‘Hullo! back already?’ cried he, as Kearney flung wide the door and entered. ‘I suppose you hurried away back to join me at supper.’
‘Thanks; but I have supped already, and at a more tempting banquet than this I see before you.’
‘Was it pleasant? was it jolly? Were the girls looking lovely? Was the champagne-cup well iced? Was everybody charming? Tell me all about it. Let me have second-hand pleasure, since I can’t afford the new article.’
‘It was pretty much like every other small ball here, where the garrison get all the prettiest girls for partners, and take the mammas down to supper after.’
‘Cunning dogs, who secure flirtation above stairs and food below! And what is stirring in the world? What are the gaieties in prospect? Are any of my old flames about to get married?’
‘I didn’t know you had any.’
‘Have I not! I believe half the parish of St. Peter’s might proceed against me for breach of promise; and if the law allowed me as many wives as Brigham Young, I’d be still disappointing a large and interesting section of society in the suburbs.’
‘They have made a seizure on the office of the Pike, carried off the press and the whole issue, and are in eager pursuit after Madden, the editor.’
‘What for? What is it all about?’
‘A new ballad he has published; but which, for the matter of that, they were singing at every corner as I came along.’
‘Was it good? Did you buy a copy?’
‘Buy a copy? I should think not.’
‘Couldn’t your patriotism stand the test of a penny?’
‘It might if I wanted the production, which I certainly did not; besides, there is a run upon this, and they were selling it at sixpence.’
‘Hurrah! There’s hope for Ireland after all! Shall I sing it for you, old fellow? Not that you deserve it. English corruption has damped the little Irish ardour that old rebellion once kindled in your heart; and if you could get rid of your brogue, you’re ready to be loyal. You shall hear it, however, all the same.’ And taking up a very damaged-looking guitar, he struck a few bold chords, and began:—
‘Is there anything more we can fight or can hate for?
The “drop” and the famine have made our ranks thin.
In the name of endurance, then, what do we wait for?
Will nobody give us the word to begin?
‘Some brothers have left us in sadness and sorrow,
In despair of the cause they had sworn to win;
They owned they were sick of that cry of “to-morrow”;
Not a man would believe that we meant to begin.
‘We’ve been ready for months—is there one can deny it?
Is there any one here thinks rebellion a sin?
We counted the cost—and we did not decry it,
And we asked for no more than the word to begin?
‘At Vinegar Hill, when our fathers were fighters,
With numbers against them, they cared not a pin;
They needed no orders from newspaper writers,
To tell them the day it was time to begin.
‘To sit here in sadness and silence to bear it,
Is harder to face than the battle’s loud din;
’Tis the shame that will kill me—I vow it, I swear it?
Now or never’s the time, if we mean to begin.’
There was a wild rapture in the way he struck the last chords, that, if it did not evince ecstasy, seemed to counterfeit enthusiasm.
‘Very poor doggerel, with all your bravura,’ said Kearney sneeringly.
‘What would you have? I only got three-and-six for it.’
‘You! Is that thing yours?’
‘Yes, sir; that thing is mine. And the Castle people think somewhat more gravely about it than you do.’
‘At which you are pleased, doubtless?’
‘Not pleased, but proud, Master Dick, let me tell you. It’s a very stimulating reflection to the man who dines on an onion, that he can spoil the digestion of another fellow who has been eating turtle.’
‘But you may have to go to prison for this.’
‘Not if you don’t peach on me, for you are the only one who knows the authorship. You see, Dick, these things are done cautiously. They are dropped into a letter-box with an initial letter, and a clerk hands the payment to some of those itinerant hags that sing the melody, and who can be trusted with the secret as implicitly as the briber at a borough election.’
‘I wish you had a better livelihood, Joe.’
‘So do I, or that my present one paid better. The fact is, Dick, patriotism never was worth much as a career till one got to the top of the profession. But if you mean to sleep at all, old fellow, “it’s time to begin,” ’ and he chanted out the last words in a clear and ringing tone, as he banged the door behind him.
CHAPTER IV
AT ‘TRINITY’
It was while the two young men were seated at breakfast that the post arrived, bringing a number of country newspapers, for which, in one shape or other, Joe Atlee wrote something. Indeed, he was an ‘own correspondent,’ dating from London, or Paris, or occasionally from Rome, with an easy freshness and a local colour that vouched for authenticity. These journals were of a very political tint, from emerald green to the deepest orange; and, indeed, between two of them—the Tipperary Pike and the Boyne Water, hailing from Carrickfergus—there was a controversy of such violence and intemperance of language, that it was a curiosity to see the two papers on the same table: the fact being capable of explanation, that they were both written by Joe Atlee—a secret, however, that he had not confided even to his friend Kearney.
‘Will that fellow that signs himself Terry O’Toole in the Pike stand this?’ cried Kearney, reading aloud from the Boyne Water:—
‘ “We know the man who corresponds with you under the signature of Terry O’Toole, and it is but one of the aliases under which he has lived since he came out of the Richmond Bridewell, filcher, forger, and false witness. There is yet one thing he has never tried, which is to behave with a little courage. If he should, however, be able to persuade himself, by the aid of his accustomed stimulants, to accept the responsibility of what he has written,