Norah's Good-bye

: The World Peril Of 1910

The scene had shifted back from the royal city of Potsdam to the little

coast town in Connemara. John Castellan was sitting on a corner of his

big writing-table swinging his legs to and fro, and looking a little

uncomfortable. Leaning against the wall opposite the windows, with her

hands folded behind her back, was a girl of about nineteen, an almost

perfect incarnation of the Irish girl at her best. Tall, black-haired,

black-browed, grey-eyed, perfectly-shaped, and with that indescribable

charm of feature which neither the pen nor the camera can do justice

to--Norah Castellan was facing him, her eyes gleaming and almost black

with anger, and her whole body instinct with intense vitality.



"And so Ireland hasn't troubles enough of her own, John, that you must

bring new ones upon her, and what for? To realise a dream that was never

anything else but a dream, and to satisfy a revenge that is three

hundred years old! If that theory of yours about re-incarnation is true,

you may have been a Spaniard once, but remember that you're an Irishman

now; and you're no good Irishman if you sell yourself to these

foreigners to do a thing like that, and it's your sister that's telling

you."



"And it's your brother, Norah," he replied, his black brows meeting

almost in a straight line across his forehead, "who tells you that

Ireland is going to have her independence; that the shackles of the

Saxon shall be shaken off once and for ever, even if all Europe blazes

up with war in the doing of it. I have the power and I will use it.

Spaniard or Irishman, what does it matter? I hate England and everything

English."



"Hate England, John!" said the girl. "Are you quite sure that it isn't

an Englishman that you hate?"



"Well, and what if I do? I hate all Englishmen, and I'm the first

Irishman who has ever had the power to put his hatred into acts instead

of words--and you, an Irish girl, with six generations of Irish blood in

your veins, you, to talk to me like this. What are you thinking about,

Norah? Is that what you call patriotism?"



"Patriotism!" she echoed, unclasping her hands, and holding her right

hand out towards him. "I'm as Irish as you are, and as Spanish, too, for

the matter of that, for the same blood is in the veins of both of us.

You're a scholar and a genius, and all the rest of it, I grant you; but

haven't you learned history enough to know that Ireland never was

independent, and never could be? What brought the English here first?

Four miserable provinces that called themselves kingdoms, and all

fighting against each other, and the king of one of them stole the wife

of the king of another of them, and that's how the English came.



"I love Ireland as well as you do, John, but Ireland is not worth

setting the world swimming in blood for. You're lighting a match-box to

set the world ablaze with. It isn't Ireland only, remember. There are

Irish all over the world, millions of them, and remember how the Irish

fought in the African War. I don't mean Lynch and his traitors, but the

Dublin boys. Who were the first in and the last out--Irishmen, but they

had the sense to know that they were British first and Irish afterwards.

I tell you, you shall be shot for what you've done, and if I wasn't the

daughter of your father and mother, I'd inform against you now."



"And if you did, Norah, you would do very little good to the Saxon

cause," replied her brother, pointing with his thumb out of one of the

windows. "You see that yacht in the bay there. Everything is on board of

her. If you went out into the street now, gave me in charge of the

constabulary, to those two men in front of the hotel there, it would

make no difference. There's nothing to be proved, no, not even if my

own sister tried to swear my life and liberty away. It would only be

that the Germans and the Russians, and the Austrians, and the rest of

them would work out my ideas instead of me working them out, and it

might be that they would make a worse use of them. You've half an hour

to give me up, if you like."



And then he began to collect the papers that were scattered about the

big drawing-table, sorting them out and folding them up and then taking

other papers and plans from the drawers and packing them into a little

black dispatch box.



"But, John, John," she said, crossing the room, and putting her hand on

his shoulder. "Don't tell me that you're going to plunge the world in

war just for this. Think of what it means--the tens of thousands of

lives that will be lost, the thousands of homes that will be made

desolate, the women who will be crying for their husbands, and the

children for their fathers, the dead men buried in graves that will

never have a name on them, and the wounded, broken men coming back to

their homes that they will never be able to keep up again, not only here

and in England, but all over Europe and perhaps in America as well!

Genius you may be; but what are you that you should bring calamity like

this upon humanity?"



"I'm an Irishman, and I hate England, and that's enough," he replied

sullenly, as he went on packing his papers.



"You hate that Englishman worse than you hate England, John."



"And I wouldn't wonder if you loved that Englishman more than you loved

Ireland, Norah," he replied, with a snarl in his voice.



"And if I did," she said, with blazing eyes and flaming cheeks, "isn't

England nearer to Ireland than America?"



"Geographically, perhaps, but in sentiment--"



"Sentiment! Yes, when you have finished with this bloody business of

yours that you have begun on, go you through Ireland and England and

Europe, and ask the widows and the fatherless, and the girls who kissed

their lovers 'good-bye,' and never saw them again, what they think of

that sentiment! But it's no use arguing with you now; there's your

German yacht. You're no brother of mine. You've made me sorry that we

had the same father and mother."



As she spoke, she went to the door, opened it and, before he could

reply, slammed it behind her, and went to her room to seek and find a

woman's usual relief from extreme mental tension.



John Castellan went on packing his papers, his face grey, and his

features hard-set. He loved his beautiful sister, but he thought that he

loved his country more. When he had finished he went and knocked at her

door, and said:



"Norah, I'm going. Won't you say 'good-bye?'"



The door was swung open, and she faced him, her face wet with tears, her

eyes glistening, and her lips twitching.



"Yes, good-bye, John," she said. "Go to your German friends; but, when

all the horrors that you are going to bring upon this country through

their help come to pass, remember you have no sister left in Ireland.

You've sold yourself, and I have no brother who is a traitor. Good-bye!"



The door swung to and she locked it. John Castellan hesitated for a

moment or two, and then with a slow shake of his head he went away down

the stairs out into the street, and along to the little jetty where the

German yacht's boat was waiting to take him on board.



Norah had thrown herself on her bed in her locked room shedding the

first but not the last tear that John Castellan's decision was destined

to draw from women's eyes.



About half an hour later the encircling hills of the bay echoed the

shriek of a siren. She got up, looked out of the window, and saw the

white shape of the German yacht moving out towards the fringe of islands

which guard the outward bay.



"And there he goes!" she said in a voice that was almost choked with

sobs, "there he goes, my own brother, it may be taking the fate of the

world with him--yes, and on a German ship, too. He that knows every

island and creek and cove and harbour from Cape Wrath to Cape Clear--he

that's got all those inventions in his head, too, and the son of my own

father and mother, sold his country to the foreigner, thinking those

dirty Germans will keep their word with him.



"Not they, John, not they. The saints forgive me for thinking it, but

for Ireland's sake I hope that ship will never reach Germany. If it

does, we'll see the German Eagle floating over Dublin Castle before

you'll be able to haul up the Green Flag. Well, well, there it is; it's

done now, I suppose, and there's no help for it. God forgive you, John,

I don't think man ever will!"



As she said this the white yacht turned the southern point of the inner

bay, and disappeared to the southward. Norah bathed her face, brushed

out her hair, and coiled it up again; then she put on her hat and

jacket, and went out to do a little shopping.



It is perhaps a merciful provision of Providence that in this human life

of ours the course of the greatest events shall be interrupted by the

most trivial necessities of existence. Were it not for that the

inevitable might become the unendurable.



The plain fact was that Norah Castellan had some friends and

acquaintances coming to supper that evening. Her brother had left at a

few hours' notice from his foreign masters, as she called them, and

there would have to be some explanation of his absence, especially as a

friend of his, Arthur Lismore, the owner of the finest salmon streams

for twenty miles round, and a man who was quite hopelessly in love with

herself, was coming to brew the punch after the fashion of his

ancestors, and so, of course, it was necessary that there should be

nothing wanting.



Moreover, she was beginning to feel the want of some hard physical

exercise, and an hour or so in that lovely air of Connemara, which, as

those who know, say, is as soft as silk and as bright as champagne. So

she went out, and as she turned the corner round the head of the harbour

to the left towards the waterfall, almost the first person she met was

Arthur Lismore himself--a brown-faced, chestnut-haired, blue-eyed, young

giant of twenty-eight or so; as goodly a man as God ever put His own

seal upon.



His cap came off, his head bowed with that peculiar grace of deference

which no one has ever yet been able to copy from an Irishman, and he

said in the strong, and yet curiously mellow tone which you only hear in

the west of Ireland:



"Good afternoon, Miss Norah. I've heard that you're to be left alone for

a time, and that we won't see John to-night."



"Yes," she said, her eyes meeting his, "that is true. He went away in

that German yacht that left the bay less than an hour ago."



"A German yacht!" he echoed. "Well now, how stupid of me, I've been

trying to think all the afternoon what that flag was she carried when

she came in."



"The German Imperial Yacht Club," she said, "that was the ensign she was

flying, and John has gone to Germany in her."



"To Germany! John gone to Germany! But what for? Surely now--"



"Yes, to Germany, to help the Emperor to set the world on fire."



"You're not saying that, Miss Norah?"



"I am," she said, more gravely than he had ever heard her speak. "Mr

Lismore, it's a sick and sorry girl I am this afternoon. You were the

first Irishman on the top of Waggon Hill, and you'll understand what I

mean. If you have nothing better to do, perhaps you'll walk down to the

Fall with me, and I'll tell you."



"I could have nothing better to do, Norah, and it's yourself that knows

that as well as I do," he replied. "I only wish the road was longer.

And it's yourself that's sick and sorry, is it? If it wasn't John, I'd

like to get the reason out of any other man. That's Irish, but it's

true."



He turned, and they walked down the steeply sloping street for several

minutes in silence.



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