The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  ‘Roderick,’ Margaret was pleading, ‘don’t let that storm twist you as it has twisted me.’ He looked at her startled. She had never before referred to her attacks so positively. Nothing seemed more unlikely than that there should be any disturbance in the placid serenity of this sweet being. The boudoir expressed that same serenity. She had been sitting at her spinet when he entered. She preferred its music to that of the grand piano in the drawing-room. The harp she regarded as too solemn and dramatic. She liked tinkling things, the music boxes that she collected, the little silver bells she wore on her chatelaine belt. They heralded her approach in chime with the soft susurrus of her silken skirts. Nothing ominous about such sounds; nothing twisted!

  ‘After all,’ she went on, ‘other people didn’t go round demanding their trees when they flew away from them that night.’

  There was a knock at the door and Sterrin entered.

  She could not stand the strain any longer. Young Thomas had decided to go at once without begging, he said. Mrs. Stacey had broken into tears and lamentation when he bade her goodbye and when he turned to Sterrin she made another dash for the stairs determined to brave her father’s ire. She dropped a specially deep curtsey first to her mamma then to her papa.

  ‘Papa,’ she began, ‘I’ve come to crave a boon of you.’ She wasn’t too sure what a boon was but in the story books that were read to her the princesses generally said the word when they wanted to get something out of their royal papas. She poured out a graphic and not too coherent description of Young Thomas’s merits, his unremitting toil, the grief of Papa’s foster-mother, Mrs. Stacey, and finally the pathos of his plight driven forth to wander homeless in the snow.

  Her papa maintained a serious front and indicated the golden September sunshine that streamed through the open windows. The weather conditions, he pointed out, were ideal for a homeless wanderer. There seemed little likelihood of snow. She had to yield the point. Her papa was always right. But it said snow in the story where the scullion, who was really an enchanted prince, was being cast forth for raising his eyes towards the king’s daughter. That was the worst of the written word. It seemed to have no bearing on real life; like c-a-t and d-o-g and m-a-t that she had laboured over only to find that they were silly when it had come to writing a letter to Young Thomas.

  Roderick sent Sterrin from the room, but he was smiling. He went to the gun room and dismantled a fowling piece then sent an order to have it cleaned by Young Thomas; as though nothing had happened.

  Roderick did not smile after his talk with Black Pat about Lucas.

  ‘She’ll have no one, Master Rody, but Lucas.’ Black Pat was gloomy, too. ‘She believes that he was meant for her by Heaven. The Big Wind that took her husband and child from her took wife and child from Lucas. ’Tis fate she says.’

  Roderick sighed resignedly. ‘By gad Pat, fate or the Big Wind has caused me enough of trouble without blowing that beetle on my property.’ He felt something absurdly like a premonition as he watched Black Pat walk down the road. Roderick gave George Lucas permission to marry Mrs. Conry, and allowed the darraghadheal to burrow quietly into the Kilsheelin estate.

  17

  Thomas was to go to Dublin for the great rally that was to terminate the open-air agitation of Repeal Year. Roderick had decided that he could use the lad’s resourcefulness—and horsemanship—in what some newspaper reporter had humorously described as the ‘Repeal Cavalry’.

  Thomas was stunned with joy. He was to be supplied with an armlet that would identify him as a ‘Courier’. He would convey messages through that mighty throng! He was to play his minute part in this final display that would preface the liberation of his country!

  Thomas dared to feel pity for the great Mr. Hegarty; for all of his friends in the kitchen. Carrying out their routine tasks; nothing seemed to have changed for them. They were unconscious of the glory that had burst upon his soul. He rushed to tell his marvellous news to Sterrin.

  She looked at him in wonder. He was the same Young Thomas—but—he was all shiny; not polish shiny but like the glow around people in holy pictures.

  ‘Think of it, Miss Sterrin,’ he said when he had poured out the news. ‘Not just going to Dublin, but taking part in such a gathering; the biggest ever in the world. Me! The million that was at Tara will only be a handful to this last rally. It is like a play staged by history; the last act of a long drama and I’ll be there—on the stage.’ He turned away to the window, embarrassed. For the first time in his life he had opened his heart to another. But even to her there were still things he could not say aloud. He gripped the iron hasp of the window. Even if she were old enough to understand, he could never tell her what it was that was bringing tears to his eyes.

  This wasn’t just the flamboyant ardour of youthful patriotism. He had felt like this once before; the time he had awakened after the storm night, cramped from lying across two hard chairs but snug from the unaccustomed covering that had been tucked around him. By order of no less a person than his Honour, the Sir! Then, like now, he had felt that he—belonged.

  No, Miss Sterrin would never understand what it was to feel like this. She’d need to be a waif, homeless, nameless, forever blowing her heart breaths upon the window pane to peep in from outside.

  ‘The castle will seem queer with you away.’ The wistful voice dropped into the surge of his thoughts. He turned. She did look poorly. And he revelling in his own good fortune.

  ‘I shall be terribly lonely for you,’ she continued.

  ‘That’s just because you’re feeling low. You’ll be all right by the time I’m leaving and you won’t mind.’ His sympathy was automatic. She had said something that had lifted his new-found sense of belonging—to the point of elation. This great castle would seem different to someone because it was without him! Miss Sterrin to be lonely for him! For Young Thomas the knife boy!

  Sterrin out-sighed him, ‘When Papa is away Mamma doesn’t seem to notice that I am here at all. I have to ask her everything twice and then she—she almost snaps because she has to come out of her thoughts to answer me.’

  ‘Fancy you noticing that!’

  She leaned up on her elbow. ‘Why? Had you noticed it too?’

  He moved to the fireplace. ‘I’m noticing that it is time I did something about making a fire. A big blazing fire will put these queer thoughts out of your head.’

  ‘And will you read a book to me?’

  ‘If Nurse Hogan allows, and if I can manage the time.’

  As he was leaving the room she called out, ‘Young Thomas, if a dragon were to run away with me would you rescue me?’

  He paused to consider the question. ‘If the dragon wore trousers I probably would. But they usually wear scales.’

  On the journey to Dublin he thought on what she had said about her mamma almost snapping at her in her papa’s absence because she had to ‘come out of her thoughts’ to answer Sterrin. The idea seemed to suggest a chink in the structure of Miss Sterrin’s love-guarded life; a chink to admit the grey chill of—outsideness, that he knew so well. Of course, the Sir and her Ladyship were very wrapped up in each other. Different from anything he had ever observed amongst the Quality who came to stay at the castle; even honeymooners. They were like the sweethearts in books whose love-story ended in marriage and the information that ‘they lived happily ever after’. Thomas was always exasperated at that unsatisfactory phrase. Why couldn’t the author go on and let one glimpse that happy-ever-after? But now, in Kilsheelin Castle he was glimpsing it all the time.

  Once in the turbulent city, Thomas forgot his carriage decorum. His head kept moving from one side to the other as though it were on a swivel. ‘It is not always like this,’ Mike O’Driscoll explained. ‘Dublin has never seen such crowds before. Look at that!’ He flicked the whip in the direction of the Customs House where the great bulk of a man-of-war loomed over vessels flying the flags of all nations. ‘It has never seen the like of that either. I wonder what it is there fo
r.’

  Roderick’s travelling companion, his neighbour Mr. Delaney, wondered also. He was like an emancipated schoolboy. He leaned from one window to the other and talked uninhibitedly to strangers in the carriages that crawled on either side. They dropped him at the crumbling mansion that had been his grandfather’s town residence, and was now occupied by a recluse kinsman. Before entering it he made Roderick promise to collect him later and go to the Crow Street Theatre where the famous actor Thomas Young was billed to play. ‘He has changed his name,’ he said. ‘Married the wealthy Mrs. Winterbottem last month and has assumed her name.’

  Sir Roderick was amazed. ‘How could a man who has made his own name so famous, throw it aside at the whim of a rich widow?’

  Thomas withdrew his head from the rumble and drew forth Mr. Delaney’s carpet bag. Ye Gods! thought the nameless knife boy. Fancy throwing away any name, famous or humble; one’s own rightful name! The new Caroline hat that made him look so tall and grown up had fallen over his eyes. A woman who walked alone winked at the graceful youth who was straightening his hat over crisp curls.

  ‘That lady must have mistaken me for someone else,’ said Thomas when he remounted. O’Driscoll spat. ‘The whipster! Keep your eyes straight ahead the way you were trained, avic. That’s no lady.’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ agreed Thomas. ‘Ladies don’t wink.’

  Later as O’Driscoll turned the horses away from the theatre after dropping the two gentlemen, Thomas looked longingly back.

  ‘Surely,’ cried O’Driscoll, ‘’Tisn’t wantin’ to shut yourself up in a playhouse you are with all that divarshun goin’ on in the streets.’

  Thomas sighed. ‘I’d give anything to see the acting of a great man like Mr. Young.’

  ‘Whoa!’ called O’Driscoll to the horses. ‘You needn’t give anything except whatever it costs to go in by that door.’ He pointed his whip to the gallery entrance. ‘But you can give me your word that you’ll slip out before the last word is spoke on the stage and be on that kerb to open the carriage door when the gentlemen come out.’

  A grateful Thomas arrived panting at the back row of the gallery just as the manager had come before the curtain to announce the change in the famous actor’s name. He apologised that there had not been sufficient time to alter the billing. Then the curtain slowly rose. Thomas gazed and his whole world receded. He stood at the rails like some bewitched mortal gazing across the threshold of the fairy land of Hy Brazil.

  The witty interruptions of the surrounding ‘gods’ scarce reached his consciousness. But in the middle of the last act, he was shattered to reality; the central character—played by Mr. Young—was lamenting his lost youth. ‘Then, alas,’ he wailed, ‘I was young—’ and across his sentence the raucous voice of Thomas’s neighbour yelled, ‘And now you’re Winterbottem!’ The house exploded into laughter. Thomas slipped out during the uproar.

  ‘You kept your word,’ said O’Driscoll as Thomas climbed up beside him. ‘Are you satisfied now?’

  ‘Yes, Mr. O’Driscoll,’ said Thomas leaning back blissfully, ‘very, very satisfied—’ There was a sound of laughter from the theatre and he turned to the sight of Sir Roderick and Mr. Delaney emerging arm-in-arm; still hilarious over the interruption which they decided was a better finish than waiting for the finale.

  When Thomas had shut them in he resumed his seat and went on talking as if he had not been interrupted. ‘After all, what’s in a name?’ he demanded from the uplifted tail of the livery stable horse. ‘A rose under any other name would smell as sweet and Mr. Young under any other name would sound as sweet. The actor’s the thing, not the name—’

  From the corner of his mouth, O’Driscoll hissed. ‘It’s a bad sign when a lad of your age talks to himself. It wasn’t natural for a gossoon to shut himself up in a playhouse and the whole world walkin’ outside. What playhouse could give that divarshun?’ He gestured towards the kerbs.

  Along the kerbs every instrument from a harp to a tin whistle was striving for supremacy. And every one seemed to have its own followers. The girls and youths from the country danced jigs and reels around the fiddlers. The overseas strangers favoured the Celtic harp.

  ‘Mm,’ Thomas murmured, ‘but then I shall have an opportunity of seeing them all, both the world and the musicians, at the meeting on Sunday. I might never again have the opportunity of seeing Thomas Young act.’

  But neither the world, nor the musicians—nor Thomas—saw the meeting at Clontarf.

  The next day, when he emerged from Conciliation Hall after receiving his armlet and instructions, no one would dream that he was other than one of the vast troop of well-to-do young horsemen who voluntarily attended all the Monster meetings under the adhesive nickname of the Repeal Cavalry.

  ‘Where do you think you are going?’ an angry voice interrupted his rapt admiration of his armlet. He stepped apologetically from the path of a big, important looking personage. ‘What does that indicate?’ The man pointed to the armlet. Thomas explained. ‘And you are a member of this “Cavalry”?’ Very emphatically Thomas assured him that he was. ‘You seem very proud of your assignment. Your name, Mr. Cavalryman?’ The question was demanded in that tone of authority to which Thomas was accustomed to give prompt answer.

  ‘Young, er—’ The proud cavalryman had no name to offer but the classification that distinguished him from the boys who carried the turf and water. ‘Young—’ he stammered and the gentleman’s eyes narrowed at the evasion. Thomas’s embarrassed eyes fell on the poster announcing the order of tomorrow’s rally. They were interspersed with hand bills that blazed the two words to which he responded in lieu of a name. Only they were in reverse. Thomas Young instead of ‘Young Thomas’! And the posters announced the actor as dispensing with the name. Thomas turned and smiled at the big man. ‘My name,’ he smiled, ‘is Thomas Young.’

  The gentleman looked silently at Thomas then gestured to one of the policemen and murmured something. The policeman stepped nearer to Thomas.

  There had been a titter from some of the young Repeal horsemen when Thomas read out the actor’s name. ‘I say,’ called one of them, thinking Thomas was a bit of a blade. ‘You had some nerve to twit a big gun like him!’ Thomas learned with shock that he had been misleading one of the police chiefs from Dublin Castle.

  ‘It would have been wiser to have given your own name,’ said an older man. ‘Also it was indiscreet to make any reference to the term “Cavalry”. The Liberator has protested to the newspaper that coined the phrase. He says it could readily give the government the opening they are looking for. It could be construed into something martial; something challenging. And there is something afoot. Why all these extra police and military twenty-four hours before the meeting?’

  The answer followed in the wake of a galloping horseman who drew rein outside the Corn Exchange and rushed inside. By obvious arrangement the police chief and convoy of police moved after him. Thomas found himself back in the hall propelled inwards by the rush of Repealers sensing trouble. Up in the gallery reserved on festive occasions for ladies, he could see Sir Roderick with Mr. Delaney and a party of provincial gentlemen talking and sending out bursts of laughter through cigar smoke. But everyone went still as the messenger strode purposefully to the Liberator and placed a document before him.

  All eyes were focused on O’Connell as he scanned its contents. It took but a second; then he spoke quietly; just a few words, but they were heard through the hall, from the back where Thomas stood to the gallery where Sir Roderick and the others were now on their feet. ‘This must be obeyed,’ they heard him say. ‘They have declared the meeting at Clontarf illegal.’

  The scratching of the quill could be heard as the secretary furiously wrote to the Liberator’s dictation; a clattering broke the stunned silence as Sir Roderick and the others came tearing down the stairs. Men were crowding to read the document then turning to look at each other.

  ‘Surely, the Liberator will not obey this!’ cri
ed Sir Roderick. ‘They cannot forbid the public the right of assembly.’

  But the messenger had already left for the printers with O’Connell’s appeal to the people not to assemble. The gathering was banned.

  With sinking dread Thomas heard voices say that it was a whimsical phrase ‘Repeal Cavalry’ that had given the government the pretext it needed. ‘You see now,’ said the young horseman who had thought Thomas had been merely twitting the police chief about his name. ‘He was trying to trap you into a definite statement that you belonged to the cavalry.’

  Thomas reeled. He had betrayed his great trust! Heaven, could it possibly have been his abysmal folly that had crashed this sublime finale! He turned and forced his way blindly towards the crowded entrance.

  ‘Young Thomas!’ Sir Roderick’s peremptory summons halted his knife boy’s despairing flight.

  He was despatched with those who were posted to the Naas road to meet the contingents from the South and bid them return to their homes. At every approach to the city, North, South, East and West, the Wardens repelled the processions marching behind their banners and bands.

  Once during a lull while they waited for fresh contingents, the two law students who were with Thomas beguiled their deflated spirits with anecdotes of their background. Thomas listened amazed. The brilliance of their banter was like a shower of intellectual fireworks that made a responsive sparkling in his own intellect. In the darkness he became disorientated. His background receded. He scarcely realised that he was joining in their sallies with a delicacy of wit that delighted them. Then the marching feet sounded again. ‘No meeting?’ The weary men who had walked from the extremest points of the country could not believe their ears.