No Defense: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

THE TWO MEET

"Well, good-bye, Dyck. I'll meet you at the sessions, or before that at
the assizes."

It was only the impulsive, cheery, warning exclamation of a wild young
Irish spirit to his friend Dyck Calhoun, but it had behind it the humour
and incongruity of Irish life.

The man, Dyck Calhoun, after whom were sent the daring words about the
sessions and the assizes, was a year or two older than his friend, and,
as Michael Clones, his servant and friend, said, "the worst and best
scamp of them all"--just up to any harmless deviltry.

Influenced by no traditions or customs, under control of no stern records
of society, Calhoun had caused some trouble in his time by the harmless
deeds of a scapegrace, but morally--that is, in all relations of life
affected by the ten commandments--he was above reproach. Yet he was of
the sort who, in days of agitation, then common in Ireland, might
possibly commit some act which would bring him to the sessions or the
assizes. There never was in Ireland a cheerier, braver, handsomer fellow,
nor one with such variety of mind and complexity of purpose.

He was the only child of a high-placed gentleman; he spent all the money
that came his way, and occasionally loaded himself with debt, which his
angry father paid. Yet there never was a gayer heart, a more generous
spirit, nor an easier-tempered man; though, after all, he was only
twenty-five when the words with which the tale opens were said to him.

He had been successful--yet none too successful--at school and Trinity
College, Dublin. He had taken a pass degree, when he might have captured
the highest honours. He had interested people of place in the country,
but he never used promptly the interest he excited. A pretty face, a
fishing or a shooting expedition, a carouse in some secluded tavern, were
parts of his daily life.

At the time the story opens he was a figure of note among those who spent
their time in criticizing the government and damning the Irish
Parliament. He even became a friend of some young hare-brained rebels of
the time; yet no one suspected him of anything except irresponsibility.
His record was clean; Dublin Castle was not after him.

When his young friend made the remark about the sessions and assizes,
Calhoun was making his way up the rocky hillside to take the homeward
path to his father's place, Playmore. With the challenge and the
monstrous good-bye, a stone came flying up the hill after him and stopped
almost at his feet. He made no reply, however, but waved a hand downhill,
and in his heart said:

"Well, maybe he's right. I'm a damned dangerous fellow, there's no doubt
about that. Perhaps I'll kill a rebel some day, and then they'll take me
to the sessions and the assizes. Well, well, there's many a worse fate
than that, so there is."

After a minute he added:

"So there is, dear lad, so there is. But if I ever kill, I'd like it to
be in open fight on the hills like this--like this, under the bright sun,
in the soft morning, with all the moor and valleys still, and the larks
singing--the larks singing! Hooray, but it's a fine day, one of the best
that ever was!"

He laughed, and patted his gun gently.

"Not a feather, not a bird killed, not a shot fired; but the looking was
the thing--stalking the things that never turned up, the white heels we
never saw, for I'm not killing larks, God love you!"

He raised his head, looking up into the sky at some larks singing above
him in the heavens.

"Lord love you, little dears," he added aloud. "I wish I might die with
your singing in my ears, but do you know what makes Ireland what it is?
Look at it now. Years ago, just when the cotton-mills and the linen-mills
were doing well, they came over with their English legislation, and made
it hard going. When we begin to get something, over the English come and
take the something away. What have we done, we Irish people, that we
shouldn't have a chance in our own country? Lord knows, we deserve a
chance, for it's hard paying the duties these days. What with France in
revolution and reaching out her hand to Ireland to coax her into
rebellion; what with defeat in America and drink in Scotland; what with
Fox and Pitt at each other's throats, and the lord-lieutenant a danger to
the peace; what with poverty, and the cow and children and father and
mother living all in one room, with the chickens roosting in the rafters;
what with pointing the potato at the dried fish and gulping it down as if
it was fish itself; what with the smell and the dirt and the poverty of
Dublin and Derry, Limerick and Cork--ah, well!" He threw his eyes up
again.

"Ah, well, my little love, sing on! You're a blessing among a lot of
curses; but never mind, it's a fine world, and Ireland's the best part of
it. Heaven knows it--and on this hill, how beautiful it is!"

He was now on the top of a hill where he could look out towards the bog
and in towards the mellow, waving hills. He could drink in the yellowish
green, with here and there in the distance a little house; and about two
miles away smoke stealing up from the midst of the plantation where
Playmore was--Playmore, his father's house--to be his own one day.

How good it was! There, within his sight, was the great escarpment of
rock known as the Devil's Ledge, and away to the east was the black spot
in the combe known as the Cave of Mary. Still farther away, towards the
south, was the great cattle-pasture, where, as he looked, a thousand
cattle roamed. Here and there in the wide prospect were plantations where
Irish landlords lived, and paid a heavy price for living. Men did not pay
their rents. Crops were spoiled, markets were bad, money was scarce,
yet--

"Please God, it will be better next year!" Michael Clones said, and there
never was a man with a more hopeful heart than Michael Clones.

Dyck Calhoun had a soul of character, originality, and wayward
distinction. He had all the impulses and enthusiasms of a poet, all the
thirst for excitement of the adventurer, all the latent patriotism of the
true Celt; but his life was undisciplined, and he had not ordered his
spirit into compartments of faith and hope. He had gifts. They were gifts
only to be borne by those who had ambitions.

Now, as he looked out upon the scene where nature was showing herself at
her best, some glimmer of a great future came to him. He did not know
which way his feet were destined to travel in the business of life. It
was too late to join the navy; but there was still time enough to be a
soldier, or to learn to be a lawyer.

As he gazed upon the scene, his wonderful deep blue eyes, his dark brown
hair thick upon his head, waving and luxuriant like a fine mattress, his
tall, slender, alert figure, his bony, capable hands, which neither sun
nor wind ever browned, his nervous yet interesting mouth, and his long
Roman nose, set in a complexion rich in its pink-and-cream hardness and
health--all this made him a figure good to see.

Suddenly, as he listened to the lark singing overhead, with his face
lifted to the sky, he heard a human voice singing; and presently there
ran up a little declivity to his left a girl--an Irish girl of about
seventeen years of age.

Her hat was hanging on her arm by a green ribbon. Her head was covered
with the most wonderful brown, waving hair. She had a broad, low
forehead, Greek in its proportions and lines. The eyes were bluer even
than his own, and were shaded by lashes of great length, which slightly
modified the firm lines of the face, with its admirable chin, and mouth
somewhat large with a cupid's bow.

In spite of its ardent and luscious look, it was the mouth of one who
knew her own mind and could sustain her own course. It was open when Dyck
first saw it, because she was singing little bits of wild lyrics of the
hills, little tragedies of Celtic life--just bursts of the Celtic soul,
as it were, cheerful yet sad, buoyant and passionate, eager yet
melancholy. She was singing in Irish too. They were the words of songs
taught her by her mother's maid.

She had been tramping over the hills for a couple of hours, virile,
beautiful, and alone. She wore a gown of dark gold, with little green
ribbons here and there. The gown was short, and her ankles showed. In
spite of the strong boots she wore they were alert, delicate, and
shapely, and all her beauty had the slender fullness of a quail.

When she saw Dyck, she stopped suddenly, her mouth slightly open. She
gave him a sidelong glance of wonder, interest, and speculation. Then she
threw her head slightly back, and all the curls gathered in a bunch and
shook like bronze flowers. It was a head of grace and power, of charm and
allurement--of danger.

Dyck was lost in admiration. He looked at her as one might look at a
beautiful thing in a dream. He did not speak; he only smiled as he gazed
into her eyes. She was the first to speak.

"Well, who are you?" she asked with a slightly southern accent in her
voice, delicate and entrancing. Her head gave a little modest toss, her
fine white teeth caught her lower lip with a little quirk of humour; for
she could see that he was a gentleman, and that she was safe from
anything that might trouble her.

He replied to her question with the words:

"My name? Why, it's Dyck Calhoun. That's all."

Her eyes brightened. "Isn't that enough?" she asked gently.

She knew of his family. She was only visiting in the district with her
mother, but she had lately heard of old Miles Calhoun and his wayward
boy, Dyck; and here was Dyck, with a humour in his eyes and a touch of
melancholy at his lips. Somehow her heart went out to him.

Presently he said to her: "And what's your name?"

"I'm only Sheila Llyn, the daughter of my mother, a widow, visiting at
Loyland Towers. Yes, I'm only Sheila!"

She laughed.

"Well, just be 'only Sheila,"' he answered admiringly, and he held out a
hand to her. "I wouldn't have you be anything else, though it's none of
my business."

For one swift instant she hesitated; then she laid her hand in his.

"There's no reason why we should not," she said. "Your father's
respectable."

She looked at him again with a sidelong glance, and with a whimsical,
reserved smile at her lips.

"Yes, he's respectable, I agree, but he's dull," answered Dyck. "For an
Irishman, he's dull--and he's a tyrant, too. I suppose I deserve that,
for I'm a handful."

"I think you are, and a big handful too!"

"Which way are you going?" he asked presently.

"And you?"

"Oh, I'm bound for home." He pointed across the valley. "Do you see that
smoke coming up from the plantation over there?"

"Yes, I know," she answered. "I know. That's Playmore, your father's
place. Loyland Towers is between here and there. Which way were you going
there?"

"Round to the left," he said, puzzled, but agreeable.

"Then we must say good-bye, because I go to the right. That's my nearest
way."

"Well, if that's your nearest way, I'm going with you," he said,
"because--well, because--because--"

"If you won't talk very much!" she rejoined with a little air of
instinctive coquetry.

"I don't want to talk. I'd like to listen. Shall we start?"

A half-hour later they suddenly came upon an incident of the road.

It was, alas, no uncommon incident. An aged peasant, in a sudden fit of
weakness, had stumbled on the road, and, in falling, had struck his head
on a stone and had lost consciousness. He was an old peasant of the usual
Irish type, coarsely but cleanly dressed. Lying beside him was a leather
bag, within which were odds and ends of food and some small books of
legend and ritual. He was a peasant of a superior class, however.

In falling, he had thrown over on his back, and his haggard face was
exposed to the sun and sky. At sight of him Dyck and Sheila ran forward.
Dyck dropped on one knee and placed a hand on the stricken man's heart.

"He's alive, all right," Dyck said. "He's a figure in these parts. His
name's Christopher Dogan."

"Where does he live?"

"Live? Well, not three hundred yards from here, when he's at home, but
he's generally on the go. He's what the American Indians would call a
medicine-man."

"He needs his own medicine now."

"He's over eighty, and he must have gone dizzy, stumbled, fallen, and
struck a stone. There's the mark on his temple. He's been lying here
unconscious ever since; but his pulse is all right, and we'll soon have
him fit again."

So saying, Dyck whipped out a horn containing spirit, and, while Sheila
lifted the injured head, he bathed the old man's face with the spirit,
then opened the mouth and let some liquor trickle down.

"He's the cleanest peasant I ever saw," remarked Sheila; "and he's coming
to. Look at him!"

Yes, he was coming to. There was a slight tremor of the eyelids, and
presently they slowly opened. They were eyes of remarkable poignancy and
brightness--black, deep-set, direct, full of native intelligence. For an
instant they stared as if they had no knowledge, then understanding came
to them.

"Oh, it's you, sir," his voice said tremblingly, looking at Dyck. "And
very kind it is of ye!" Then he looked at Sheila. "I don't know ye," he
said whisperingly, for his voice seemed suddenly to fail. "I don't know
ye," he repeated, "but you look all right."

"Well, I'm Sheila Llyn," the girl said, taking her hand from the old
man's shoulder.

"I'm Sheila Llyn, and I'm all right in a way, perhaps."

The troubled, piercing eyes glanced from one to the other.

"No relation?"

"No--never met till a half-hour ago," remarked Dyck.

The old man drew himself to a sitting posture, then swayed slightly. The
hands of the girl and Dyck went out behind his back. As they touched his
back, their fingers met, and Dyck's covered the girl's. Their eyes met,
too, and the story told by Dyck in that moment was the beginning of a
lifetime of experience, comedy, and tragedy.

He thought her fingers were wonderfully soft, warm, and full of life; and
she thought that his was the hand of a master-of a master in the field of
human effort. That is, if she thought at all, for Dyck's warm, powerful
touch almost hypnotized her.

The old peasant understood, however. He was standing on his feet now. He
was pale and uncertain. He lifted up his bag, and threw it over his
shoulder.

"Well, I'm not needing you any more, thank God!" he said.

"So Heaven's blessing on ye, and I bid ye good-bye. You've been kind to
me, and I won't forget either of ye. If ever I can do ye a good turn,
I'll do it."

"No, we're not going to leave you until you're inside your home," said
Dyck.

The old man looked at Sheila in meditation. He knew her name and her
history. Behind the girl's life was a long prospect of mystery. Llyn was
her mother's maiden name. Sheila had never known her father. Never to her
knowledge had she seen him, because when she was yet an infant her mother
had divorced him by Act of Parliament, against the wishes of her church,
and had resumed her maiden name.

Sheila's father's name was Erris Boyne, and he had been debauched,
drunken, and faithless; so at a time of unendurable hurt his wife had
freed herself. Then, under her maiden name, she had brought up her
daughter without any knowledge of her father; had made her believe he was
dead; had hidden her tragedy with a skilful hand.

Only now, when Sheila was released from a governess, had she moved out of
the little wild area of the County Limerick where she lived; only now had
she come to visit an uncle whose hospitality she had for so many years
denied herself. Sheila was two years old when her father disappeared, and
fifteen years had gone since then.

One on either side of the old man, they went with him up the hillside for
about three hundred yards, to the door of his house, which was little
more than a cave in a sudden lift of the hill. He swayed as he walked,
but by the time they reached his cave-house he was alert again.

The house had two windows, one on either side of the unlocked doorway;
and when the old man slowly swung the door open, there was shown an
interior of humble character, but neat and well-ordered. The floor was
earth, dry and clean. There was a bed to the right, also wholesome and
dry, with horse-blankets for cover. At the back, opposite the doorway,
was a fireplace of some size, and in it stood a kettle, a pot, and a few
small pans, together with a covered saucepan. On either side of the
fireplace was a three-legged stool, and about the middle of the left-hand
wall of the room was a chair which had been made out of a barrel, some of
the staves having been sawn away to make a seat.

Once inside the house, Christopher Dogan laid his bag on the bed and
waved his hands in a formula of welcome.

"Well, I'm honoured," he said, "for no one has set foot inside this place
that I'd rather have here than the two of ye; and it's wonderful to me,
Mr. Calhoun, that ye've never been inside it before, because there's been
times when I've had food and drink in plenty. I could have made ye
comfortable then and stroked ye all down yer gullet. As for you, Miss
Llyn, you're as welcome as the shining of the stars of a night when
there's no moon. I'm glad you're here, though I've nothing to give ye,
not a bite nor sup. Ah, yes--but yes," he suddenly cried, touching his
head. "Faith, then, I have! I have a drap of somethin' that's as good as
annything dhrunk by the ancient kings of Ireland. It's a wee cordial that
come from the cellars of the Bishop of Dunlany, when I cured his cook of
the evil-stone that was killing her. Ah, thank God!"

He went into a corner on the left of the fireplace, opened an old jar,
thrust his arm down, and drew out a squat little bottle of cordial. The
bottle was beautifully made. It was round and hunched, and of glass, with
an old label from which the writing had faded.

With eyes bright now, Christopher uncorked the bottle and smelled the
contents. As he did so, a smile crinkled his face.

"Thank the Lord! There's enough for the two of ye--two fine
tablespoonfuls of the cordial that'd do anny man good, no matter how bad
he was, and turn an angel of a woman into an archangel. Bless yer Bowl!"

When Christopher turned to lift down two pewter pots, Calhoun reached up
swiftly and took them from the shelf. He placed them in the hands of the
old man, who drew a clean towel of coarse linen from a small cupboard in
the wall above his head.

She and Dyck held the pots for the old man to pour the cordial into them.
As he said, there was only a good porridge-spoon of liqueur for each. He
divided it with anxious care.

"There's manny a man," he said, "and manny and manny a lady, too, born in
the purple, that'd be glad of a dhrink of this cordial from the cellar of
the bishop.

"Alpha, beta, gamma, delta is the code, and with the word delta," he
continued, "dhrink every drop of it, as if it was the last thing you were
dhrinking on earth; as if the Lord stooped down to give ye a cup of
blessing from His great flagon of eternal happiness. Ye've got two kind
hearts, but there's manny a day of throuble will come between ye and the
end; and yet the end'll be right, God love ye! Now-alpha, beta, gamma,
delta!"

With a merry laugh Dyck Calhoun turned up his cup and drained the liquid
to the last drop. With a laugh not quite so merry, Sheila raised her mug
and slowly drained the green happiness away.

"Isn't it good--isn't it like the love of God?" asked the old man. "Ain't
I glad I had it for ye? Why I said I hadn't annything for ye to dhrink or
eat, Lord only knows. There's nothing to eat, and there's only this to
dhrink, and I hide it away under the bedclothes of time, as one might
say. Ah, ye know, it's been there for three years, and I'd almost forgot
it. It was a little angel from heaven whispered it to me whir ye stepped
inside this house. I dunno why I kep' the stuff. Manny's the time I was
tempted to dhrink it myself, and manny's the time something said to me,
'Not yet.' The Lord be praised, for I've had out of it more than I
deserve!"

He took the mugs from their hands, and for a minute stood like some
ancient priest who had performed a noble ritual. As Sheila looked at him,
she kept saying to herself:

"He's a spirit; he isn't a man!"

Dyck's eye met that of Sheila, and he saw with the same feeling what was
working in her heart.

"Well, we must be going," he said to Christopher Dogan. "We must get
homeward, and we've had a good drink--the best I ever tasted. We're proud
to pay our respects to you in your own house; and goodbye to you till we
meet again."

His hand went out to the shoulder of the peasant and rested there for a
second in friendly feeling. Then the girl stretched out her hand also.
The old man took the two cups in one hand, and, reaching out the other,
let Sheila's fingers fall upon his own. He slowly crooked his neck, and
kissed her fingers with that distinction mostly to be found among those
few good people who live on the highest or the lowest social levels, or
in native tents.

"Ah, please God we meet again! and that I be let to serve you, Miss
Sheila Llyn. I have no doubt you could do with a little help some time or
another, the same as the rest of us. For all that's come between us
three, may it be given me, humble and poor, to help ye both that's helped
me so!"

Dyck turned to go, and as he did so a thought came to him.

"If you hadn't food and drink for us, what have you for yourself,
Christopher?" he asked. "Have you food to eat?"

"Ah, well--well, do ye think I'm no provider? There was no food cooked
was what I was thinking; but come and let me show you."

He took the cover off a jar standing in a corner. "Here's good flour, and
there's water, and there's manny a wild shrub and plant on the hillside
to make soup, and what more does a man want? With the scone cooked and
inside ye, don't ye feel as well as though ye'd had a pound of beef or a
rasher of bacon? Sure, ye do. I know where there's clumps of wild
radishes, and with a little salt they're good--the best. God bless ye!"

A few moments later, as he stood in his doorway and looked along the
road, he saw two figures, the girl's head hardly higher than the man's
shoulder. They walked as if they had much to get and were ready for it.

"Well, I dunno," he said to himself. "I dunno about you, Dyck Calhoun.
You're wild, and ye have too manny mad friends, but you'll come all right
in the end; and that pretty girl--God save her!--she'll come with a smile
into your arms by and by, dear lad. But ye have far to go and much to do
before that."

His head fell, his eyes stared out into the shining distance.

"I see for ye manny and manny a stroke of bad luck, and manny a wrong
thing said of ye, and she not believing wan of them. But oh, my God, but
oh!"--his clenched hands went to his eyes. "I wouldn't like to travel the
path that's before ye--no!"

Down the long road the two young people travelled, gossiping much, both
of them touched by something sad and mysterious, neither knowing why;
both of them happy, too, for somehow they had come nearer together than
years of ordinary life might have made possible. They thought of the old
man and his hut, and then broke away into talk of their own countryside,
of the war with France, of the growing rebellious spirit in Ireland, of
riots in Dublin town, of trouble at Limerick, Cork, and Sligo.

At the gate of the mansion where Sheila was visiting, Dyck put into her
hands the wild flowers he had picked as they passed, and said:

"Well, it's been a great day. I've never had a greater. Let's meet again,
and soon! I'm almost every day upon the hill with my gun, and it'd be
worth a lot to see you very soon."

"Oh, you'll be forgetting me by to-morrow," the girl said with a little
wistfulness at her lips, for she had a feeling they would not meet on the
morrow. Suddenly she picked from the bunch of wild flowers he had given
her a little sprig of heather.

"Well, if we don't meet--wear that," she said, and, laughing over her
shoulder, turned and ran into the grounds of Loyland Towers.

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