Part 19

“And I knew you could not be,” he retorted in her own mood. “If you are again on this hill of Kerry, I will be telling you the tale of that Siod clan. There was a woman who came out of the mists long ago, as you have, and left thought and mind on a mortal clan. It is told around the peat fires at fall of night, but they speak of other things when I join their circle.”

“Was she also a flower?”

“No—she was born of the sea, and the name put on her was Moruadh (sea-maid), and it became, in time, Maurya. A prince of the Children of the Sea took her for wife and was banned for it by the druids—and that was even before Padrig was brought captive slave from Gaul.”

“A prince of the Children of the Sea?”

“Munster clans of the west are called that, for their fathers came over the sea from some lost land—yes, that is what has been told of them always.”

“I am coming back some day, Hugh of the Fairies,” she said.

A long signal call came to them. His eyes met hers in question. She nodded her head.

“They are far away yet,” she said, and she seemed reluctant enough at the sound. “So you are of the sons of Irish princes, yet you herd sheep on the Kerry hills?”

“So do others whose genealogies reach to the generations when the Son of Mary was born; true that is, though many would be doubting it. Some souls are born for palaces and walls and roofs—others for the surge of the sea and stout decks—and others to feel ever the springing grass under foot. I am of that last, and Shamas was telling my father never to house me, or break my reed pipe until I had reached height and made my own choice; and I have yet some growing to do.”

“And what will you be then: herder of sheep?”

“I think I will just be playing the pipe to the sheep and singing old songs until you are coming again.”

“To the fairies’ rath?”

“I think it will be in the fairies’ rath.”

She broke a spray of the hawthorn bloom, and stood looking at him.

“It has been very wonderful,” she mused. “I will not believe any of it when I wake tomorrow, but I will take a bit of the hawthorn for proof. If—if I come back to these hills I will send you a message of hawthorn, and you will come again and tell me of Ireland’s music and her poets—perhaps you will then have poems of your own.”

“I am the one would be thankful if that could be,” he said.

Voices were heard on the wind, and the bark of a dog. The sun was touching the very edge of the far sea.

“Do not move from that pillar, and you will be out of their sight,” she said. “I will give them a fright to think I was alone in this waste place. I will tell them a fairy prince was my host: they will never believe me, but I know it is true.”

She broke the spray of hawthorn in two parts.

“Why did the tinker laugh at you when he sang the song of the coulin—and what is that? Is it another mystery?”

“It is not. It is the ancient Irish way for men to wear the hair, long and tied back. Under the old English laws men were punished for keeping that old custom or using Irish speech. It is me he is laughing at, and telling me I’ll be sent to the Castle yet in punishment for my long hair.”

“It makes you look like old pictures,” she said, “and surely a boy can do that much as he pleases in these days. This is your hawthorn to prove I was here and had shelter with you. What is the name of this place?”

“It is Templard—the high temple—and should be sung in a song because the Dark Rose has stood under the hawthorn shade in this place,” he said, and she laughed silently at that.

“How they would joy to hear me called dark anything,” she said.

The voices were nearer, and one man’s voice calling, “Rose! Rosa! Rosalie!”

“It is one of the hundred cousins,” she laughed. “You will see, Hugh of the Siod, that they call my name in many ways, but only you have called me Rose the Dark. Fare you well, shepherd boy, until you make music to call me back to Kerry.”

“I will be making that music,” he said.

She let fall the spray of hawthorn lightly on the white lamb in his arms just as a dark hound halted on the summit of the earth wall; she ran to meet him, poised there like a green bird with scarlet wings as her cloak blew back in the wind.

There were shouts, a clamor of voices, and then the one voice.

“Rose! You here safe, and the peasants searching the bogs for you!”

“Whist!” she called down to them mockingly, “this is no place for your shouting and your hounds. I have been spending an hour with the fairies in their rath of Templard, and the rest of you are not to put foot in it. Not at all after the sun is down,” and she pointed to the ball of celestial fire sinking beyond oceans—“the mystic hour is past.”

Then she darted down, laughing, and only the hawthorn spray was left to show she had not been a vision, laughing, mocking, weeping, adorable in young beauty.

Once Hugh caught sight of her again. A carriage with black horses waited on the old road used by the peat-cutters of the bog beyond. Toward it she walked with a tall man and the hound between them. A half-dozen men and boys followed through the whins and rocky pasture—they did not look back, and he knew fear was on them for all her mocking; and no maid or man of the glen would choose the ruins of Templard for a resting place at setting of sun on any day.

She halted once on a velvet-green knoll and for a few heartbeats she stood—a flash of crimson against the deep purple of the sky. She did not look back, but with upflung hand made a gesture of hail and farewell, and Hugh smiled at that, and waved in return though he knew she would not see.

It was late twilight when he brought down the sheep to the fold, and Molly Donn, his foster sister, put before him a brown loaf baked in the hearth oven, the pitcher of new milk, and boiled potatoes, while a white-haired little old man puffed at his pipe and looked him over.

“You ranged the ewes over far when you took them to the rath of Templard,” he remarked, and Molly rested the needles in her knitting to stare at him.

“Shamas man, have you indeed ‘the sight’ that you look over all the pasture range—and you not beyond the boolie this day?” she asked, and the old man with the grave mouth, and merry blue eyes, puffed his pipe and chuckled.

“Have thought with you, Molly girl,” he suggested. “What need of the second sight, when he sports a twig of hawthorn flower from the fairy rath on that hill? That hawthorn is ever the first to be blooming.”

“You have sharper eyes than the youth about you, Father Shamas,” said Hugh, and laughed at the fear in the eyes of Molly. “I was in truth on that hill, and fell asleep and dreaming in the bracken until the rain fell—that was when the sheep strayed a bit, but all are safe home again.”

Molly made the sign to ward off evil, and looked her horror at him.

“Asleep in the bracken of Templard and this on the eve of Beltain!” she whispered. “Saint Bride to your saving! Fear would be on me over the dreams of Templard.”

“Save your fears, Molly asthore. The dream was a beautiful dream, and I am the richer.”

Old Shamas regarded the glowing eyes of the lad. “The dreams of the young are seed for the harvest of old age,” he said. “It is good to dream in beauty, else the old days will be gray days.”

“It’s only guessing at that you are, Shamas,” retorted Hugh, “for there is no age on you—nor will ever be.”

The old man and the lad looked in each other’s eyes with the smiling content of comradeship, but Molly, turning the heel of the hose, did not see the look, and was slow in imagination for a Kerry coast woman.

“It’s glib you are growing with the tongue, Hugh, lad,” she admonished him. “I was never daring to cross my elders, nor was Michal at your age. When your father is coming back, or sending for you for the schooling, he will be putting blame on us for the bold words of you—and God and Mary know it is no fault of mine!”

“True for you,” laughed Hugh, “it is not—Shamas is the one to blame.”

Michal came in at that, shaking the water from his coat-amore, for the rain was again falling.

“Lucky it is it held off so long,” he said, “for the hunt was up for a bit of a girl straying on the mountain, and lost from the old castle.”

“What is witching you?” demanded Molly. “You know well the castle of Argial is a forsaken place.”

“It has been, but the new heir, Hector Laud, must be giving it an overlooking, and brought along friends for gay doings.”

“Fine it would be to have a new and young lord of Argial again—that has never been known in our time,” mused Molly.

“This one is new but not young; Denis and Tim Doherty saw him. He is a pale, masterful kind of man, and proud at that. They say it will be a great wonder if he gets the girl he is wanting as mistress of Argial, for she has lightning in her blood, and the devil’s share of courage. Well, Time tells the story! That girl it was started the hunt, and Tim was after getting two shillings for taking his gray pony and going the bog boreen in the search. No, he was not the one to find her. She was found, and he earned the two shillings in ease and comfort.”

“Who was the lost one?” asked Shamas, for Hugh made no question.

“It was the daughter of a Maurice, and she English, and knowing not a path of all Kerry.”

“Maurice is not a name of England,” mused Shamas, “not at all of England.”

“Well—God knows! That is their saying, and she has only her beauty for wealth and her uncle keen on the match when the time comes. She’s only a bit of a slip yet, and time in plenty ahead! Denis was fair enchanted by a glimpse of her behind the black horses of Argial, and them galloping to put fear on a soul! His saying was that the cuckoo would sing in falling snow for that daughter of Maurice, whoever she may be.”

Molly on the creepie by the hearthstone clicked her knitting needles, and glanced her impatience at Michal, busy with his supper.

“That would be the man of it,” she said in disdain of masculine weaknesses. “Every man-jack of them agog over a bright eye, and never a knowledgeable word from you of where the child was lost, and who had the finding of her.”

“Ah, blather of you, Molly! That’s the woman of it—wanting to know the ins and outs of all things going. Give me another mug of milk, girl! No one was finding the stray at all. She walked out from Templard when she got ready, and no fear on her and not a hair of her head wet! She had mocking and laughter for Laud of Argial and told of a King of the Fairies who made music for her in the ruins, but Argial had blackness of thunder in his looks and drove like the devil down from the mountain.”

“Glory be to God!” breathed Molly, crossing herself. “A slip of a girl like that to venture in Templard this day! Hugh, lad, when the sheep were straying over there beyond did you get sight of her?”

But Hugh was sprawled on the hearth with a bit of paper and pencil. He was tousling his curls for straying thoughts, and making scribbles there by the glow of the peat fire. Molly repeated her question before he gave heed to it.

“I saw no daughter of a Maurice there, and no bride of Argial,” he said stolidly. “What I saw on Templard was a different thing. Did I not tell you I fell asleep in the bracken and had a dream? Whist, Molly dear, and let be, for I heard music there and am making a song of it.”

“Oh, Shamas man,” begged Molly. “Say something for me to put the fear of God on that lad! You know well it is ill luck to sleep on a fairies’ rath, and ill luck to make songs to their harping, and worst luck of all for a maid or man to follow fairy king, or fairy mistress, to a rath on a Midsummer Eve, or on this eve of Beltain. Tell it to him, Shamas, for—Bride and Mary to our helping!—it is only to you he will hearken.”

And in the old Kerry castle of Argial, a dark old man, in an invalid’s chair, frowned at the girl called by Hugh the Dark Rose, and all the laughter and joy were gone from her face.

“I will not have you mock your host and my friend!” he said, and his clenched hand fell on the tea-table and set the china and silver a-tinkle. “I will not have it from you! Gerald and you have bread and comfort under his roof—and that is more than I can give you; and bread alone is more than I may have at the last—with stocks going smash, and no hope of retrieving losses, I will not have this rebellion and mockery of yours!”

The girl looked from his angry eyes to the brandy and soda on the tea-table.

“I meant to ask you about that, about the little inheritance of Jerry’s and mine—if—it is gone—?”

“Of course it’s gone—gone long ago—with my own! I tell you there is only one way of school and comfort for both of you.”

“But, uncle,” the girl went over and stood back of his chair as if speech were less hard if his eyes were not on her; “Jerry and I have endless numbers of cousins somewhere here in Ireland—”

“All poorer than church mice; and the ones with means have all gone to America or the continent. Sensible enough they are, too!”

“Yet there might be some left who would let us make a home with them—even a home on a farm would not be bad. We are not quite paupers; surely, we have a little left, and I would work—do anything—”

His laugh with a deal of scorn in it, halted her.

“Do anything! Then do the only sensible thing there is to do. Settle your mind to be civil and be mistress of Argial when the time comes. Hector is enough of a connection of the family to accept favors from. Gerald will be provided for; he will get his bit to secure a commission, and he would think you a fool to talk of work—and perhaps a clerk’s grind for him! Why, it is a dower for a princess Hector Laud is offering for you—and you talk of a group of unknown Irish cousins, poverty-stricken as yourself! It is too absurd for words. Don’t let me hear any more of it.”

There was silence for so long a time that the man in the chair grew restless and turned half around; his voice was more conciliating.

“Be a good girl now! You must know you are the only hope left. Hector adores you, and your mockery is serious to him. You are too young to know what is best. Why start a fool’s hunt for Irish cousins you never saw when an English cousin offers you the key to his treasure chests?”

“I care little enough for the treasure chests—though I do love the Kerry hills,” she said at last.

“Well, that’s something! You can have all of them you want when married, but not a foot shall you go alone on them again while we are in the castle. And that will only be until tomorrow. You will go back to school until common sense has ended your flighty rebellion. It is a choice between starvation and the income of a girl-queen. Poverty is an enemy to fight against—it will conquer you in the end!”

“It may overpower me when I think of Jerry and his future,” she said quietly, “but to be overpowered does not mean to be conquered.”

In an early April a woman rode down the boreen of the glen from Templard, and her eyes rested often on the simple growths—from cress of the brook to the buds on the prickly thorn. She reached out and touched the green ivy in the dusky wood, and pinned a bit of it on her coat of darker green.

Molly Donn, catching glimpse of her through the open door, flew hurriedly to combing her hair with one hand, and pushing Shamas toward the door with the other.

“Go on now—it is herself! Have manners and give her greeting whilst I make myself tidy. God save her! No word of anyone has overpraised her!”

Shamas, a little older, a little whiter, did as bidden, and looked his wonder when the rider spoke.

“You are Shamas? Are you not?” she asked, and her dark eyes had searching kindness.

“It is Shamas, indeed, I am called, my lady,” he made answer, “though there is many another of the same name on the Kerry coast, and I’ve no monopoly.”

“There can be only one here at the foot of Templard,” she said, “one with—

The ever young blue eyes, Beneath the thatch of snow.”

“Ah then, you’ve been seeing the lad’s bits of verse, and songs of the Kerry hills,” he said; and the old face was illumined. “Sure enough he did not forget his old friends—not even a pet cow or a sheep! Why, I find myself giving looks to the bog-berries and the bracken under foot as never before—and all because he bore them in his mind and put them in his songs across the sea beyond.”

“Yes—I’ve been seeing the songs—and hearing them. My brother is home from the front and tells me they are sung in the trenches by the soldiers. He is not well enough to ride, so I have come alone. I thought you would perhaps tell me a little about the boy who wrote the ‘Legends of Desmond.’”

Molly appeared at that moment, eager and voluble with offered hospitality.

“Who could tell you if not Shamas Ronayne?” she asked. “Didn’t he teach the lad them old tales and songs of old battles?—Indeed, he did then, and it’s proud we are of Hugh, and joyful that his heart has remembrance for the glen folk. It’s proud, too, we are that the lady of Castle Argial has his name among the many who would crave remembrance of her—and will you please to come within, for a rest on the way?”

The lady of Argial dismounted, and looked with interest at the low room, stone-floored, and the walls brown with peat smoke. The simple furnishings were clean, but the bareness of it all seemed to appall the visitor.

“And this was the cradle!” she said at last, and looked at Shamas, as to one who would understand. “Tell me of him.”

“It is not much to tell,” said the old man. “He was ailing as a young lad, and was left behind when his father sailed for the western world. The grass under his feet here was the right cure for him. Ere the day came when his father struck the rich luck of mines and such wealth as is to be had for the looking over there, the lad Hugh had a mind full of tales of old Munster—and more than the tales, for he had the feel of the land and could sing it—yes, he could do that! When tutors and the learning of books were coming his way, he made that learning serve for telling the old tales in a new manner and saving the old songs in print, so cheaply that even the husband of a one-donkey farm could afford the price of it. Many wise men were making record of old Irish for the scholars and the learned—that is what he is saying, but the thing he was wishful for ever was to make it easy for the lad of the cow-path—and the digger of peat—and the herring fishers along the shore. Yes, that was the wish of him.”

“He has his wish,” she said. “Hugh Siod is a name well loved by many.”

“Aye, and hated as well,” murmured Shamas. “You’re not the first to ride this path asking of him; the sergeant of constabulary has gathered in more than one copy, and others are hid as the history of Keating was hid for generations among the Irish. My own is under the hearth.”

“Whist man,” muttered Molly, who was setting the black kettle on the hob for making of tea, “why bury a crock of coin only to lift the cover off for the passer-by?”

But Shamas smiled at the visitor, and lifted the stoneflagging where a flat package reposed in the excavation beneath.

“Let be, Molly,” he said tolerantly, “the lady of Argial has blood in her of the nobles who had banishment—‘to hell or Connaught’ put upon them by the invader. The daughter of Maurice could not be an informer against her own.”

“She could not,” said the lady of Argial. “My grandfather was killed for Ireland—and my father went into exile to escape the same enemies. I am only learning these things now, for it was long kept hidden from us.”

“Aye! That is often the way of it,” agreed Shamas. “The young in free lands could not have understanding of it, and what use to put shadow on them? Look at this now”—and he opened the package and turned the leaves of the little volume to a tale, _The Wife of Desmond_. “There now is a lament, second to none ever written: not Dierdre for her lover—not Nuala in her exile, ever had the heart wail for hearts’ losses equaled by the Irish bride of Desmond at the slaughter of her infant sons and their father, who had dared Saxon laws to marry in honor an Irish maid!”

“That was a true tale, and a terrible,” agreed Molly, who was at the open door watching the path, “but fear goes with it, and what profit in the printed words of such, when troubles might come to all of us for the very sight of it here?”

“It teaches the young from songs what they never would glimpse from the books of historians,” said their visitor. “I had taunts given me in schools that my people were of jails, and exiles. I carried the shadow of that in silence all my youth. This book told me they were not criminals—they were patriots—and my pride in them now is beyond word. Think of that!—I—who scarcely dared speak the name of them all my life!”

“And you a grand lady, too!” breathed Molly in amaze. “And it is noble I am sure your forbears were, and not to be spoke of by the likes of me who has no reading of books to my knowledge. But indeed now there have been no bad killings this while back, and it is a good herring year, and the new litter of pigs gives us promise of comfort for the winter, to say nothing of the nest-egg Hugh himself has been sending me! No, my lady, it is myself is glad enough to hear speech of these things, for Shamas here, and Michal, who is gone to the harbor, give me no light on it at all; but when a good year is with us why put in time with reading of the old-time slaughterings?”

“To justify our fathers who sacrificed themselves for freedom. It is a wonderful word—freedom! The pity is that few value it until after it has been lost.”

There was weariness in the sweet, deep voice, and a moment of shadow in the dark eyes, and the old man nodded his head slowly.

“It came your way early,” he said, “but it has been bringing understanding with it.”

“No,” she said lowly, “this little book brought the understanding. I owe much to it; I drifted in discontent from port to port until it found me! I bought a hundred copies for my brother who is afire with hope these days. Surely, our Irish regiments, fighting abroad, must win us justice at last here at home!”

“A blessing on the day!” said Shamas. “It is a proud time for us, Lady Argial, that your heart is with the cottagers here in Kerry. There’s many an Irish estate give over to cattle and keepers and mayhaps some gentleman for the fall hunting, and no spirit of life in it at all, and it kills the land, that does. It kills the spirit of a land—or—drives it too far afield to find the way back again!”

“Wouldn’t himself be proud to see you here now, drinking tea from his own cup, and with the book of his writing to your hand?” said Molly, beaming hospitality—and settling herself on the doorstep with her own cup of tea after presenting her visitor with a gilded guest cup. “Now wouldn’t it be a proud day the day he would see you so?”

“I did see him once; it seems very long ago. He was a slender young lad with a wonderful smile and odd sayings. He sang a song on the mountain—a song of Ireland—it had charm and mysteries in it. That was years ago.”

“And the song was _Kathleen na Hulihan_?” ventured Shamas. “He ever was singing or whistling one of them, and there have been many.”

“No,” said Lady Argial, with the book open at _A Legend of the Dark Rose_—“no—it was a different song. But my brother has a new song of Kathleen and he says the boys are singing it in camp. He found it in an American paper, but the poet’s name I could not learn. I think the writer of this book would love it, though it is the sad song of an old man.”

“I am wondering if you would let us have it?” asked Shamas. “Not so many new songs come up the glen—it would be a favor of grace, if it would not be asking too much?”