if you're that way inclined.'
John-Henry swallowed the whisky, and the man smiled.
'Oh, that's all right,' he said. 'I can get more when I want it, and you'll be here till the morning, or maybe the day after, I don't mind telling you.'
'Look here,' said John-Henry, 'you can take my wallet-there's twenty pounds in it-if you'll let me out of this place.'
'I don't want your money,' said the man.
'We'd have taken it from you if we'd had the need.
Is it robbers you think we are?'
'You stole my car, didn't you?'
'We borrowed it for the cause. When the country is free you can have it back again.'
'That's nonsense, and you know it. Why am I kept here?'
'I tell you I don't know, and that's the plain truth, before God. Do you play two-handed whist?'
'I did once. I haven't played it for a long time.'
'I have a pack of cards here in my pocket.
If you're agreeable we could have a game, and it would help to pass the time. I can't do a thing outside your door but kick my heels and look at the heather. We might as well be company one for one another as not.'
'All right,' said John-Henry, 'bring out your cards.' They sat down together in the small, close cabin, with a patch of light coming in at the stuffed-up window, and they played two-handed whist, and finished the whisky in the flask.
And this, thought John-Henry, is surely the madness of all time, that my captor and I pledge one another in illicit spirit, and he takes money off me in whist that he is too proud to steal, and we discuss the best method of snaring rabbits. Tomorrow he shoots me in the back, and maybe, as the sentry said in Slane, he will weep with pity and bring flowers to my funeral.
Two days passed, with the fellow Tim leaving him from time to time and coming back with bread, and sometimes cold bacon, or a fowl's leg, and more whisky in the flask to keep body and soul together, and each time John-Henry would ask him, 'Well, Tim, when is the execution to be?', and each time Tim shook his head and said, 'I've told you before, there's to be no execution.'
'Then what am I doing in this confounded cabin?'
'You're having a rest, for the good of your soul,' answered Tim, and out would come the greasy pack of cards, and the tipple of whisky, and was it fifteen pounds that Tim had won now or seventeen?
John-Henry did not remember, but it was fair exchange for the whisky, and maybe if he was warm enough in mind and body he would have no fear when they shot him in the hills.
The third night Tim brought rather more whisky than usual in his flask, and the guttering candle made a sickly light, and the cards stuck, and the few pieces of turf that they had kindled filled the room with smoke, so that John-Henry yawned and stretched and finally flung himself upon the straw and slept soundly, with his head pillowed in his hands. He woke to find a red dawn staring at him through the open door of the cabin, and his captor gone, and the white mist clearing away from the hills. He rose to his feet and rubbed his eyes and stared out upon the day, a lank, untidy figure, with straw in his hair and a three days' growth of beard, and he stood by the open door and felt the sun upon his face, and saw a curlew fly low over the hills and vanish. Then he looked upon the ground, and close to his feet, lying beneath a stone, was a newspaper, with the dew upon it, dated the day before. There was a cross on the front page, and a scrawling writing above it, saying 'Turn to page 3.' He opened the paper, and there on the centre page was a picture of Clonmere. The caption above the picture, in heavy black type, said 'Historic Mansion Destroyed.'
John-Henry knelt down and spread the paper on the ground, for his hands were trembling. He placed a stone at each corner of the page so that the morning wind should not blow the curling edges. Underneath the picture, in smaller print, were some half-dozen lines, 'Clonmere Castle, at Doonhaven, on Mundy Bay, was last night burnt down by persons unknown. Some of the contents were saved by people in the village who woke and saw the house ablaze, but the building was a shell by morning. The owner, Mr.
John-Henry Brodrick, is believed to be in the country at the present time.'
He knelt upon the ground, looking at the paper, and the first blind rage that filled his heart died suddenly away, leaving him cold, and stupefied, and numb.
A lark rose from the ground to greet the day, and the mists rolled back, baring the bright sun. In the far distance shimmered the pale sea. And while the ruins of his home and the wreckage of his dreams stared up at him from the printed page, John-Henry saw once again the eyes of the man in the hotel in Slane, and the blue-eyed, freckled Tim grinning at him over the pack of cards, as, pledging John-Henry's future in a flask of whisky, he whispered..
'Ourselves Alone.'
The anger was spent, and the sorrow too. It seemed to him that he looked upon something that would stand for ever as a symbol in his heart, and could never be destroyed, whatever the fire might have done to the bricks and stones. The past would always cling to him, the unseen, ghostly hands of the people he never knew, but who had so great a part in him. This was no farewell, standing amongst the rubble. In a sense it was a dedication to the future. One day he would understand in full measure what it was that he had lost, and he would return again, because this was where he belonged. Now, being young, rage and grief that have such sharpness in their coming would quickly pass, and even now he felt something of a schoolboy's excitement bent on treasure-seeking, as he stirred the embers with hi? feet and looked for the lost treasures.
The people had great delicacy. They stayed away, they did not trample the grounds and stare at the blackened walls. He had his heritage to himself. And he knew that they had taken already the things they wanted, for outside one of the cottages in Oakmount was part of a dresser that he recognised, and a little child at the gatehouse was playing with a porcelain vase that had stood once on the drawing-room mantelpiece.
There were other things, no doubt, lying snug and secure in the cottages at Doonhaven, for a fire, like a wreck, is public property until law and authority walk in. John-Henry was neither law nor authority. He was someone who must take his chance in a country that was torn in civil war, and if his possessions were lost to him he must suffer in silence. Little remained, then, that he could bring away, except that lying on the bank, untouched and quite unharmed, was the smiling portrait of Great-great-aunt Jane, and he was glad of this because he had always loved it, and his mother should have it in her house. The curious thing was that from a little distance the walls of his home appeared untouched. The chimneys stood, and all the windows, and it was only on approaching closely that he could see that nothing had been left of the inside, and the ceiling was the sky.
Yet the foundations of every room remained. And he could walk amongst the rubble and recognise each room, although no room remained. The old part of the house had suffered most. The new wing, always untenanted, looked as it must have done those fifty years ago when it was being built and his father had climbed the scaffolding as a little lad. The iron balcony above the great front door was twisted, but unbroken, and it clung precariously from the blackened walls like a fairy thing, the windows bare behind it, and the walls of the boudoir gone for ever. These were what he valued most, for no known reason, the iron balcony and the portrait of Aunt Jane. With a strange impartiality the fire had spared them both.
When John-Henry had finished probing amongst the stones, he stood on the bank below the castle, and he saw coming towards him down the drive a herd of cattle, which grazed by the wayside as they came, driven by a leisurely fellow with a cap on the side of his head, who sucked a grass stem as he walked. The cows took kindly to their new pasture, they nosed the shrubs, and trod the soft gravel and the leader of them, seeing the creek below, led his followers down the bank to the water-garden, amongst the wild plants that once had been the pride of Jane and Barbara, and thence to the creek itself, where they drank deeply, raising their heads now and again to gaze across the water. The cowman watched them, swishing the grass with his stick, but averting his eyes from the ruins of the castle all the while as though from delicacy.
John-Henry walked down the bank to join him, and the man took the grass stem from his mouth and touched his cap.
John-Henry felt at once that the man, who was young, about his own age, had a face that was familiar to him, seen surely within the last week, and in a sudden wave of perception he saw a likeness to the man in the bar of the hotel in Slane. For a moment he said nothing but 'Good-day,' and the pair of them stood staring at the cattle which grazed below.
