“The play is over, friends, and the curtain rung down. That last bit wasn’t rehearsed. Hope you liked it.” He thrust the automatic out of sight. “The dead-line is wiped out, General. Step on the stage if you like.”
The Major-General’s mouth hung open, and he was as nearly pop-eyed as a soldier could be. And then his white mustache bristled, his face purpled, his teeth clicked.
“You—you young jackanapes!” he exploded; and swinging on his heel, marched stiff-legged across the field. Presently a flow of adequate language would relieve him.
Marcus Caverley went, too, but slowly, and his feet not too certain. There was a half-smile about his mouth, the small heart-sad smile of one who has seen what he had looked for come to pass and is bereaved of his secret treasure.
Archie MacDonald, rubbing that long chin, looked across at Kate O’Brien with a pleasantly sardonic grin.
“They had me fooled for a bit,” he said. “Had they you?”
“Bah!” said Kate O’Brien inadequately.
And the Major went across towards the river shaking his head.
“The silly young fools,” he murmured. “The whole jing-bang of them—and not a thought of fishing in their heads!”
And then his lean face grew serious and a shade gloomy. Yes! people of illusion living idle days in a make-believe world. That described himself, he supposed. All his friends were getting settled—or unsettled—and himself a cranky old bachelor. Darn all this marrying and giving in marriage! And marriage nothing but a gamble! He was staring down at the pool in which Martin Kierley had drowned, and over there in that hotel he had seen Nuala Kierley, just for half a minute. Queer how she stayed in his mind! She had come in on them out of the night in her Irish cloak, her hair shining, her eyes drowned, her face white—and beautiful. Like the woman Ireland—wandering, broken, lost, worshiped. Lost! Where is she now, how does she live, what does she sell? . . .
IV
Kate O’Brien had stayed where she was, and her grave white face showed no sign of bewilderment. Art O’Connor walked straight across to her.
“You dangerous fools!” she said in cold reprimand. “You might have frightened that girl to death.”
“But I never dreamed—”
“Silly play-acting! Did you think you fooled me with it for a moment?”
“Did you think you fooled me with yours?” he stopped her hotly. “And it was more than silly—it was almost sacrilegious. Your red mop and your green rag—and your white arms. Oh, they are white and shapely enough. Take these into them.” He thrust a crumple of red wig and green scarf into her hands, and she never looked at them. “It was foolish of you to hide them in Mickeen Oge’s cache. Did you think that I would not know your eyes below any disguise?” His glance was so compelling and angry that hers wavered and sank before it. “Consider!” His finger was fiercely under her nose. “Consider your wickedness! You made a mock of that woeful tragedy of the Red Girl—whose blood is in you. How could you do it? Why did you do it?”
She did not lift her eyes. “To prove the Irish blood in you.”
“And now you know! What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing, I suppose,” she said tonelessly and half turned away. “I was wicked—you said I was more wicked than Mona Lisa.”
He laid a detaining hand on her arm, and a sudden shade of fear and doubt went over his face.
“There were other things I said about you, too, if you remember—and I meant them.”
She looked up quickly into his eyes and he caught her hand impulsively.
“Kate O’Brien, you and I were meant to be friends—with an occasional glorious row.”
She looked down and kept her smile secret.
“But you are leaving here tomorrow, are you not?”
“If you could think up something worth raising Cain about I would stay—say a year or ten.”
“That should not be very hard,” she murmured.
His face cleared. He took her arm and brought her round to his side.
“Come on, tigress, and let us think up something worth fighting about.”
They crossed the field together, and any one could see they were of one mind. There was no one at Aonach Well when they got there; the spoils of the picnic were scattered about, and the men had gone about their own affairs. The two stood side by side looking down at the little crystal pool under the rocks. A thin rivulet of water tinkled down through drooping ferns, and seeped away gurgling through blue-green cress.
Quietly Art O’Connor placed arm across her shoulders.
“Kate, let us not fight just yet.”
“I do not want to fight any more.” Her eyes were deep.
The water tinkled as it fell and gurgled as it flowed—carelessly, not caring, unconcerned, chuckling at some secret outside man’s dimension. It was a pagan well, after all, and in its ten thousand years it had often seen what it was seeing now.
PART FIVE
Bad Town Dublin
“Clean Town Dublin, the Daneman built it,
Stone Town Dublin, the Norman walled it,
Bad Town Dublin, the Briton cursed it,
Our Town Dublin, now Erin holds it—for weal or woe.
Flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone,
Heroes’ blood on prison stone,
Wandering, broken, lost, alone,
In Pain she won it, let Pain atone—to friend or foe.”
Chapter I
I
NUALA KIERLEY—Nuala O’Carroll she was then—was brought up over east on the Tipperary border, horse-breeding country. She learned to ride as soon as she could walk, bareback, donkeys, jennets, ponies, and, in her teens, any horse that could be held while a saddle was girthed. At the age of seventeen she was the best horsewoman in Munster—the world if you like. That was how she met Martin Kierley.
Nuala was a distant cousin of Sean Glynn’s of Leaccabuie. He used to say that he was a bit in love with her himself—every one was—until she met Kierley; and it was then that Sean turned his eyes on Joan Hyland.
Martin Kierley was fond of horses too. Breeder, fox-hunter, gentleman-rider; handsome as damned Lucifer; tall, dark, dare-devil; good-natured besides, a friendly man, lovable—and a spendthrift: that was Martin Kierley when he met Nuala O’Carroll, and he was ten years older. And there you are! She was nineteen when she married him.
They were the finest-mated couple any one ever saw, brilliant, contrast and complement to each other: he dark and gay, she fair and inclined to be serious. It was that serious, considering, slightly-frowning way she had that used [to] turn men’s hearts to water. They were happy too—for a time—and loved each other for a longer time—and they spent money like running water. The life they led, the only life Martin Kierley could live, called for money, and money, and money, and they had not such a great deal to begin with. The well soon went dry. And, then, Sean Glynn noticed that Martin Kierley still had plenty of money to spend. Sean used to wonder sometimes.
That was during the terrible Black-and-Tan war; and there was a good deal of money going on both sides. So Sean did not wonder too much. For the young couple were in with the Sinn Fein I.R.A., and deeply in; and money was called for in the company they worked in.
Look now, and let it not be forgotten! Nuala loved Kierley, and she might love another man before all was done, but no man that ever drew breath would oust Ireland from its pride of place in her heart. She was made that way. A queer fatalistic something of the woman Eire in her, her very self. As a girl of seventeen she was in the 1916 rising, and under fire all across Dublin; and during the Black-and-Tan war—my Lord! the things she would do. But never mind all that now. . . .
At a certain time Sean Glynn was called to Dublin. He was one of the principal intelligence officers of the I.R.A.; a cool and daring man; but when he got a hint of what he was wanted for he knew fear. In Dublin he saw—the name will not be mentioned—a man of iron, a small, slim, mild-looking man with gentle blue eyes that would t
urn cold as ice; and that man talked to Sean Glynn.
“There is a leak, Sean,” said he, “and a bad one. Men are dying and plans failing, and we must find the source—at all costs. I know the channel through which the leak flows, but not where it starts; and you—and a friend of yours—will find that for me.”
He stopped there.
“How?” said Sean. “I don’t need a friend in this—if it can be helped.”
“Listen! A certain British agent on a certain night will have a document in his possession for an hour, and during that hour he will be well guarded. At the end of the hour the document will be in the hands of a British secretary in Dublin Castle. We can get that agent any time we want—with no document on him—but the British have plenty fearless men to replace him. We must get our man in that hour before he delivers the document at the Castle.”
“How?” said Sean again.
“I’ll tell you. We have been studying him. Hanley is his name—Captain Sir Henry Hanley, and he’s half Irish—ex-British officer, middle-weight champion of his battalion, quite fearless, and no fool. A strong man, and, like strong men, he has his weakness. He might be got at through a woman, but she must be some woman. She must be our very best. You’ll speak to your cousin, Nuala Kierley?”
“Did you speak to her husband?” Sean put to him.
“No,” said the man without fluttering an eyelid. “ ’Tis not a thing you would speak to a husband about.”
“Nor to a cousin either,” said Sean. “I will not do it, and that’s flat.” Sean was not afraid of the man, but he was afraid.
That man knew what Sean was afraid of, but in Ireland’s cause he never relented.
“I thought you might refuse,” he said. “We’ll put the case to Nuala herself—she’s in the next room.”
And he did that, very coldly, very clearly: the hidden leak, the deaths, the failures, the risk—and the lure.
“Don’t do it, Nuala,” Sean warned her. “Don’t do it, girl!”
He might as well have warned the wind. She had to do it. It was for Ireland.
“No one must know about this,” said the man, “no one but you and Sean—and myself.” He tapped the table. “No one in the world,” he said.
She looked at him for a long time, that deep considering look, and the supple shoulders of her slowly stiffened. She knew then why Sean had warned her.
“Very well,” she said at last, very quietly.
And then that relentless man smiled at Sean Glynn.
“You are very careful of your cousin, Sean,” he said. “Very good! Take care of her. She and you alone are in this. Make your own plans—but bring me that document.”
II
The plans were not hard to make. Hanley, the British agent, was staying at the Rowton—the old Rowton before it was burned down. Sean Glynn took a room there, too, on the same floor, but away round a corner of the passage. Nuala Kierley did not stay in the hotel, but she came there every night, to the foyer or the restaurant; it was a famous resort of good society—and certain society. She was dressed for the part, but not made up. She did not need make-up. She used [to] sit at her own small reserved table well away in a corner, her hair shining like the palest of pale gold—whiter than gold—and a little half-shy, half-frightened daring in every line of her. Sean Glynn used [to] sit at a table half-hidden by a pillar and marvel at her.
She took a week to get her man, and she got him good and hard. A finely-built, smooth-faced, virile, youthful man, what chance had he? He saw her—he could not help seeing her; and she looked at him, and the small fright and the small daring fought each other in her eyes—that considering, faintly-perplexed, faintly-frowning, wholly-serious way she looked at a man. . . . She took him like a bramble off a briar.
In three days they were dining together. She was fresh, she was new, she was making the first venture into intrigue, and she was acting neither the fear nor the daring. And he was keen—just as if the possession of the woman added the last keen flavor to the deadly risks he was taking. In a week he was completely in her toils. And at the end of that week the document came into his hands.
The two dined together that night too; and three men dined at a table near them—armed guards. And Sean Glynn knew that other guards lounged in the foyer and about the door. But Nuala Kierley did her work from within. At the end he was half-drunk—more than half-drunk—without knowing it. . . .
After a time she went to her room. She had taken a room for the night, or, rather, she was supposed to have, for the room was Sean Glynn’s. In fifteen minutes Hanley followed.
Sean Glynn was at the end of the passage standing within a dark doorway, and, as soon as the man entered Nuala’s room, he walked slowly down to the door, his hand on the butt of an automatic. He waited. He could have walked in and held the man up, but that was to be the last resort. Hanley was a daring devil, and a fight or a shot might spoil everything. Sean Glynn just waited. Inside there was a murmur of voices, the clink of glasses, then again the murmur of voices—and after that silence. . . .
When at last the door opened softly, and Nuala’s bare forearm appeared in the slit, Sean Glynn took the long envelope from her hand and went away. . . .
The traitor was Martin Kierley.
“You knew?” the man of iron said to Sean that night.
“I was afraid.”
“So was Nuala Kierley. You know the fate of traitors? Take the wife down to Leaccabuie with you tomorrow.”
“She may not come.”
“It will be an order. She will be a marked woman in Dublin. Tell her on the way down.”
Sean took her to Leaccabuie, and told her on the way. She was not surprised, but she was numb. And from Leaccabuie he took her to Lough Aonach, where the I.R.A. Flying Column was holed up after the Coolbeigh ambush, and where Captain Archibald MacDonald was held prisoner at the time, and where he saw her for half a minute by the light of a peat fire—and never forgot.
And then a strange thing happened. She must have got a word of warning to her husband somehow, for he escaped out of Dublin on the very day that he was to be dealt with, and made straight for Lough Aonach were Nuala was. Hugh Forbes, the great guerilla leader, was with Nuala and Sean Glynn in the lounge of the Anglers’ Hotel when Kierley burst in.
Already he was a broken man, broken as damned Lucifer, the dare-devil gone clean out of him; but still he loved her. Surely he loved her. He groveled. He wanted her to know it was for her he took the British bribes—big ones. And she cared for him too. But there and then she spurned him, would have nothing to do with him, would not let him touch her, would never forgive a traitor. In the end he saw that. He turned to Hugh Forbes, and some manhood came alive in him.
“All right, Hugh!” he said steadily enough. “Take me away.”
And Hugh Forbes took him away, up to the old ruins of Castle Aonach in the hills. But Hugh Forbes had a way of his own and took it. “Look here, Sean Glynn,” he said. “I will not have his blood on your head or on hers. The truce is coming, you say, and I’ll hold him till it comes, and then slip him out of the country.”
Sean warned him about the iron man in Dublin.
“Your iron man can go to hell,” said Hugh, and Hugh meant it. “That’s the place for him,” said Hugh, who feared no man.
So he held Kierley under guard. And the truce came; and on the very night of its coming, Kierley escaped, and, next morning, was found drowned in Poul Cailin Rua—the Red Girl’s Pool—which is the pool of traitors. And that week the apparition of the Red Girl was seen, so they say. The man knew that life was dust, and Nuala lost to him for ever. He took the only road.
And then Nuala Kierley disappeared, and no friend ever set eyes on her for seven years.
Chapter II
I
MAJOR ARCHIBALD MacDonald yawned lazily and lifted himself out of the big chair. He was feeling drowsy, but it was too fine an afternoon to go to sleep in a hotel lounge. Last night, on the way over from Glasgow, h
e had spent most of the second watch on the bridge of the Lairdshill with First Officer Macgugan, and they had told each other some reasonably tall yarns; and afterwards in his own quarters, Mac and he had discussed Gaelic music over strong coffee—Cruachan Beann, which is a song of pure nostalgia, and that poignant song of warning before Glencoe, Muintir a Glinne so—“people of this glen, this glen, this glen, if the stones knew what I know they would flee to the mountains.”
He reached his tweed hat down off a peg and strolled through the hall to the big front porch. He paused there, slowly filled a pipe, and looked across the wide roadway, over the roofs of taxis, at the dusty-foliaged trees of Stephen’s Green Park. The head porter, a man even taller than himself, came to his side.
“Your friend, sir—when do you expect him?”
“Any time. He’s coming up by car. Hot, isn’t it?”
“Like hell, sir.”
“I think I’ll strike down Grafton Street—and look for some German lager.”
“The pubs don’t be open till 3.30; try Davy Byrne’s in Duke Street, sir.”
“Very good! If my friend arrives—Glynn is the name, Sean Glynn—tell him I shan’t be long.”
He lit his pipe with two matches, crossed the pavement, dodged a bus and a tram, went through the hand-gate in the railings of the park, and strolled along the curving walks, hands in pockets, smoke drifting about his ears, eyes careless. Children were feeding ducklings along the concreted edge of the big pond, nursemaids careless whether they fell in or not; ancient men sat somnolently in the sun; young men, with apparently no more object in life than himself, moved just as lazily as himself. He liked this half-foreign city of Dublin, half-foreign even here in Ireland, of which it was the capital. An easy-going city, in no hurry about anything. Leisurely. Hiding its currents under a smooth surface. Plenty of business too, but, somehow, giving the impression that business was of secondary importance to—something else.
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