusk, a few bare elms, a few rooks, cawing homewards. The priest’s servant lighted a little lamp in the hall, and the crucifix stood out plain.
Suddenly the priest spoke. “That’s an old wound. You’ve broken it open by brutal treatment.”
“New or old, it’s a bullet-wound,” said the sergeant. “What the ’ell d’you know about it, anyway?”
He stood up and faced the priest truculently. “If you know it’s an old wound, p’raps you know when ’e got it, and ’ow.”
The old man said deliberately, “He got it while defending his country from drunken barbarians like you.”
The sergeant struck him hard in the face, and the men with the rifles closed in menacingly.
Father Farrell bent over Dan O’Gwyer. “Get up, my son,” he said, and helped the boy to his feet. “Come into my house.” Leaning on the priest’s arm, the boy, keeping his face, for shame of his nakedness, buried in the old man’s shoulder, limped towards the open door.
The sergeant leapt before them, raised his stout arms, standing there outlined against the light in the hall. “I’m going to have that man shot. I advise you to stand aside from him.”
The women in the crowd set up a wailing, and the men with the rifles stood back, half-way across the road, their fingers itching on the triggers. The priest’s voice said calmly: “If you must shoot, shoot.”
“Gawd ’elp you,” said the sergeant. He sprang away from the door. “Men,” he shouted. “Don’t shoot the parson. Fire!”
The rifles cracked; the flames were apparent on the darkening air. Father Farrell and O’Gwyer fell together, crumpling very slowly beneath the crucifix.
Following the shots, there was a moment of intense silence. Then the women knelt in the road and their wailing filled the air. The sergeant said curtly: “Get back to the lorry.”
The men of the village took up the bodies and carried them from the hall into the priest’s bedroom. The women followed. Only Rory and Maggie remained to go back in the trail of the soldiers to the lorry which still stood outside the grocery. Maggie was crying quietly. Rory’s broad shoulders were rock-like, stubborn, his eyes hard as grey granite. The men clattered into the lorry. The sergeant climbed up last into a seat alongside the driver. The lorry was vibrating, ready to be off along the road that was now lost in darkness. The headlights flamed out, revealing nothing at the cross-roads but a black smudge that must have been O’Gwyer’s boots and trousers.
“Get some more drink in by tomorrow,” the sergeant shouted. “We’ll be back about the same time.”
Rory gazed at the bragging brute without speaking. The engine roared suddenly and the lorry moved off. The men in it began to sing.
Rory took a handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to Maggie. She looked a question; he nodded grimly and slipped into a ramshackle shed in the grocery garden. He hastily pulled away the pile of junk that hid the switch. His hand on the switch was as steady as a rock; his eye watched Maggie through the small window. She knew what to look for. As soon as the headlights touched the blazed tree she dropped the handkerchief.
The explosion of the mine lit the night, shook the village. There was still no haste in Rory’s step as he walked to the spot where the remains of the lorry lay half in and half out of the crater. He looked contemptuously at the dead and drove away the women who would have cared for the wounded. “Go!” he said. “As far as you can. As quick as you can. It’s our turn now.” All the boys were gathered round. “And if any of you want to go too, do it now.”
All the boys stayed. They got the guns out of the well behind the sawmill yard that night.
*
By midnight most of the women were gone from Ballybar. The boys gathered in the grocery. There were twelve of them. In addition, there were Rory and Maggie. Rory told them that this would be their last fight in Ballybar. “For some of us, perhaps for most of us, it will be the last fight of all. I shall call it a good fight if you leave three men dead for every one of us that dies. Five of you will stay here with me and Maggie. The other seven will occupy Tuohy’s house opposite. I have his permission. He’s too old a man for this sort of thing. He’s gone and taken his wife and Mary Clarke with him. Slaney, you’d better take charge opposite. Pick your six men.”
Slaney picked his men, and Rory shared out the ammunition. “Don’t waste it,” he said. “Let’s hope they come late. If they do, keep them in play till dark. Then get away if you can. You can go to the barn, or you can disappear into the country. Those of you who can, will meet me at the waterfall at ten the next night. This is the end of things here, and I shall have fresh orders by then. If I am not there, you will know where to go for your orders.”
He paused for a moment in his pacing of the room, and stood there with his wide shoulders hunched, his head bowed, his eyes troubled. “Of course,” he said, “we needn’t wait for them. We needn’t have this last fight. We could clear out now. But I want to stay. This is war, and wars are won by killing the enemy; in no other way. They will come back after what has happened tonight, and we shall be ready to do our job in circumstances that give us a good chance. That’s all.”
Slaney and his six men picked up their guns. “When you go in,” said Rory, “put heavy furniture against the front door. Fill the passage with it. Jam up the back door, too. Put mattresses to the windows and shoot between them. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do here, and you can do the same if you like. I shall send my best shot—that’s you, Conroy; take your gun and get ready—to find a window that overlooks the back of this house. Don’t waste a shot unless someone really looks like getting in that way or tries to fire the place. I’ll keep three men up here on the first floor; Maggie and I and another will shoot from the ground floor. There are three Mills bombs for each party; no more. If they force a way into the ground floor, let the men there retreat upstairs. Let the enemy have the bombs as they follow. There’s nothing more, except that you’ll fight better with food in your bellies. See to that, Slaney.”
Rory shook hands with Slaney and his six, and they clattered away down the stairs, a grim rain-coated cohort, with black hats slanted over their foreheads.
When they and Conroy were gone, Rory got his men to work, barricading doors, masking windows with mattresses. Not till everything was done did he send Maggie and three of the men to sleep. He and another sat up till five, then changed the watch.
But for all that happened in Ballybar that night, the whole party might have slept. The grey winter dawn came, with none of the customary activity of the village. No carts creaked along the street; there was no sound of the opening of little shops. Rory removed the mattresses from the ground-floor window and swung himself over the sill. To the right and to the left the road stretched with not a thing upon it, and only here and there from far-scattered houses did a plume of smoke rise into the cold air. Slaney shouted cautiously from across the street that all was well with his garrison; and passing to the back of the grocery, Rory had a reassuring glimpse of young Conroy who had cut no more than a peephole into the boarding of an isolated loft.
Maggie made tea, and they breakfasted on that and bread and jam; and after breakfast the four men of Rory’s command, as if acting by some agreement, all went upstairs to the upper floor. Rory took Maggie in his arms. The two pairs of grey eyes met, and held for a long time.
“Well,” said Rory. “I’m a bright sort of husband, am I not?”
“I had a bright sort of father, too,” she said.
“Here am I with a lovely young bride, and this is all I can do for her: give her bread and jam for breakfast and guns in the afternoon.”
“You darling! You don’t know what you’ve given me. You’ll never know.”
“Oh, yes; I know all right,” Rory said, “because I know what you’ve given me. We’ve just swapped hearts.” He put his head down on her breast. “There! I can hear it! That’s my old heart, ticking away in there.”
She kissed the thick tangle of his hair, then lifted up his serious face with both her hands. “What a fraud I feel,” she said. “Oh, my darling! You ought not to be doing this. You ought to be doing lovely things. You were brought up on dreams, weren’t you? Oh, I know them all. The land of saints and scholars; Dark Rosaleen. And this is what we give you. Oh, God! How you must hate this country!”
“Ach, my dear, you must never talk like that now. It’s easy to hate what needs a helping hand. It’s easy to pass by on the other side. And dreams? Ay, I’ve had them, too. When all of us children played with Maeve and Ireland was a country of lovely queens. But now the dream’s cold day-light, and the queens are girls like Mary Clarke. But don’t think that there’s any room in my heart for regret. Promise me that, my love: if I’m killed, don’t think that I died regretting the easy things I’ve missed. I’ve had you, and I’ve had the boys, and we’ve all had some grand times.”
“And if we—get out of this, you’ll love me for ever and ever?”
“Dear Maggie, eternity is now. There’s no past about it and no future. It just is. And that’s how my love is for you.”
“And mine for you,” she whispered. “Kiss me now.”
So they kissed for the last time, straining body to body, as though they could not let one another go. Suddenly, he went rigid in her arms, his whole being concentrated on listening. He put her gently from him, and said quietly: “They’re coming.” Mulligan, who was to share with them the defence of the ground floor, came running down the stairs.
“You shoot kneeling, Mulligan,” Rory said. “I’ll fire over your head. Maggie’ll keep a spare rifle loaded for either of us. It’s a pity this isn’t a hay window. We can only see ’em when they’re right in front of us.”
“And they can only shoot us from right in front,” Mulligan grinned. “I prefer that.”
But there was no shooting for a moment. They heard the lorry stop a good way off—perhaps at the entrance to the street.
“They don’t like the look of things,” said Rory. “Everything’s too quiet for ’em. They’re afraid of a trap. It would have been nice if they’d stopped the lorry right between these two houses.”
They kept their eyes to the slit that divided the mattresses. It allowed them to see little more than the house Slaney occupied. Presently, appearing soundlessly upon that little field, like shadows creeping upon a screen, came two Black-and-Tans. They moved cautiously, close under the walls of the houses, their rifles in their hands.
“Slaney can’t see ’em,” said Rory, “but I expect he can see a couple on this side,” and to confirm the words came the sudden crack! crack! of two rifles. Almost at the same moment, two shots, fired from the first floor, thundered through the grocery. One of the men opposite spun round, fell, and began to crawl away on hands and knees, slowly fighting each inch of the way. The other began to run back swiftly the way he had come; he suddenly fell headlong and lay still. The crawling man passed him, moved slowly off the screen of vision.
“Poor devils,” said Rory. “They’ve just been sent out to see where we are. Well, now they know. Let’s sit still for a bit and see what strategy they employ. As a rule, they’ve got as much as a mad bullock.”
Twenty minutes passed; then the lorry roared loudly. They heard it charging down the street. When it came into view, there was no one in it but the driver. He swung the lorry round sharply, ran it nose first almost into the wall of the house next to that which Slaney occupied. Rory’s garrison was too interested in this manœuvre to fire. By the time they had recovered from their surprise, the driver had leapt from his seat and lay flat on the floor of the lorry.
“What the hell!” said Mulligan. “I don’t see it.”
“Wait a minute,” Rory advised him. “I’m beginning to get the idea. We’re going to have a real fight today, my boy. There’s someone with brains out there who’s thinking about saving his men’s lives.”
Presently, four men came at a rush. They appeared so swiftly on the narrow screen that only one shot rang out from the grocery. It missed. Then the men were under cover of the slewed-round lorry, and with boots and rifles they began to beat down the door of the house. It took them less than half a minute. Then they were inside. And no sooner were they in than, at disconcertingly infrequent intervals, others rushed up, one at a time, past the protecting lorry, into the house.
Soon there were a dozen men in the house next door to Slaney. Suddenly, from its upper floor, a volley was poured upon the grocery windows. Rory, Maggie and Mulligan heard the bullets thump into the mattresses. One sang between them and buried itself in the wall. For a second there was consternation, and in the room upstairs, no doubt. In that second, the driver of the lorry leapt to his seat, put his engine in reverse. Instantly, bullets spattered the cab of the lorry. An answering volley came from across the street. The man worked with the fury of fear. He got his lorry away.
“Take it easy,” said Rory. “We can rest a bit. Now they’ll repeat the manœuvre on this side of the street. We’ll have to leave it to Slaney. We’re fighting brains this time, my boy. These men will all be under cover. They’ll have endless ammunition, and they’ll be able to plug at us all day from both sides of the street.”
They waited for a long time. The stillness that had been on the street at dawn came back, punctuated at rare intervals by a rifle-shot, trying pot-luck at Rory’s garrison. Then there came again the roar of the motor-lorry. But this time there was no surprise in it. Six shots rang out almost as one from Slaney’s house. Rory and Mulligan, gazing through their slit, saw the driver crumpled over the wheel, saw the lorry swerve crazily, crash into the front of a house, and come to a standstill.
“Now the brains of that organisation can do some more thinking,” Mulligan grinned. “Holy Mary! Will you listen to that?”
“That’s the thinking,” Rory said grimly.
A machine-gun had begun to stutter in the street. Slaney’s house was getting it. The gun sprayed from the ground floor to the upper windows. No one dared appear at those windows then. At the same moment, men could be heard smashing down the door of the house next to the grocery. The horrid yammer of the gun ceased, and in the silence Rory could hear men trampling in the room beyond the wall.
“That’s simpler,” Mulligan said, crestfallen. “Why didn’t he do that with us? Seems easier than all the business with the motor-lorry.”
“Because he’s realised what I’m always trying to drive into you: that you don’t waste ammunition if there’s any other way. The man with the last shot wins.”
“And what the hell are we to do with our shots now?” Mulligan demanded. “Sure we can sit here gazing at one another across the streets of Ballybar till St. Patrick’s Day.”
“Just do what I’m doing,” Rory chided him. “Watch those windows opposite, and as soon as you see a movement, shoot. You’d better watch the bottom window. I’ll take the top.”
“Ach, the hell of a lot of movement we’ll see. They’ll all be after having their dinner. I can...”
Mulligan swung round, and looked at Maggie with a pained, surprised look on his face. It was so sudden and comical that she was about to laugh, when she noticed a red hole in the middle of his forehead. His knees doubled under him; his rifle clattered to the floor. At the same moment, Rory’s rifle spoke. “I got him,” he said grimly; then turned to Mulligan. “Don’t leave him there,” he said. They carried him to the room at the back. Rory picked up Mulligan’s rifle and laid it carefully on the table. He looked at his wrist-watch. “Make some tea for the boys,” he said. “It’s noon.”
Maggie took the tea upstairs. When she came down she began to rummage in a cupboard. Rory said testily: “What are you doing there? Come and load the rifles.”
“I’m looking for a bandage. Somers is shot through the right wrist. They didn’t want to tell you. He’s no more use, I’m afraid.”
“If he’s no more use, leave him. You must help what is of use. Load the rifles.”
Maggie loaded the rifles. “Now kneel down where Mulligan was and shoot at anything you see.”
Maggie knelt, and shot, and saw a man fall half out of the window.
And so the battle went on. Desultorily, at long intervals, the rifles cracked, each side wary. At three o’clock there was a trampling on the stairs. “Clancy’s dead.”
Rory wheeled round. “Then for God’s sake what are you doing here? If Clancy’s dead and Somers is useless, you’re the only man left up there. Get back, and send Somers with messages if you must send them.”
He went back to his window, stood once more sighting through the slit between the mattresses that were drilled like a target at the end of a day’s shooting.
“Notice what’s happening over there?” he muttered.
“Yes. I noticed it a long time ago.”
There was firing from only one window of Slaney’s house, and that was slow and infrequent. “One rifle, I should say,” Rory said grimly. “Well, we’ve notched a good few.”
The afternoon wore on. There was a moment when Rory recognised the face of the last man holding out opposite. It was Slaney, bandaged about the head. He continued to shoot, steadily, unhurriedly.
Towards three o’clock there was shooting in a new quarter. Rory, grimed and red-eyed, laid down his rifle. “Hear that? They’re shooting behind Slaney’s house. They’ll try to rush him now.”
There was silence on Rory’s side of the street. Barney Day, who was holding the room upstairs, ceased firing, as he, too, waited to hear the upshot of the attack on Slaney. It came swiftly. One, two, three detonations shook the street. “He’s given ’em the bombs,” Rory muttered. No other sound after that came from Slaney’s side of the street. The last explosion shook the mattresses down from the upper window. No face appeared at it.
Rory shouted up the stairs, and Barney Day came running down. He was in his shirt-sleeves and one of the sleeves was red.
“You hurt?” Rory asked him.
“Ach, it’s only a fleabite. I can shoot.”
“Well, it looks as though it’s you and me and Maggie now. How’s Somers?”
“Bad. He’s groaning.”
“We’ll stick it out till dark. Then you’d better slide away into the country and take Somers with you. How d’you think we’ve done?”
“Not bad at all. We’ve give as good as we took.”
“I think so. That’s fine. Well, get back now.” Day started off towards the stairs. Rory recalled him with a gesture, and held out his hand. “Well, Barney... in case...”
“Good-bye, Rory. At dark, then, it’s each for himself?”
“That’s it. Good-bye. You’ve made a good fight.”
About ten seconds after that Barney was shot through the heart, and just as the light was giving out Rory was shot through the leg. He fell in a heap, groaning, a kneecap smashed to pieces.
Maggie knelt over him. “Tell Somers to go,” he said. “They’ll be breaking in here any minute.”
The small garden behind the grocery was a shrubbery, thick with laurels. Somers came down the stairs, white, groaning quietly, holding his broken wrist. Maggie opened the back door cautiously and he stumbled out into the obscurity of the bushes. It was a black night, cloudy, without stars. He seemed at once to be swallowed up. They gave him a few minutes, then followed. Maggie leant forward. Rory hung round her neck. She half-carried, half-dragged him. The six paces between the door and the shrubbery seemed endless. She knew the little twisting path through the bushes and struggled forward towards the spot where it debouched into a ditch. Beyond the ditch was a rising field. The ditch itself ran left, behind the straggle of hedges that were parallel with the village street.
Maggie swayed and tottered between the bushes. Rory bit into his lip so that he might not cry aloud as his dangling wounded leg swayed and flapped.
They reached the ditch. “For God’s sake, darling—you’re choking me.” She lowered him gently till he stood upon his sound leg, and took deep panting breaths. “Where will we make for?” she asked.
“The barn. Can you do it?”
“Do it? Oh, God! We must. We must.”
He arranged himself upon her back again and she stumbled forward. A shadow, just darker than the night, rose out of the earth.
“For the love of Mary, don’t shoot. ’Tis me—Ken Conroy.”
Maggie sobbed with relief. “He’s wounded, Ken. He can’t walk. We must get him to the barn.”
Now it was a little easier. With an arm round the neck of each, Rory hopped forward on one leg. Though he was short, he was heavy, and Conroy was a wisp of a man: the tiny acrobat who would go down the well, standing in the bucket. So they were long about that march of agony, their hearts thundering as their ears reached backwards for the sound of pursuit. There was a moment when simultaneously all three stood in their tracks, sweating with fear. A twig snapped loudly behind them, and for half a minute they stood there with tingling spines awaiting the thump of lead. Then they went on again—shuffle hop, shuffle—but never now separated from the fear of following footsteps.
So they traversed the way through the ditch, behind the blind empty houses, till they were at the street’s end, at the cross-roads, behind the priest’s house, where unattended by wake or vigil lay the bodies of Father Farrell and young O’Gwyer, who for a sight of Mary Clarke had loosed this agony upon them.
Now from the end of the ditch a rubble of shale gave a slithering access to the high-road, and a groan was wrenched from Rory’s lips as he contemplated the horror of that descent. Maggie took him on her back again. Conroy went first, walking backwards, his hands sustaining Maggie’s body so that the load might not make her rush or stumble. And thus they came to the high-road and paused there to breathe and listen. There seemed to be nothing in all the night but a bat or two, erratically brushing the heavy-omened air.
Now they slanted over the cross-roads, with the hop-shuffle-hop stabbing its pain through Rory, and they came through a loose-swinging gate to the big field in whose far corner was the dark loom of the barn. So near their refuge, they tried to hurry, Rory swinging out his leg and muttering to them to go quickly. When they were in the gloom of the great building they rested again for a while, drawing deep sobs of joy, fugitives come through ordeal to sanctuary.
Literally, in there, they could not see a step before their faces. But they knew every inch of that way, and unerringly crossed the wide uneven floor to the corner where the ladder went up to the loft. Clinging with both hands, hopping on one leg, Rory could make the ascent alone, every rung gained at the cost of anguish as his loose-hanging leg jarred the ladder. He lay again, half-fainting, at the top. Conroy went warily forward to hold aside the loose boards; Maggie finished the journey as she had begun it, with Rory’s strangling arms about her neck.
And now, indeed in sanctuary at last, they chanced a light: the merest glim cast by a small electric torch with a handkerchief tied round its head. They laid Rory upon the pallet, gave him brandy, and then Maggie cut off one leg of his trousers and turned to the box where she kept her bandages and splints.
“My God, there’s not a splint in the place,” she groaned as the pitiful little light fell upon the box that was her pride. Everything was there, everything she needed, except some pieces of flat wood. She and Conroy gazed with consternation into the box.
“We could smash the box,” he said.
“’Tis too strong. I wouldn’t dare risk the noise.”
“Well, listen, Maggie. You’ll find some bits of packing-case wood downstairs behind the door. I brought them myself, intending to smooth them off some day.”
“Look after him,” said Maggie. “Not an inch must he stir. I’ll be back at once.”
*
Sitting on the bench in Richmond Park, with the deer stepping delicately across the grass that was vivid with the green of earliest spring, Maggie paused and looked round in wonder, as though from the horrors she had been recounting she had stepped suddenly into an awareness of the graciousness about her. “I must go on,” she said. “It will hurt you.” I nodded, and she continued.
“When I got downstairs to the floor of the barn, I was afraid. I had the tiny light with me, and it made the shadows more frightening than if there had been no light at all. I felt as though someone were walking behind me, and someone was. He said suddenly: ‘I was sure there were three of you. Where are the others?’
“I stopped quite still. He said: ‘Don’t move. Don’t turn round. There’s no reason for you to see me.’ Then he took the little light from my hand and stuck the end of the torch in a truss of hay. ‘That’s excellent,’ he said. ‘Now I can see you, but I can remain invisible as I have been ever since you left the house. Where are the others?’
“He had a beautiful voice. He spoke so low and so pleasantly that I was almost betwitched into answering.
“‘We followed that other fellow, too,’ he said ‘the one with the broken wrist. We didn’t want to lose any of the bonny fighters. There’s a matter of a dozen or so dead men to be accounted for, to say nothing of the lot blown up in the lorry last night. Tell me, where are the others?’
“I did not speak. I could almost feel him shrug his shoulders, almost see him smile, standing there behind me in the dark. ‘No?’ he said. ‘No information? Well, my dear, I’m in command of the men here. I feel responsible, you know, after what’s happened today. I’m afraid I shall have to find out. Where are the others?’
“This time, he reached out his arm from behind me so that I could see he held a revolver. Then he drew it back, and there was nothing but the voice. It was so different a voice from any that I expected—so smooth and speaking so beautifully.
“‘Well, ’pon my soul,’ he said at last, ‘if you don’t speak soon, then by the word of an Essex—’
“And then I knew. All the time he had been speaking, that voice coming out of the dark seemed to be coming out of the darkness of years and years ago. It had been puzzling my memory, and when he said the name everything lit up. I thought of us all sitting that night, singing, when that mad old captain came and we all sang his hymn. And I thought of swimming and sailing and fishing, and he and Rory loving one another. And I thought my heart would break with joy because I knew I had only to turn round and see a face I remembered and say: ‘But, Oliver, it’s Rory. He’s upstairs. You won’t want to hurt him.’
“And then I turned round, and he said: ‘Humph! Inquisitive? Well, here I am.’ And with that he turned a strong torch of his own full on his face. And, oh, dear God, it wasn’t the face I knew. It was cold and cruel, and the eyes were smiling terribly with wound marks round them, and there were wounds that twisted his lips to a sneer. And my heart dried up, and fear came on me, and suddenly I shrieked.
“And that was how I betrayed Rory.
“There was silence after I shrieked, and then he shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘That ought to fetch ’em.’ He didn’t know me. I could see that he didn’t know me.
“And then there was nothing to do but wait. He had snapped out his torch. I could hear a creeping and crawling along the floor of the loft. He could hear it, too. It went on for a long time, till I knew that Rory was at the opening over the ladder. Then suddenly a big electric torch flashed from up there down into the floor of the barn and began searching for us. It was Conroy holding it, so that Rory could shoot. When the shot came I screamed again, and the thunder in my ears drowned the noise of my own cry. Oliver had fired over my head. Rory slipped head first down the ladder, his arms sprawled out, his wounded leg folded up under him when he came to rest. Conroy watched from above. He had no revolver.
“First, Oliver took the revolver out of Rory’s hand and put it in his pocket. Then he turned him over. He knew at once. His own revolver fell from his hand. All the marks seemed to go out of his face as though a sponge had cleaned them off. He looked soft and young and gentle. Then they flowed back. There was too much to be wiped away. He picked up his revolver and turned to me, ‘Maggie Donnelly?’ he said.
“‘Maggie O’Riorden.’
“‘Christ!’ he said. ‘Christ?’ and ran out of the barn.
“Then Conroy came down the ladder. He stood looking at Rory for a moment with tears streaming down his face. Then he turned and struck me in the mouth. ‘You bitch!’ he said. He spat in the straw at my feet and stumbled out into the darkness. I knew what he meant. He thought that I had been tortured to make me say where Rory was, and that I hadn’t been brave enough to keep my mouth shut, that I had screamed and so brought Rory crawling out to be killed. But it wasn’t that. It was Oliver’s face.”
She began to cry, and I comforted her as best I could, and we got up and walked on a little way.
She had stayed in the barn all night, sitting with her back against a bale of hay, with Rory’s head in her lap, her hands stroking his hair. His face was uninjured. Towards dawn she saw through the cracks in the barn a red flickering light. Then she went out and ran across the field which they had traversed so painfully not long before. Half the village was on fire. Great bulging columns of smoke, charged with red light, and dancing volleys of sparks shot up into the darkness from what had been Ballybar. She stood at the cross-roads watching the infernal spectacle till the flames grew paler against the light growing in the east. Then she heard the sound of marching on the road. She crawled behind the hedge, and what was left of the flying column of Black-and-Tans trailed past her in the dawn. Oliver marched at the head of them. Suddenly one of the men began to sing. Oliver turned upon him savagely: “Shut your blasted mouth,” he said.
The man protested: “Can’t a feller sing?”
Then, Maggie said, Oliver’s face went blind with fury. He was carrying a heavy stick and he turned and belaboured the man over the head till he reeled and fell. The others closed about him, muttering. He took a revolver from his belt, formed them into ranks, and marched them off. He walked last, the revolver in his hand. She watched till they were out of sight on the road just grey with morning twilight. Then she went on into Ballybar.
There was nothing to stay for: nothing but the houses foundering in the sea of fire and one or two of the boys’ bodies lying in the road. Ken Conroy was there, dead, under the wall of a burning house. She understood the blow he had given her and the reason for it, and she forgave him, and took up his little jockey’s body and carried it and laid it under the wall of the graveyard just beyond the end of the street. She kissed the dead face before she laid him in the dust, and that was the last thing she did in Ballybar.
“You see,” she said, “Mrs. O’Riorden doesn’t understand how it was. She says she would like to have been at the funeral, as though it were something with nice wreaths and singing. But, you see, it was like that. And I couldn’t tell her, could I?”
“No, my dear,” I said, looking down at the earnest face, so young with its eyes so grey, “I think you were wise and strong to leave it as you did.”
“And if I’d talked about it,” she said, “it would have been very hard not to mention Oliver. And I didn’t want to do that, because Rory was very fond of you, and he loved Oliver once. He wouldn’t have wished it. There’s sorrow enough in the world, without my coming between friends.”
Then I cried, cried as I had never cried before, as I shall never cry again, tears of anguish for the wrong that had been done, tears for Rory lying beyond the reach of tears in a far-off draughty barn, tears for Oliver venting his savage sorrow as he marched hopelessly along the road of twilight, tears of humiliation at the wisdom and steadfastness of the girl at my side. She walked along quietly, embarrassed by the sobs that shook me, looking shyly into my face from time to time.
“You’re too good, too good,” I managed to say at last. “Why should you protect me like this?”
“Good?” she said. “No, I’m not good. I’m trying to be sensible, that’s all. Aren’t you sad and lonely like the rest of us? Very well, then.”
We walked in silence for a while, and then I asked her: “What are you going to do now?”
“Do?” she asked with surprise. “Why, I must go back.”
“Must you?”
“Why, yes. A few more days and I shall be strong enough. There’s a lot still to do.”
I left her at Eileen’s gate.
*
She wrote to me when she got back, and told me that Rory had been buried at Ballybar. Then she left that part of the country and engaged in I know not what work in Dublin. Her letters continued to reach me irregularly, but never a hint was there as to what she was doing. And then in January, 1922, the Treaty with Ireland was signed, and she wrote me a letter of anguish. She was irreconcilable. With Charles Burgess and de Valera and Mary MacSwiney she turned her back on the old comrades of the long and bloody fight. Then, for the only time, she mentioned Rory’s name. “If Rory were alive, his gun would be pointing at Michael Collins now.”
She was still in Dublin, and moved by I know not what impulse I went to see her. She was consorting daily with black rebellious women, indulging in orgies of despair. And soon all this was to issue in a country cleft again, brother turning the knife in brother’s wound. When that was over, she sailed for America; and no news ever reached me or Dermot again of Rory’s widow.
At the end of that last brief visit to her in Dublin, I sailed for Holyhead in a mood of misery. Ireland and the Irish and the Cause of Ireland and Irish Patriots had haunted my life from that far-off day when Dermot bowed to the memory of the Manchester Martyrs in an Ancoats bedroom. Gladly I watched the coast fade behind me.
At Holyhead my coach was shared by four raffish-smart young men who played cards for high stakes. Their voices had a shrill nervous edge; their eyes were swift yet furtive.
At Chester one of them said: “The Captain’ll have to change here for Manchester. Better get out and say good-bye.”
They tumbled out on to the platform. I got out, too, to stretch my legs. From farther down the train came a group of men, led by one whose face I felt I ought to know. The two groups mingled, with loud and hearty greetings, back-slapping and nervous laughter.
Then I and my four travelling companions got back into our compartment. The window was down, and the captain and his group gathered there. The train began to move. “Well, boys,” the captain shouted, “remember the motto: no work while there’s a bank to rob.”
He took off his felt hat and waved it, and suddenly I remembered Captain Dennis Newbiggin. Plumage made a spot of bright colour in the band of his hat.
“You boys demobbed at last?” I asked my companions.
None of them answered. They looked at me furtively, suspiciously, as they shuffled the cards and went on playing for high stakes.