The Red Route; or, Saving a Nation

Front matter

I THE RED ROUTE OR SAVING A NATION THE RED ROUTE OR jiafring e BY WILLIAM SIME AUTHOR OF "KING CAPITAL," " TO AND FRO," ETC. VOL. III. LONDON : W. SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., Paternoster Square. 1884. Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Limited, London and Aylesbury. CONTENTS VOLUME III. CHAP. PAGE I. SECRETARYSHIP I II. EILEEN TRAVELS WITH THE FLAG . 1 6 III. BACK FROM THE MOUNTAINS . . 31 IV. FINN GETS AN INCOME ... 42 V. UNCLE ARTHUR 60 VI. AT THE RESIDENT MAGISTRATE'S . 78 VII. FINN IN POLITICAL SOCIETY . . 91 VIII. GORTON BECOMES DISAGREEABLE . 107 IX. INTERMEDIATION . . . . 117 X. WOOING 13d XI. PLOTTING 145 XII. REACTION 155 XIII. AT CLARGES STREET .... 167 XIV. CONNECTING IT AVITH THE PAST . 181 XV. PERMEATION I90 VI CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE XVI. BACK TO THE CLADDAGH . . . 1 99 XVII. THE DISCOVERY 212 XVIII. BEFORE THE MARRIAGE . . . 223 XIX. THE INSTRUMENT OF VENGEANCE . 229 XX. LIBERATED IRELAND ....

Chapter I. Secretaryship

Finn stayed some weeks in Brighton, and got the first and only instalment of money he ever received from Mr. O'Gee during his connection with him. Nominally he was invested in an income of four hundred a year ; really, he had, nothing. But, as O'Gee told him on his way up to London, it was a great comfort to a man in his position to have a young gentleman connected with the land in the capacity of secretary. Not that he, O'Gee, had any feeling about the inequality of Irishmen. God knew that a mercantile assistant, a labourer in the fields, a fisherman from the shores were all open to such employment about his person, if they had knowledge and political talent. But London was a place which demanded tact VOL. III. I and presence in a secretary, and when a secretary had a mother who owned an estate, and who, no doubt, would be willing to make an ample allowance for his support, it was very satisfactory all round.

Finn thought ruefully, if affectionately, of his poor mother's well kept little farm of a few acres, and sighed ; but as, at the moment, he was in no want of money, he felt no very poignant regrets at the prospect of its continued absence. He believed he would be certain to get along somehow. He was so excited at the prospect of being in London at all, that he had no room in his mind for anything but extravagant and glowing expectation. He was not a little confused at the great station of Victoria, where they stopped, and where there was so much Saxon shouting, pushing, and confusion. In the midst of it all, however, and while a porter was wheeling O' Gee's luggage and a portmanteau of his over to a cab, he heard some bystanders call out the patriot's name. Everybody seemed to know him, and Finn straightened himself to a swagger as he fol lowed O'Gee to a cab.

His astonishment was increased when the porter's head inserted SEC RE TA R YSHIP. 3 itself at the window and in broad Hibernian accent exclaimed, " More power to your arm, Mr. O'Gee, sir." " The cause is good," replied the patriot promptly. " Keppel Street," shouted the porter, and the cabman drove away to Bloomsbury, going out through the gates with a blaze of light and among such a crush of vehicles as even Brighton had not boasted. " They talk about the West being over populated ; what is it to this ! " exclaimed Finn. " What indeed!" said his companion, finish ing the remains of a flask which he had filled with spirits for their brief journey. " But then there's always money circulating here — plenty of it, O'Brien." " It would be desirable to get hold of some of it," said Finn, lost in contemplation of the rushing curricles, the high green-and-yellow omnibuses, the interchange of shouting, and the passengers on the sideways.

"Quick now," said O'Gee, "put your head out and look at Westminster — that's the Abbey, with some of Ireland's noblest dust among its stones; those are the Houses of Legislature farther along; the Thames lies beyond. Ah ! O'Brien, Legislation, and Administration of Justice, and Kings in their tombs — Kings of Literature, Art, and Science — Kings of Men, — it's a great story, my boy, one that is calculated to make young blood tingle in its veins. We can't stop to look at it or moralise upon it to-night. If you stay here and succeed, you will see more of it by and-by. Here now is a magnificent street, ducal houses to the right — the Queen herself lives in a palace beyond the park that lies behind these public offices." Finn said nothing, and nothing was said till they drove into Trafalgar Square.

It was a bright, frosty evening, and the moon was shining over the square and upon the great pillared front of the National Gallerv. " The great paintings of Europe hang inside these walls, O'Brien, the pilferings of many old churches. You will sometimes go in and stand before a Raphael, or a Murillo, and feel a new pride in the fact that Ireland alone keeps up the traditions that can produce such art. Only religion, my boy, in the highest .sense," SECRETAR YSHIP. 5 said O'Gee, who seemed to Finn to be speaking, but who was actually shouting, "in the sense that it is known and understood among the Catholic populace of Ireland, will ever give us pictures like these again. They think and talk as if the prowling hag, Science, will yet find us such. Not at all. This is a curious place we are now in, O'Brien, the Seven Dials.

Many of our poor countrymen live and thrive and multiply here." " It has a homely sort of appearance," said Finn, who looked out upon three brass balls on a wall, and a small crowd, visibly Irish, going to and fro beneath them. Presently they were in Oxford Street, and turning into Tottenham Court Road were not long in having their luggage and themselves deposited at the Keppel Street door. Finn thought the erect little woman, with a cap and ribbons, and a shrill voice, not very genial in her reception. Why, if the patriot had gone in at any door in the West, he would have been welcomed with effusive expressions of thanks and gratitude. This chill erectness had no word of welcome, but only opened a door on the lowest floor and screamed for a servant, who, very dirty and unkempt, looked over the banisters, with a broom in hand.

Mr. O'Gee owed the landlady a quarter's rent, which probably had something to do with the absence of enthusiasm on her part; but Finn did not know that, and if he did, he would not have realised that for a paltry debt any one could have been so mean spirited as to show it in his or her manner. Mrs. O'Gee and the children were at King ston, so for a night or two Finn was told he could accommodate himself at Keppel Street, until he had found such rooms for himself as he cared to occupy. The Bloomsbury neighbourhood abounded in advantageous rooms, he was told, and it was desirable that he should be within easy reach of Mr. O'Gee; on the Monday following he could go out about and satisfy himself. Finn felt very proud and exuberant that first night of his arrival, for there were several letters awaiting him, one from Father Hugh, one from Mrs. Lynch, one from Sister Maria, in the name of Eileen Conran, and one from General Gorton.

O'Gee handed the bunch over to him, with the remark, — "I hope you have no compromising secrets, SECRET A R YSHIP. 7 Mr. O'Brien ; one, at least, of these letters has been read, or I am much mistaken." It was Gorton's ; but there was nothing very compromising in it. It told O'Brien that the mill was now in excellent working order, that the miller had more than one agency in London, and that his representative would find Finn out, and probably give him something to do. And he expected that Finn would not forget the service in which he had enlisted ; it was added in a P. S. that nothing was to be written home about Michael Conran. Sister Maria's letter was only a short note, embodying Eileen's wish to know everything in detail which had occurred to her father on board the hooker, and expressing a hope that Mr. O'Brien was none the worse for his long sea journey.

Father Hugh's was written in the name of his mother, and contained advice to him to immediately become connected with the Catholic Church of his neighbourhood, that in such a connection alone would he find a safeguard against the innumerable tempta tions of a residence in London, and that the enclosed letter, to a friend of his own, at a part of London called Brompton, would ensure him a welcome. Father Hugh expressed his pleasure that Finn had been so happily attached to one so distinguished as Abraham O'Gee, a man for whose abilities he had the very highest regard, though he did not believe that pro fessional patriotism was the path that Ireland had to tread, if it were bent upon prosperity and religion. Still, for Finn's sake, he believed the connection to have been of Providence's own devising, and he trusted that in God's own good time he would be put on the way of life best suited to his tastes and talents.

Father Hugh ended with his blessing and assurance that Mrs. O'Brien bore up bravely under the news of Finn's expulsion from the college, and that the whole neighbourhood had devoted itself to little offices of kindness in her behalf, being touched by the account of her son's departure by sea. Mrs. Lynch's letter was an answer to Finn's long descriptive epistle ; it was shorter than he would have liked it to be. But he almost literally devoured it, as he sat in the bedroom at the top of the Keppel Street house, readino and rereading it. The faint violet aroma, even more than the words, seemed to summon SECRETA R YSHIP. 9 before him the widow in all her beauty and benignance. The letter itself ran : — " My dear Mr. O'Brien,— I do not mind saying that your letter lifted a great load from my heart.

I was exceedingly anxious to know that your rickety boat had got ashore safely, and during the stormy nights I lay awake several times wondering where it might be. Now that you are in England, of course, you are safe. In London, I believe, you are eminently safe. You will find, I am sure, that what alarms the authorities here does not alarm them in London. I fancy you may talk anything anywhere, and no one will very much care. London is so loyal to London, so national within its own bounds, and feels it so difficult to take seriously anything that goes on outside the nation of London, that every refugee is safe in it. He may be neglected, or he may become a curiosity, as he has f. mind to. No doubt you will prefer neglect for some little time. The story of your hardship at sea — did the pilot suffer much ? — touched me exceedingly.

Father John has pointed out to me how noble, how truly religious it is to be willing to die for one's country, though I wish, for your own sake, that you, and others, did not so much insist upon the West being your country and all that is worth living for. However, I am now so far of your way of thinking that I believe, until something has been done for everybody out here, every Irishman ought to feel that it is his country, and that he owes loyalty to no party, or throne, or government till its condition is altered. I. am afraid this is sad treason. My brother tells me it is. But it is the truth, and in throwing my house and grounds open to my own tenants, I am beginning to do a little for the cause espoused by your leader, Mr. O'Gee. I am one of those who believe in Mr. O'Gee. I think you have been so fortunate in becoming attached to him in so curious and romantic a way.

It seems impossible to believe, at this time of day, that events can proceed as you describe them. At prosy old Brighton, the watery suburb of London, it seems hard to believe such a meeting could take place. Now I have written enough. As for your protestations, my dear Mr. O'Brien, of esteem and even something more robust, believe me I accept them as one at least three years your senior may be permitted to accept them. I shall watch your career with great interest, and when I come to town in the summer I shall hope to see something of you. Morris asks me to send his love to you. He is quite a little savage ; I cannot tame him. I think of sending him to a public school in England. He gets beyond me. " Sincerely yours, " Beatrice Lynch." Mr. O'Gee was in high good humour that evening, and called Finn down from his bed room among the eaves, and was especially so when the lad showed him the letter from Mrs. Lynch.

" Upon my word, Sir Jonah who came out SECRETA R YSHIP. 11 of the whale's belly, it's one of the finest matches in Ireland. I knew the late Major Lynch well — well, sir, and it's a curious cir cumstance if these estates are not worth a good three thousand a year. Mr. Secretary, I congratulate you, indeed, upon your friend ship ; the widow is what an older generation would have called a toast, and a toast, sir, she shall be, if you hand me that copper kettle. I find a little Jamaica rum and hot Water a good thing just before going to bed, notwithstanding that the doctors say there is too much sugar in it for an elderly man's constitution. But the quantity of sweetness required for the desert air of politics is more than you can imagine. I drink to your Mrs. Lynch, with cordiality and congratulation."

" I thank you, sir, from the bottom of my heart," said Finn, also drinking a little of the West Indian decoction, and looking round the tall apartment, which was sparsely lit by one great lamp. There was a bassinette upside down in a corner, a hobby-horse with a wooden young gentleman on his back was in a fixed condition of gallop at the open door of an inner room ; a sideboard was heaped with documents tied up with red tape ; the windows, opening on to a balcony overlooking the street, showed numerous flower-pots without flowers. " If you would pull down the blinds, O'Brien, we would be more comfortable. I have a great deal of work to overtake to-morrow, as you may see from that crowded sideboard ; and before we separate you'd better understand some of your duties. Well, my practice in the courts or in consultation is not always accom panied by fees.

Clients are dilatory, — -clients of our own country notoriously so, — and in these cases I would like you to jog up their memory with an occasional letter, if not with a personal interview. But that is the least part of your duty. The state of Irish party politics is such, that you will, when it is known you are my secretary, be constantly solicited for news of my intentions by representatives of the press. With regard to that, I must advise you to cultivate a dark demeanour. If you will pardon me for making the remark, O'Brien, you have an appearance of greenness which is by no means part of your character. That will be a considerable assistance to you. The mask of ingenuousness, when it is well worn, is SECRETAR YSHIP. 13 as effective as any other — more so, in fact, and more pleasant to look upon ; and even if people learn to disbelieve in ingenuousness as an indication of character, they regard it leniently as rather a pretty kind of peculiarity.

Well, in putting yourself in relationship to those who are curious to know the moves in our game, you are safe to give such ingenuous answers as occur to you, but never give the whole truth at any one time ; indeed, I may say that you will never be permitted to know the whole truth, which is a condition of mind that will often save you from committing your self. But dole out what of it you do know in homœopathic doses. If it were not that you are a man of property, a pretty little income could be made by paragraphing my intentions for Fleet Street consumption. However, London is an expensive place to live in, and you may find it judicious to augment your means in that way. They are, I flatter myself, rather inte rested in my intentions at present, as I am carrying our constitutional war of Irish liberation into England.

We are numerically, O'Brien, but a handful, but we are potent at that, for every man is a speaker from the cradle upwards, and no member of my party has any interest, if it be not remotely and at intervals a fat picking, which is one of the accidents which must occur among a needy following like Ireland. On the whole, however, we are at present in a great way, as you know. Well, you will understand that I have a large correspondence. Fetch me that tea-box from the other room. These— you see what has been accumulating — are three weeks' accumulation. To-morrow you may open and arrange them somewhat in this order. You will find, I should suppose, in a collection like that, five-and-twenty from Sherryderry. Probably none of them require an answer now. A good fifty will be tradesmen's threats, and a good rule for letters of that sort is ' tear in two, and put in waste-paper basket ! ' In fact, until you are otherwise instructed, you may destroy every account you see, even as you would put your foot upon a cockroach upon that floor.

Some of these letters may be from Dublin solicitors. Open all such and keep for an answer. Some of them may be invitations to dine — we are not very popular, our party, at Buckingham Palace or Marlborough House, in SECRETAR YSHIP. 15 Downing Street or the Embassies, but we dine a little notwithstanding — only, Mrs. O'Gee will probably forestall you in these matters, and will have ransacked all the dinner tickets and invitations before you proceed to your day's work. And now about dividing your labour. Suppose you sit down to work at ten — I will generally join you in the forenoon some time, when I am not elsewhere. Three hours will generally finish your work. Let me see you in the evening again from four to six, when you will be entirely your own master. And now, good-night."

Chapter II. Eileen Travels With The Flag

As the little steamboat threw off her ropes on the stream above the bridge at Galport, one bright forenoon towards the end of the year, Eileen Conran was sitting at the bow. There were heaps of barrels and boxes round and about her, so that she was not visible to any body, though she looked keenly through the open lane of light on both sides of her, as the paddles beat the water and the steamer emerged into the first open bay outside Loughan. She gazed across the dark water at Father John's chapel ; she could see the priest getting up on horseback at the churchyard gate. She sighed as the steamer beat its way beyond the islands, and the sedged shore, and the blue mist on the roofs of the huts. Eileen had never been farther away from the Claddagh than one of the islands in the Atlantic, and she had gone thither with her father, and had had all the attention paid to her that his pre sence commanded.

This time she was to take a long journey all by herself; she was to be told, Gorton had informed her, wherever she went, where her next destination would be. She was setting out to show the flag of the rising to the men of the West. As she sat there at the bow of the steamboat, she felt the flag encircling her waist, as a sash, and it sent a glow of exultant enthusiasm to her heart and brain, so that she stood up and let the December breeze play with her hair, and a song of the old Celtic times flowed naturally to her lips. She sang to herself, looking out on the sunlit expanse of dark water, and in imagination she saw the shores of the Lough clad with armed men, called to their work by her. And she did not so much as shed a tear for her home in the Claddagh nor her absent father. Had not Gorton promised that there should be a light in the seaward window every night till she returned, and was not her place at the bridge to be taken by Conny Carmichael, her friend, though Conny's father was little of a friend to her father ?

Yes, it was all beauti- VOL. III. fully arranged, and she was to be the proud instrument of spreading the great news of the deliverance that was preparing beyond the seas, and which but needed the signal to set all men free. Time after time she unloosed her cloak, having first made sure that nobody was by, and looked down at the sash, to assure herself that it was actually there, tying her tightly up in the cause. Then, as the wide, blue moun tains on the left hand loomed into view she resumed her seat, gratified and strong, and determined that her mission should be accom plished in every detail, so that her name would yet be mentioned in that Ireland beyond the seas, and the girl who carried the flag might be remembered even when she was dead. "And these things like chimneys — what are they ?

" " The remains of ventures, sir, ventures that have ruined three or four companies ; lead mills some of them, distilleries some of them. Nothing ever prospers here. It' s all threatened away, sir, or shot away. Take my word for it, they're a miserable, God-forsaken people who can come to no good, because they won't allow good to come and stay amongst them. Now we have a benevolent nobleman at Lough Head. He used to come among them. He built them outhouses to teach them model habits, English habits, sir, our habits, as I may say, if I am not mistaken in your nation. Yes, sir, English habits ; but what do they do with their outhouses but put their milk-cans in 'em, and their cheese ? Savages, sir, savages they are. Before I went engineer and purser of this boat, I seen most of the world, and you t ake my word for it, sir, savages they are.

You go to Lough Head, sir, with a fine bright day, and no disturbance on the water ; we'll touch the quay in something under three hours. I'll lift your ticket now, sir. I've got to look after my stokers." Eileen heard that conversation behind her, and when it was done, Jeffery walked forward and leaned over the bow for a moment, looking into the spray. Then he turned, and Eileen, now standing, was looking at him. " Out of the foam, or in a ray of sunlight from the mountains, or how ? " asked Jeffery, throwing away a cigar and taking Eileen's hands in his own. "Why, you are perishing, positively perish ing with cold, and no wonder, sitting here all by yourself, and a breeze like this playing in your face. I don't know how you are here, why, or where you have come from, whether it is a supernatural visitation, as it may be in this land of miracles, but as long as you are actually in the body you shall come aft — I am the only passenger — and sit in the shelter and share a very recherche little luncheon.

Come, Eileen, and tell me all about it, when we are at the other end." They walked to the saloon together, seeing no one on their way aft ; there was no one to see them as they sat down on one of the cabin sofas. The luncheon was as good as the captain called it; and before they spoke much, they sat smiling into each other's faces, while he handed her a flask and the best-made sand wiches in the West. She had no previous experience of that kind of delicacy and she ate them accordingly with much zest, though she had an afterthought of fear and trembling when she experienced the affectionate ardour of Jeffery's eyes and remembered the sash at her waist and the mission it betokened. EILEEN TRAVELS IVITH THE FLAG. 21 " Eileen, I am so glad to see you, that I shall sit still and look at you for a little, and I sha'n't say a word to you."

Eileen was glad of the respite ; she knew the next question would be, why was she there at all ? " Now, then," she said, anticipating him, " I'll hold my peace, too, when I've told you that I thought you would be hard at work, soldiering." " Why am I here ? That's it, is it ? Little one, you don't think I've followed you. No, but as you know I've found a sister — the widow Lynch — and I've taken some days to see how her estates stand at Lough Head — her estates, Eileen, your estates, yours, my bonny lass, as I shall prove. Great lawyers say so. And now, what about your venturesome voyage ? Where do you go to ? " They were sitting clasped in each other's arms now, and she looked tremblingly into his face. " Nothing could induce me to tell you. No, no; you must let me have my own secret. We Catholics all have our secrets," she added nervously, as he held her at arm's length and looked dubiously into her face.

" It is only a secret of your religion then?" But she found that now she loved him so much she could not tell him a falsehood. No, it was not a religious secret. Then she must be travelling for the Claddagh people ? She only sighed as he said so. Her great indigo mantle was loose, and the sash at that moment showed itself. " Why, you are wearing a flag! " said the soldier. " Now you know, and if it's love there is in your heart for me, you will not ask more." " Eileen, I spy danger, and I see a way out of it. What is to hinder it ? We are free — we are together in the wilds. No one knows us. Let us marry, and the flag shall be our coverlet." " I thought they laid it on the coffins only," said the girl, musing. And they went up together on deck, from which they saw that a great mountain range had broadened upon the Western aspect, that the sun was lighting up innumerable thickets of fir, that turf-boaxs, with their brown sails set, were scudding from island to island, and that Lough Head, overlooked EILEEN TRAVELS IVITH THE FLAG. 23 by the turrets of an old castle, was visibly within reach.

" Eileen, my darling, you must tell me more about that flag. You don't know what troubles you may get yourself into." " No more, no more," said the girl. " I have work to do with it, and I will bid you good-bye now, for there will be a cart waiting for me at the pier-head ; and it will not do for the people I go amongst to see us together. I am going away amongst the mountains for a little time on work you would not understand. Now that is the last kiss, the very last, and I am away to my place again." He let her go as the steamer glided into an exquisite little bay, overhung by larches and edged with pliant willow trees, which, though stripped of their greenery, gave a cosy appear ance to the place. The pier was wooden, and as the December sunlight fell upon the larches in the rear of it, only four men were visible, a constable, two men in connection with the steamer, and a man with a car.

The car was for Jeffery, and he had his things promptly carried to it, keeping an eye upon Eileen all the time. There was nobody waiting for her. She carried a simple willow basket in her hand, and with her cloak wrapped tightly about her, she disappeared into a highroad, having curtseyed to Jeffery as she passed out. "Now, how far is Muckara from this?'1 asked the captain, feeling as desolate and uncomfortable as might be. " Three miles, sir, no more. We'll go over the road in less than no time. I'm glad to see your honour. You're the first of the family that has ever visited Muckara. I've got one of the rooms in fine order for your honour. And if any ponies was to be sent round, there's not so many holes in the stable but what we could put them up." " I'll have no horses sent up. I'll drive, Patrick."