Irish Rebels. A novel

Front matter

a movel BV ALEXANDER M'ARTHUR — rV Aiithor of "Our Musical Tour," " Nicolo dsi," "Rubinstein A Biography," " Poor wand'rere of a stormy day, From wave to wave we're driven, And Fancy's Hash and Reason's ray Serve but to light the troubled way."— Moore. LONDON DIGBY, LONG & CO., Publishers lS BOUVERIE STREET, FLEET STREET, E.C. Copyrighted at Washington, U.S.A., October, 1893, by E. M'Arthur. INDEX. CUAPTER I'AflR I. — College boys, 9 II. — The brazen head, 15 III. — The scratched pistol, 31 IV. — King is threatened, 45 Y. — A PICNIC IN THE DARGLE, - - - - 52 VI. — AN ENGLISHMAN, 66 VII. — Instructions, 78 VIIL — On the road, ........... 86 IX. — An irish farmhouse, 95 X. — Murder, - - - .... IOj XL — A murderer, 115 XII. — Eating his dinners, - - - . 133 XIIL — No nationalists, 144 XIV. — A firm refusal, 153 XV. — A FUGITIVE, .-..--- 164 XVI. — What an irish girl did for her lover, - 170 XVII. — Imprisonment, i76 XVIII. — Murder will our, ----- 186 XIX.— Eavesdropping, 200 XX. — Death, 212 XXI. — Tin: end, inscribed to m. 2). #. in sincere friendship.

Chapter I. College Boys

Towards the close of a hot summer's evening in June, after a few hours' outing in the Phœnix Park, large numbers of the Dublin citizens were taking their way leisurely townwards along the banks of the Liffey. It was Sunday, and the streets were filled with good-humoured crowds in their holiday attire, gaily jesting one with another — no inconsiderable number of these being artisans with their sweet hearts or their wives and children. Amongst the crowds was one group of young men specially noticeable, Trinity men or college boys as the citizens dub students of the University, and these were walking in close conclave oblivious to all sights and scenes around them, as they argued and laid down the \a.\v- — all of them were barristers in embryo — on various subjects with the arrogance and assurance of youth in their teens.

The three looked and were gentlemen, despite the carelessness of their attire, their ungloved hands and dusty boots, and were unmistakably Irish. The exuberance of their spirits, dramatic gestures, read)- retort, witty similies, and hearty laughter that diversified their conversation pro claiming at once their nationality. When the}- reached the site of the Eour Courts, as the Law Courts in Dublin are called, they stood for some minutes still in eager discussion, then Gerald Eitzgerald, the one who was leaning against the low stone parapet confining the river, said impatiently, as he pulled out his watch and opened it : " Ten o'clock! Well, why doesn't Lowry come? We cannot stay here all night, and I am sure that is a detective over there at the corner watching us. Let us walk on.'' " Pshaw !

" said the handsomest of the three, a young fellow of medium height, but splendidly built, with dark hair, and the Irish blue eyes fringed with dark lashes. " Why should we ? You see a detective in ever)- stray beggar. We have nothing treasonable about our persons, and if we are what the bobbies call 'loitering' I suppose we have a right to ; fortunately our clothes are whole." And if Lowry comes?" said Fitzgerald, quietly. Well, what then ? " " Look here, O'Donoghue, Fitzgerald is right," said the youngest of the part)", breaking in im petuously, a fair, blue-eyed, young fellow, taller than the others, as he looked gravely down at his companions. " Let us do as he suggests. Let us go towards Capel Street. Lowry must come that way." O'Donoghue shrugged his shoulders. "Well, Bourke, if you will have it so, two against one decides the question, but I don't see the necessity of all this fuss.

They cannot grab us in daylight." " No ; but they can suspect us, and with a society like ours it is our duty to be cautious." " Cautious," said O'Donoghue, with a scornful flash of his handsome eyes. " Cowardly, you mean." " Well, cowardly, if you like, and be hanged to you," retorted Fitzgerald, hastily, with a good humoured laugh, as he turned on his heel and led the way. All three then moved on, and they had gone a considerable distance leisurely, when a tall, massive figure approached them, a man who looked a personage, and made an impression at once, with his keen, intelligent eyes, thick, dark hair, humorous mouth and strong firm jaw and chin. " Lowry ! there he comes ! " cried all together. " Well, you see, we might just as well have stayed on the bridge," said O'Donoghue, quickly.

O'Donoghue always liked to have his own way, and always believed his way was best. " Faith, yes, sure we'll never get over the exertion, old boy," replied Fitzgerald, with comical pathos. " Well, bhoys, how are yez ? " asked Lowry, in his loud, musical tones, and with a rich brogue he cultivated strenuously from patriotism, as he smiled and nodded to them. " I am as dry as bone me self. Run on before, Charlie, me bhoy, and get Pat to brew a bowl of punch as strong as blazes," and as he finished he laid his massive hand in a vice-like grip — it was his way of showing affection — on his favourite's shoulder, O'Donoghue. O'Donoghue never winced. " Mind, me bhoy, none of his Scotch wather, but a pint of the rale mountain dew, ould Kinahan's best." " And what will we have to eat ? " " Och, the divil a matther," said Lowry. with a shrug of indifference, "whatever ye loike ; ye can all do the eatin' and let me do the drinken.

I am just lost wid the drooth" (thirst). " Let me have devilled kidneys and new potatoes," said Fitzgerald, eagerly. " Lamb chops for me," said Bourke, with a gravity of decision that bespoke his future great ness on the bench. " Och, bhoys," cried Lowry, impatiently, " the divil fly away wid yer appetites ; shure it's only in the Phœnix Park ye have been, not at a hunt, and here we arc at the bridge, too, and there niver was a poor devil so lost for a dhrop as meself this blessed minit. Charlie, aroon, run on, hone)-, and do what I ax ye." " Well, all right, I am gone," said O'Donoghue, smiling, as with firm, long strides he soon out distanced his party, hurrying on over the river to Bridge Street, till he reached the narrow pathway leading to the Brazen Head Hotel. Once O'Donoghue was gone, Lowry altered his pace, and finding this, the two young men looked anxiously up into his face, for Lowry was one of those men who seemed half able to bring his hearers into sympathy with himself before even he had uttered a word.

" Poor Charlie," he ejaculated. " Has he anything to do with it ? " asked Fitz gerald, breathlessly. " Yes," said Lowry, impressively, as he stopped and looked around him, " the word is given." For the space of a few minutes' during which they continued their way, no one spoke, then Bourke said, with a long-drawn sigh of emotion, " Well, well, after all he will have a glorious deed to perform. It shocks one and seems awful, but we have no other weapons ; we are powerless to help our country otherwise." " And ould Blunderbuss King evicted fourteen families yesterday ; his blood be upon his own head," said Lowry, excitedly. Fitzgerald shook his head mournfully, and the three continued their way in silence till they reached the quaint old courtyard before the still quainter old inn — inn despite its title of hotel — and entering they went to one of the old-fashioned parlours on the left, while O'Donoghue, quite unconscious of the task about to be given him, stood awaiting them in high spirits, with a bowl of punch read)' steaming on the table, and a promise of eatables to follow. IKISH REBELS. 15

Chapter II. The Brazen Head

WHEN Lowry entered he threw aside his straw hat and sat down with a sigh of content. He never felt himself so free and comfortable any where as in the Brazen Head, perhaps for the reason that he was thoroughly at home there, adored and served by every person about the place, and hidden from hundreds of bores and busi ness people thronging the rooms of his own town residence in Fitzwilliam Square. Besides, for a patriot such as he was many were the memories that hung around the place with its old-fashioned air and quiet, so strange to find in the city ; for although the hotel was ostensibly in Bridge Street, yet, hidden and secluded in its old courtyard, no stir or breath of the teeming life outside disturbed it. In olden times, before the Union, when the country coaches had rattled up to its doors, and Ireland's trade brought wealth and gold into the country, it had been a great place, and later on, in more troublesome and less prosperous times, had been a favourite haunt of the Young Irclanders.

Under its roof many a seditious paper had been concocted and penned, man}- a rebel toast been drunk, and in the old-fashioned bedrooms, opening out on to the long corridor upstairs, man)- a sleepless night had been passed by Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his companions, many a midnight conclave had been held in the storm}- times that darken the latter end of the last century. To Lowry memories such as these counted for much. Men dead and gone, yet bound to him by the self-same ties and hopes and fears, had sat in the same rooms thinking and planning for their country's liberation, as he and his friends were doing. Ever}- old-fashioned picture he gazed on bespoke the past, ever}- rickety piece of ancient furniture suggested a memory, and that how sad. Brave men, great men, noble men with reckless aims, wild hopes, and terrible resolves burning their brains and stirring their hearts' blood with feverish excitement, had lived and worked under the roof of the old inn, only to die not far off on the gallows or in exile.

A very world of blasted hopes seemed in the air of the old place vet despite all the work of those patriots, the country they loved and bled for, la}- in slaver}-. Ireland was still unhappy, her people in chains, and Lowrv never realised this more vividly than in the Brazen Head. Lowry was one of the chief ornaments of the Irish bar, a passionate patriot, and although hated and despised by the Orangemen, such was his splendid oratory, his learning, and his reasoning, that he had stepped over the heads of all before him in easy victory, and won fame and power in spite of every obstacle placed in his way. He was blessed with exuberant spirits, a perfect genius for wit and retort, a splendid physique, and a brogue that alone would be sufficient to make his fortune; besides, he had that gift so peculiarly Irish of making friends wherever he went.

Once his acquaintances came to know him, they loved him ever after, whilst amongst his own circle he possessed a power unlimited. Strangely enough, he was a Protestant ; perhaps to this he owed his success, for as he often said very truly himself, " Were I a Papist, I wouldn't be allowed daylight." But, despite his religion, his patriotism was like one perpetual billow surging through his whole life. " I never can make head or tail out of this Irish question ; what is it that you do want, my dear Lowry ? " said an English peer to him once as they went arm in arm down Grafton Street. B "Want!" said Lowry, hurrying on — "want!" he echoed, pointing to the noble building once the Irish Parliament House — " want ! we want that restored ; we want the rights your fathers robbed us of ; and, by heaven, we'll have them too !

" He had spoken so excitedly that a group of ragged gamins gathered about him and, turning a series of somersaults, cried shrilly: " A spach ! a spach ! More power to your elbow, Counsellor ! Three cheers for Lowry ! " And before the eyes of the astonished English man a crowd as vast and mysterious as that called up by Roderick Dhu's whistle had gathered, and, nothing loth, Lowry spoke for some five or ten minutes one of his most eloquent harangues, full of sedition, pathos, and passion, totally obstructing the traffic of the city in one of the chief thoroughfares at three in the afternoon. Then laughing, Lowry and the Englishman got up together on an outside car, and once out of the muck and rabble, the peer said quickly, moved out of his coolness by the extraordinary scene he had witnessed and the open rebelliousness and lawlessness of Lowry's speech : " Well, hang it, what can a sane Government do with a people like you ?

You almost convert me to Home Rule, for what could be better as punishment than to give you your clamoured-for Parlia ment and let you make ducks and drakes of your own business." " Which would surely be much more amusing than to look on at your doing it for us," said Lowry, quickly, with one of his slyest winks. Outside all his bluster and passion Lowry was a keen man of business — a man who, once having laid his hand to the plough, would stop at nothing; and after studying the Irish question in all its aspects it seemed to him that only one line of action could be taken by the Irish, and that the very terrrible one combined in the joint ideas — secrecy and no quarter. Like most Irishmen he was a man of tender heart ; he had children that he adored, a wife on whose smiles and frowns he hung as the veriest love-sick boy on those of his mistress, but he could shoot clown a bad landlord with as little compunction as he trapped the rats destroying his corn, and perhaps even less, for Lowry knew what bad landlords meant, and during a long series of years he had been ever ready to combat them.

" Send them to blazes ! " he often cried, with flashing eyes ; " they are carrion, tyrants, robbers; they suck the life-blood of our people ; they lay our smiling valleys desolate ; they scatter our people to the four winds of heaven. Give them no quarter, I say, for never had a country greater enemies. Yes, bhoys, exterminate them as they mercilessly exterminated your forefathers ; remember the blood and desolation that followed their inroads ; shut up the bowels of your mercy now and revenge your country's wrongs." In words like these he spoke to the people, going from town to town and from village to village, all through the length and breadth of Ireland, kindling the fire of insurrection where it slumbered in the hearts of his hearers. An English friend heard him speak to the people so on one occasion, and as they walked together alone, he said, reproachfully, and with surprise, " Ah, Lowry, how you do hate us !

" " Hate," said Lowry, quickly, as his grey eyes softened at the reproach ; " hate, never ; I honour the English, I respect them, ay, even I love them for their worth and bravery ; but let us suppose your best friend were to enter your house to morrow, take up the reins of government, and beat and starve your children, would you love that friend ? would you spare your horsewhip about his shoulders, or waste your politeness in showing him the door? Do not expect impossibilities from us ; you are yourselves to blame.'' Then after a few seconds his eyes blazed and his whole face lit up with scorn. " Yes," he cried, passionately, " I do hate you ; hate you for the cursed robbers that you are ; hate you for the blood of my countrymen you have wallowed in ; hate you for the crudest, bitterest wrongs ever wreaked on a captive people; the foulest brutality that ever cried to Heaven for vengeance.

By Heaven, yes, I hate you — hate you root and branch, now that I remember it. Hate! Great Heaven; it is no word adequate. You look surprised ; you would deny your past deeds to my country, would you ? Learn what the sufferings of Erin have been from the pages of history, years back as of to-day, and cease then to wonder at my hate ; cease to wonder that my heart pants and hungers for that glorious day when the dawn of our freedom commences, and the sun will shine on our liberty." In spite of all his rash speeches to the peasantry, Lowry had wonderfully managed to evade arrest. A sort of freemasonry existed between himself and the people, and he was as fond of outdoing the police as a schoolboy of hoaxing his master. Often after sending out placards of his speeches, which were to take place at a certain place at a certain hour, Lowry and the people met in another district and at another hour, leaving the police to come on the scene like fools.

How Lowry managed these things nobody knew, but he was as much at home with the peasants as he was with his brother barristers ; nor was it an uncommon sight to see " the Counsellor," as the people called him, the chief figure at rural wakes and weddings, dancing a jig with the prettiest and drinking whisky with the best. His Conservative friends said, with a shrug oi their shoulders, "Lowry, oh, a low fellow," and in one sense they were right, for Lowry's tastes were low, or, rather, they were simple. But, to return to the Brazen Head. As Lowry sat in the inn parlour and poured out the punch he looked troubled, so troubled that Charlie O'Donoghue said quickly : " Well, Michael, old man, what's up ? You look down in the mouth." " And feel it, me bhoy ; sure a great thrubble has come over me," he said, sorrowfully, as he looked up to the bright lad at his side.

" Yes, more evictions." " Evictions, ay, sure enough. Ould Blunder buss King evicted fourteen families last Monday, and the poor wretches are starvin' on the roadside. I sint down O'Gorman wid tin pounds, but sure what is tin pounds to fourteen starvin' families, wid nowhere to go to and nothin' to do." Charlie O'Donoghue banged his hand down on the table with a force that made every glass ring and the three men to look up in surprise. " Curse the wretch ! " he cried, with passionate anger. " What sort of a devil's world is this we live in that one man can wreak so much ruin for a sum less than the cost of the wine on his dinner table ? " " Ay, me bhoy, thrue for you. The fourteen families don't owe the ould wretch ,£100 amongst them, and this £100 is arrears of three years' rent for wretched mountain land God Almighty Him self couldn't fertilise."

" What is to be done — what is to be done ? " said Fitzgerald, with a sigh that was a groan. " The more I look into this land question the more downcast I become ; there seems no way out of it." " No way out of it, how then ? No way out of it ! If ye loike, so long as the vampire landlords are with us — for I tell ye, bhoys, the vampires must go — the land must belong to our people, to those who till it, and work on it, and live on it. It is a necessity of our climate, the fault of its uncertainty ; to-day the crops are good, to-morrow they are bad ; this year we have a great potato harvest, next year a famine, and so it goes on ad infinitum, and who suffers — the landlords ? Oh no, not they. Why should they so long as they have others to suffer for them ? No, bhoys ; the peasants must toil late and early to put food into their hungry stomachs, and to stuff the bellies of their landlords wid dainties, and when a bad year comes if they don't do the latther, the divil a wan cares if they do the former; out they go on the roadside to die like dogs, desolation behind them, despair and famine before."

" Lowry, when will you bring this truth home to the Government?" said Willie Bourke, sadly; "how is it that all England looks on ever blind to this truth ? " " Whin, bhoy? don't ax me. I give that hope up long ago. I thried every power under the sun. I thried pathos. I thried threats. I thried narra tive. I gev them the best of me poor orathory ; I stud in their Parliament House wid me heart breakin' for the wrongs of me poor pisanthry, an' whin they rose to answer me wid their cold English sneers, I swore to God Almighty I'd niver thry pathos or feelin' there. Bhoys, listen; I remimber as if it war yesterday, thirty years back whin I was a gossoon at home wid me fayther ; ye all know he was an attorney down in Cork. Well, God be wid those days, sure it was the divil I was thin, nivcr learnin', an' out all day wid the boys bird-nestin' or fishin' or shootin' sparrows wid catepults ; well, anyhow I kem much amongst the peasants an' never wanted a mashed potato or a mug of milk, no matter where I roamed, far or wide, for God help thim, the poor craythurs, it's the last crumb in their cupboards an' the last dhrop in their jugs they'll give to the hungry.

Well, there was one family I got power ful acquainted wid — Pat Reilly's. They owrted a little farm of tin or twelve acres, an' kep' a cow and a few pigs, an' of course they grew their own potatoes an' cabbage. Pat Reilly was sildom behind hand wid the rint, for the wife made that wid the cow an' the pigs and the poulthry, an' Pat looked afther the land ; but sure the potatoes failed wan year, and the wife, instead of layin' by in the ould stockin' undher the bed tickin, had to give the money to Pat to buy mate and potatoes, and, to make matthers worse, the children kotch the scarlet fever, and, begorra, to make a long story short, things wint powerful bad. Well, Pat scratched his head an' tuk counsel wid the neighbours an' thried to see his way out, but the winther kem on, the wife got into the family way, wan child died, an' Pat was like to die afther it, frettin' day an' night, an', av course, whin the rint day came round, Pat couldn't pay.

Thin, there was the situation, the wife about to be sick, no potatoes in the outhouse, the pigs to be fed, Pat in debt fifteen pounds for the quarther's rint, and no chance of risin' it, for he hadn't a relative in the world. And the neighbours round were little better off than he. Well, the spring came on, and wid it the baby and the rint day agin. Then the agint sold the cow for the vampire landlord, an' sure that was the be ginning of the ind ; things went from bad to worse, whin another year the crop failed, and at last Pat and his family — a wife and five children — were out on the road, their little home sold out. Well, bhoys, to see that poor fellow kissin' his children an' his wife, an' beggin' pardon wid salt tears in his eyes for the ruin that had come on them all, would dhraw tears from a stone. ' Sure, Pat, alannah ! ' his wife would sob, ' it's yursilf has been the dacent, hard-workin' lad, and the dhrink niver passin' yer lips ; sure, honey jewel ! don't break me heart wid yer mournful talk ; what have I to forgive ? ' An' there they sat, bhoys, out on the roadside condoling each other, the children sittin' round wid pale sad faces lookin' on an' cryin' too.

Well, the neighbours took pity on their disthress, and Pat found work ; but the time for his wife's sickness wid the sixth child kem round agin, an' what with the worry and the sorrow and the thratement she got in the work house hospital, sure the poor craythur niver raised her head, but just died there, away from her Pat and the children ; an' poor Pat was walkin' outside all the time, lookin' up at the windies and eatin' his heart out wid suspense, till the nurse kem down wid his new-born child an' tould him of Mary's death. Well, bhoys, Pat wint home an' for days he lay like dead ; thin the neighbours gathered a sum together, an' the last I saw of Pat was himself an' the six children, the baby in his arms, on board an emigrant ship, an' a sod from his wife's grave in his pocket. Och, bhoys, I never forgot that sight, never forgot Pat's face as the ship left the quay, nor the look in his eyes as he saw himself torn away from the land where his Mary and he had been so happy, only for the failure of wan potato crap.

Think of it, bhoys ! Thirty pounds ruined him, an' his landlord — a dashin' young sprig of the aristocracy — never sat behind horses that cost less than three hundred pounds, an' paid double poor Pat's rint for his gloves. Och, bhoys, bhoys, sure it's the quare world entirely, an' now here is ould Blunderbuss King at the same game ; fourteen families this blessed night out on the roadside, wid nothing to ate, God help them ! unless O'Gorman has got there by this." O'Donoghue pulled out his purse. " Michael," he said, quickly, " take what is in it ; the governor sent me a trifle for a suit, fifteen pounds, and " " Charlie, Charlie ! no, bhoy, don't," said Lowry, agitatedly, standing up. " Sure, it's the second time this month you have done that, an' this time I won't ask this, but help in another way."

" Help?" said the young fellow, as he glanced up inquiringly into the troubled grey eyes above him. " Yes ; the word is given agin ould King, an' you, me bhoy — you are the one chosen," whispered Lowry. O'Donoghue started a moment and breathed hard. " Yes," he said, faintly ; then he threw up his head and turned back his hair, and filling his glass said, sternly : " To my success, boys ! " That weird toast was drunk in silence. O'Donoghue eat his supper mechanically, listening to Lowry and the others talking on always of the same subject — Ireland and her wrongs — but he took no part in the conversation, and the others made no attempt to include him in it, till at length the clock struck one, and, jumping up in consternation, Willy Bourke said, loudly : " Well, look here you fellows, we'll be locked out again, and you will find old Walters won't let us in two nights running, and that makes the sixth time this month."

" An' it will make the seventh on Wednesday next, for the meeting will be held here at eleven o'clock," said Lowry looking around him lazily and smiling. " It's a hanged nuisance this college custom, and it's all a relic of monkery ; some one ought to put that into Grey's head." said Fitzgerald. " My dear fellow," said Bourke, " Grey would say and a very good custom too ; no fear of bam boozling him." " Well, bhoys, off wid yez," said Lowry, sturdily, " an' don't forget Wednesday next. I'll drink another grog and follow yez a quarther of an hour lather, so as to puzzle the bobby at the corner." A general handshake then followed, that between Lowry and O'Donoghue meaning much, and a few minutes later the college boys were driving rapidly along the quay meditating a plan to soothe the surly Walters.

They stopped the car at Moore's monument, and getting down paid their fare and went humbly enough up to the college gates. After ringing twice, Walters answered them. " Well, young gentlemen," said he quietly, " breaking the rules again ? " " Oh bother, Walters, let us off this time," said Fitzgerald, slipping a half-crown adroitly into his hand. " The Dean asked for you, sir, half an hour ago,"' said the porter quizzingly to Fitzgerald. It was his pet amusement to tease Fitzgerald. " Don't believe him," said Bourke quickly; "the Dean is out himself; he is at La Touche's party." A peal at the outer gate startled all four. " Faith, that's himself," said "Walters, quickly ; " run young gentlemen," he cried good-naturedly, as he opened the second door, and nothing loth the three dashed through and made for their rooms in that portion ofthe college known as Botany Bay.