No Defense, Complete - Gilbert Parker
Michael nodded.
"Almost his very words you've used, and he flung out his hands, as you
said.
"Aye, he'll be changed; but they've kept the clothes he had when he went
to prison, and he'll come out in them, I'm thinking--"
"Ah, no!" interrupted Michael. "That can't be, for his clothes was stole.
Only a week ago he sent to me for a suit of my own. I wouldn't have him
wear my clothes--he a gentleman! It wasn't fitting. So I sent him a suit
I bought from a shop, but he wouldn't have it. He would leave prison a
poor man, as a peasant in peasant's clothes. So he wrote to me. Here is
the letter." He drew from his pocket a sheet of paper, and spread it out.
"See-read it. Ah, well, never mind," he added, as old Christopher shook
his head. "Never mind, I'll read it to you!" Thereupon he read the note,
and added: "We'll see him of the Calhouns risin' high beyant poverty and
misfortune some day."
Old Christopher nodded.
"I'm glad Miles Calhoun was buried on the hilltop above Playmore. He had
his day; he lived his life. Things went wrong with him, and he paid the
price we all must pay for work ill-done."
"There you're right, Christopher Dogan, and I remember the day the
downfall began. It was when him that's now Lord Mallow, Governor of
Jamaica, came to summon Miles Calhoun to Dublin. Things were never the
same after that; but I well remember one talk I had with Miles Calhoun
just before his death. 'Michael,' he said to me, 'my family have had many
ups and downs, and some that bear my name have been in prison before
this, but never for killing a man out of fair fight.' 'One of your name
may be in prison, sir,' said I, 'but not for killing a man out of fair
fight. If you believe he did, there's no death bad enough for you!' He
was silent for a while; then at last he whispered Mr. Dyck's name, and
said to me: 'Tell him that as a Calhoun I love him, and as his father I
love him ten times more. For look you, Michael, though we never ran
together, but quarrelled and took our own paths, yet we are both
Calhouns, and my heart is warm to him. If my son were a thousand times a
criminal, nevertheless I would ache to take him by the hand.'"
"Hush! Look at the prison gate," said his companion, and stood up.
As the gates of the prison opened, the sun broke through the clouds and
gave a brilliant phase to the scene. Out of the gates there came slowly,
yet firmly, dressed in peasant clothes, the stalwart but faded figure of
Dyck Calhoun.
Terribly changed he was. He had entered prison with the flush upon his
cheek, the lilt of young manhood in his eyes, with hair black and hands
slender and handsome. There was no look of youth in his face now. It was
the face of a middle-aged man from which the dew of youth had vanished,
into which life's storms had come and gone. Though the body was held
erect, yet the head was thrust slightly forward, and the heavy eyebrows
were like a pent-house. The eyes were slightly feverish, and round the
mouth there crept a smile, half-cynical but a little happy. All freshness
was gone from his hands. One hung at his side, listless, corded; the
other doffed his hat in reply to the salute of his two humble friends.
As the gates closed behind him he looked gravely at the two men, who were
standing not a foot apart. There swept slowly into his eyes, enlarging,
brightening them, the glamour of the Celtic soul. Of all Ireland, or all
who had ever known him, these two were the only ones welcoming him into
the world again! Michael Clones, with his oval red face, big nose, steely
eye, and steadfast bearing, had in him the soul of great kings. His hat
was set firmly on his head. His knee-breeches were neat, if coarse; his
stockings were clean. His feet were well shod, his coat worn, and he had
still the look that belongs to the well-to-do peasant. He was a figure of
courage and endurance. Dyck's hand went out to him, and a warm smile
crept to his lips.
"Michael--ever--faithful Michael!"
A moisture came to Michael's eyes. He did not speak as he clasped the
hand Dyck offered him. Presently Dyck turned to old Christopher with a
kindly laugh.
"Well, old friend! You, too, come to see the stag set loose again? You're
not many, that's sure." A grim, hard look came into his face, but both
hands went out and caught the old man's shoulders affectionately. "This
is no day for you to be waiting at prison's gates, Christopher; but there
are two men who believe in me--two in all the world. It isn't the
killing," he added after a moment's silence--"it isn't the killing that
hurts so. If it's true that I killed Erris Boyne, what hurts most is the
reason why I killed him."
"One way or another--does it matter now?" asked Christopher gently.
"Is it that you think nothing matters since I've paid the price, sunk
myself in shame, lost my friends, and come out with not a penny left?"
asked Dyck. "But yes," he added with a smile, wry and twisted, "yes, I
have a little left!"
He drew from his pocket four small pieces of gold, and gazed ironically
at them in his palm.
"Look at them!" He held out his hand, so that the two men could see the
little coins. "Those were taken from me when I entered prison. They've
been in the hands of the head of the jail ever since. They give them to
me now--all that's left of what I was."
"No, not all, sir," declared Michael. "There's something left from
Playmore--there's ninety pounds, and it's in my pocket. It was got from
the sale of your sporting-kit. There was the boat upon the lake, the gun,
and all kinds of riffraff stuff not sold with Playmore."
Dyck nodded and smiled. "Good Michael!"
Then he drew himself up stiffly, and blew in and out his breath as if
with the joy of living. For four hard years he had been denied the free
air of free men. Even when walking in the prison-yard, on cold or fair
days, when the air was like a knife or when it had the sun of summer in
it, it still had seemed to choke him.
In prison he had read, thought, and worked much. They had at least done
that for him. The Attorney-General had given him freedom to work with his
hands, and to slave in the workshop like one whose living depended on it.
Some philanthropic official had started the idea of a workshop, and the
officials had given the best of the prisoners a chance to learn trades
and make a little money before they went out into the world. All that
Dyck had earned went to purchase things he needed, and to help his fellow
prisoners or their families.
Where was he now? The gap between the old life of nonchalance, frivolity,
fantasy, and excitement was as great as that between heaven and hell.
Here he was, after four years of prison, walking the highway with two of
the humblest creatures of Ireland, and yet, as his soul said, two of the
best.
Stalking along in thought, he suddenly became conscious that Michael and
Christopher had fallen behind. He turned round.
"Come on. Come on with me." But the two shook their heads.
"It's not fitting, you a Calhoun of Playmore!" Christopher answered.
"Well, then, list to me," said Dyck, for he saw the men could not bear
his new democracy. "I'm hungry. In four years I haven't had a meal that
came from the right place or went to the right spot. Is the little
tavern, the Hen and Chickens, on the Liffeyside, still going? I mean the
place where the seamen and the merchant-ship officers visit."
Michael nodded.
"Well, look you, Michael--get you both there, and order me as good a meal
of fish and chops and baked pudding as can be bought for money. Aye, and
I'll have a bottle of red French wine, and you two will have what you
like best. Mark me, we'll sit together there, for we're one of a kind.
I've got to take to a life that fits me, an ex-jailbird, a man that's
been in prison for killing!"
"There's the king's army," said Michael. "They make good officers in it."
A strange, half-sore smile came to Dyck's thin lips.
"Michael," said he, "give up these vain illusions. I was condemned for
killing a man not in fair fight.
"I can't enter the army as an officer, and you should know it. The king
himself could set me up again; but the distance between him and me is ten
times round the world and back again!" But then Dyck nodded kindly. It
was as if suddenly the martyr spirit had lifted him out of rigid, painful
isolation, and he was speaking from a hilltop. "No, my friends, what is
in my mind now is that I'm hungry. For four years I've eaten the bread of
prison, and it's soured my mouth and galled my belly. Go you to that inn
and make ready a good meal."
The two men started to leave, but old Christopher turned and stretched a
hand up and out.
"Son of Ireland, bright and black and black and bright may be the picture
of your life, but I see for you brightness and sweet faces, and music and
song. It's not Irish music, and it's not Irish song, but the soul of the
thing is Irish. Grim things await you, but you will conquer where the
eagle sways to the shore, where the white mist flees from the hills,
where heroes meet, where the hand of Moira stirs the blue and the witches
flee from the voice of God. There is honour coming to you in the world."
Having said his say, with hand outstretched, having thrilled the air with
the voice of one who had the soul of a prophet, the old man turned. Head
bent forward, he shuffled away with Michael Clones along the stony
street.
Dyck watched them go, his heart beating hard, his spirit overwhelmed.
It was not far to the Castle, yet every footstep had a history. Now and
again he met people who knew him. Some bowed a little too profoundly,
some nodded; but not one stopped to speak to him, though a few among them
were people he had known well in days gone by. Was it the clothes he
wore, or was it that his star had sunk so low that none could keep it
company? He laughed to himself in scorn, and yet there kept ringing
through his brain all the time the bells of St. Anselm's, which he was
hearing:
"Oh, God, who is the sinner's friend,
Make clean my soul once more!"
When he arrived at the Castle walls he stood and looked long at them.
"No, I won't go in. I won't try to see him," he said at last. "God, how
strange Ireland is to me! The soil of it, the trees of it, the grass of
it, are dearer than ever, but--I'll have no more of Ireland. I'll ask for
nothing. I'll get to England. What's Ireland to me? I must make my way
somewhere. There's one in there"--he nodded towards the Castle--"that
owes me money at cards. He should open his pockets to me, and see me safe
on a ship for Australia; but I've had my fill of every one in Ireland.
There's nothing here for me but shame. Well, back I'll go to the Hen and
Chickens, to find a good dinner there."
He turned and went back slowly along the streets by which he had come,
looking not to right nor left, thinking only of where he should go and
what he should do outside of Ireland.
At the door of the inn he sniffed the dinner Michael had ordered.
"Man alive!" he said as he entered the place and saw the two men with
their hands against the bright fire. "There's only one way to live, and
that's the way I'm going to try."
"Well, you'll not try it alone, sir, if you please," said Michael. "I'll
be with you, if I may."
"And I'll bless you as you go," said Christopher Dogan.
CHAPTER XI
WHITHER NOW?
England was in a state of unrest. She had, as yet, been none too
successful in the war with France. From the king's castle to the poorest
slum in Seven Dials there was a temper bordering on despair. Ministries
came and went; statesmen rose and fell. The army was indifferently
recruited and badly paid. England's battles were fought by men of whom
many were only mercenaries, with no stake in England's rise or fall.
In the army and navy there were protests, many and powerful, against the
smallness of the pay, while the cost of living had vastly increased. In
more than one engagement on land England had had setbacks of a serious
kind, and there were those who saw in the blind-eyed naval policy, in the
general disregard of the seamen's position, in the means used for
recruiting, the omens of disaster. The police courts furnished the navy
with the worst citizens of the country. Quota men, the output of the
Irish prisons--seditious, conspiring, dangerous--were drafted for the
king's service.
The admiralty pursued its course of seizing men of the mercantile marine,
taking them aboard ships, keeping them away for months from the harbours
of the kingdom, and then, when their ships returned, denying them the
right of visiting their homes. The press-gangs did not confine their
activities to the men of the mercantile marine. From the streets after
dusk they caught and brought in, often after ill-treatment, torn from
their wives and sweethearts, knocked on the head for resisting, tradesmen
with businesses, young men studying for the professions, idlers, debtors,
out-of-work men. The marvel is that the British fleets fought as well as
they did.
Poverty and sorrow, loss and bereavement, were in every street, peeped
mournfully out of every window, lurked at street corners. From all parts
of the world adventurers came to renew their fortunes in the turmoil of
London, and every street was a kaleidoscope of faces and clothes and
colours, not British, not patriot, not national.
Among these outlanders were Dyck Calhoun and Michael Clones. They had
left Ireland together in the late autumn, leaving behind them the
stirrings of the coming revolution, and plunging into another revolt
which was to prove the test and trial of English character.
Dyck had left Ireland with ninety pounds in his pocket and many tons'
weight of misery in his heart. In his bones he felt tragedies on foot in
Ireland which concession and good government could not prevent. He had
fled from it all. When he set his face to Holyhead, he felt that he would
never live in Ireland again. Yet his courage was firm as he made his way
to London, with Michael Clones--faithful, devoted, a friend and yet a
servant, treated like a comrade, yet always with a little dominance.
The journey to London had been without event, yet as the coach rolled
through country where frost silvered the trees; where, in the early
morning, the grass was shining with dew; where the everlasting green
hedges and the red roofs of villages made a picture which pleased the eye
and stirred the soul, Dyck Calhoun kept wondering what would be his
future. He had no profession, no trade, no skill except with his sword;
and as he neared London Town--when they left Hendon--he saw the smoke
rising in the early winter morning and the business of life spread out
before him, brave and buoyant.
As from the heights of Hampstead he looked down on the multitudinous area
called London, something throbbed at his heart which seemed like hope;
for what he saw was indeed inspiring. When at last, in the Edgware Road,
he drew near to living London, he turned to Michael Clones and said:
"Michael, my lad, I think perhaps we'll find a footing here."
So they reached London, and quartered themselves in simple lodgings in
Soho. Dyck walked the streets, and now and then he paid a visit to the
barracks where soldiers were, to satisfy the thought that perhaps in the
life of the common soldier he might, after all, find his future. It was,
however, borne in upon him by a chance remark of Michael one day--"I'm
not young enough to be a recruit, and you wouldn't go alone without me,
would you?"--that this way to a livelihood was not open to him.
His faithful companion's remark had fixed Dyck's mind against entering
the army, and then, towards the end of the winter, a fateful thing
happened. His purse containing what was left of the ninety
pounds--two-fifths of it--disappeared. It had been stolen, and in all the
bitter days to come, when poverty and misery ground them down, no hint of
the thief, no sign of the robber, was ever revealed.
Then, at last, a day when a letter came from Ireland. It was from the
firm in which Bryan Llyn of Virginia had been interested, for the letter
had been sent to their care, and Dyck had given them his address in
London on this very chance. It reached Dyck's hands on the day after the
last penny had been paid out for their lodgings, and they faced the
streets, penniless, foodless--one was going to say friendless. The
handwriting was that of Sheila Llyn.
At a street corner, by a chemist's shop where a red light burned, Dyck
opened and read the letter. This is what Sheila had written to him.
MY DEAR FRIEND:
The time is near (I understand by a late letter to my mother from an
official) when you will be freed from prison and will face the world
again. I have not written you since your trial, but I have never
forgotten and never shall. I have been forbidden to write to you or
think of you, but I will take my own way about you. I have known
all that has happened since we left Ireland, through the letters my
mother has received. I know that Playmore has been sold, and I am
sorry.
Now that your day of release is near, and you are to be again a free
man, have you decided about your future? Is it to be in Ireland?
No, I think not. Ireland is no place for a sane and level man to
fight for honour, fame, and name. I hear that things are worse
there in every way than they have been in our lifetime.
After what has happened in any case, it is not a field that offers
you a chance. Listen to me. Ireland and England are not the only
places in the world. My uncle came here to Virginia a poor man.
He is now immensely rich. He had little to begin with, but he was
young like you--indeed, a little older than you--when he first came.
He invested wisely, worked bravely, and his wealth grew fast. No
man needs a fortune to start the business of life in this country.
He can get plenty of land for almost nothing; he can get credit for
planting and furnishing his land, and, if he has friends, the credit
is sure.
All America is ready for "the likes of you." Think it over, and
meanwhile please know there has been placed with the firm in Dublin
money enough to bring you here with comfort. You must not refuse
it. Take it as a loan, for I know you will not take it as a gift.
I do not know the story of the killing, even as it was told in
court. Well, some one killed the man, but not you, and the truth
will out in time. If one should come to me out of the courts of
heaven, and say that there it was declared you were a rogue, I
should say heaven was no place for me. No, of one thing I am sure--
you never killed an undefended man. Wayward, wanton, reckless,
dissipated you may have been, but you were never depraved--never!
When you are free, lift up your shoulders to all the threats of
time, then go straight to the old firm where the money is, draw it,
take ship, and come here. If you let me know you are coming, I will
be there to meet you when you step ashore, to give you a firm hand-
clasp; to tell you that in this land there is a good place for you,
if you will win it.
Here there is little crime, though the perils of life are many.
There is Indian fighting; there are Indian depredations; and not a
dozen miles from where I sit men have been shot for crimes
committed. The woods are full of fighters, and pirates harry the
coast. On the wall of the room where I write there are carbines
that have done service in Indian wars and in the Revolutionary War;
and here out of the window I can see hundreds of black heads-slaves,
brought from Africa and the Indies, slaves whose devotion to my
uncle is very great. I hear them singing now; over the white-tipped
cotton-fields there flows the sound of it.
This plantation has none of the vices that belong to slavery. Here
life is complete. The plantation is one great workshop where trades
are learned and carried out-shoeing, blacksmithing, building,
working in wood and metal.
I am learning here--you see I am quite old, for I am twenty-one now
--the art of management. They tell me that when my uncle's day is
done--I grieve to think it is not far off--I must take the rod of
control. I work very, very hard. I have to learn figures and
finance; I have to see how all the work is done, so that I shall
know it is done right. I have had to discipline the supervisors and
bookkeepers, inspect and check the output, superintend the packing,
and arrange for the sale of the crop-yes, I arranged for the sale of
this year's crop myself. So I live the practical life, and when I
say that you could make your home here and win success, I do it with
some knowledge.
I beg you take ship for the Virginian coast. Enter upon the new
life here with faith and courage. Have no fear. Heaven that has
thus far helped you will guide you to the end.
I write without my mother's permission, but my uncle knows, and
though he does not approve, he does not condemn.
Once more good-bye, my dear friend, and God be with you.
SHEILA LLYN.
P. S.--I wonder where you will read this letter. I hope it will
find you before your release. Please remember that she who wrote it
summons you from the darkness where you are to light and freedom
here.
Slowly Dyck folded up the letter, when he had read it, and put it in his
pocket. Then he turned with pale face and gaunt look to Michael Clones.
"Michael," said he, "that letter is from a lady. It comes from her new
home in Virginia."
Michael nodded.
"Aye, aye, sir, I understand you," he said. "Then she doesn't know the
truth about her father?" Dyck sighed heavily. "No, Michael, she doesn't
know the truth."
"I don't believe it would make any difference to her if she did know."
"It would make all the difference to me, Michael. She says she wishes to
help me. She tells me that money's been sent to the big firm in
Dublin-money to take me across the sea to Virginia."
Michael's face clouded.
"Yes, sir. To Virginia--and what then?"
"Michael, we haven't a penny in the world, you and I, but if I took one
farthing of that money I should hope you would kill me. I'm hungry; we've
had nothing to eat since yesterday; but if I could put my hands upon that
money here and now I wouldn't touch it. Michael, it looks as if we shall
have to take to the trade of the footpad."
CHAPTER XII
THE HOUR BEFORE THE MUTINY
In the days when Dyck Calhoun was on the verge of starvation in London,
evil naval rumours were abroad. Newspapers reported, one with
apprehension, another with tyrannous comment, mutinous troubles in the
fleet.
At first the only demand at Spithead and the Nore had been for an
increase of pay, which had not been made since the days of Charles II.
Then the sailors' wages were enough for comfortable support; but in 1797
through the rise in the cost of living, and with an advance of thirty per
cent. on slops, their families could barely maintain themselves. It was
said in the streets, and with truth, that seamen who had fought with
unconquerable gallantry under Howe, Collingwood, Nelson, and the other
big sea-captains, who had borne suffering and wounds, and had been in the
shadow of death--that even these men damned a system which, in its stern
withdrawal of their class for long spaces of time from their own
womenfolk, brought evil results to the forecastle.
The soldier was always in touch with his own social world, and he had
leave sufficient to enable him to break the back of monotony. He drank,
gambled, and orated; but his indulgences were little compared with the
debauches of able-bodied seamen when, after months of sea-life, they
reached port again. A ship in port at such a time was not a scene of
evangelical habits. Women of loose class, flower-girls, fruit-sellers,
and costermongers turned the forecastle into a pleasure-house where the
pleasures were not always secret; where native modesty suffered no
affright, and physical good cheer, with ribald paraphrase, was notable
everywhere.
"How did it happen, Michael?"
As he spoke, Dyck looked round the forecastle of the Ariadne with a
restless and inquisitive expression. Michael was seated a few feet away,
his head bent forward, his hands clasped around his knees.
"Well, it don't matter one way or 'nother," he replied; "but it was like
this. The night you got a letter from Virginia we was penniless; so at
last I went with my watch to the pawnbroker's. You said you'd wait till I
got back, though you knew not where I was goin'. When I got back, you
were still broodin'. You were seated on a horse-block by the chemist's
lamp where you had read the letter. It's not for me to say of what you
were thinkin'; but I could guess. You'd been struck hard, and there had
come to you a letter from one who meant more to you than all the rest of
the world; and you couldn't answer it because things weren't right. As I
stood lookin' at you, wonderin' what to do, though, I had twelve
shillin's in my pocket from the watch I'd pawned, there came four men,
and I knew from their looks they were recruitin' officers of the navy. I
saw what was in their eyes. They knew--as why shouldn't they, when they
saw a gentleman like you in peasant clothes?--that luck had been agin'
us.