Ireland In Travail - free ebook by Joice NanKivell Loch

IRELAND IN TRAVAIL

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CHAPTER I 47—AGENT

In the wonderful August weather of 1920, my wife and I were in our London flat sighing for cooler places. The season had come to an end with less than its usual glory, and for days taxis and growlers, topheavy with luggage, had been carrying fleeing Londoners to country and to sea. The holidays had begun; but England, still limping from the late war, had lost the holiday spirit: indeed the world was restless as if it had come through painful convulsions to kick spasmodically for a while. We were

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CHAPTER II WE CROSS TO DUBLIN

“Any firearms?” A lamp flashed on a pair of khaki legs. “Any firearms?” asked the man with the lamp again in a feeble attempt at cheerfulness. I was trying to be cheerful too; but it was the middle of the night and very cold, and I had lost a husband. A soft cloud of steam rose from the engine of the train that had just disgorged me. All along the platform were weary passengers and flashing lamps. A silk stocking slid to the platform from my suitcase. The stooping Customs man bumped his finger o

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CHAPTER III I COME ACROSS 47

It was past eleven o’clock when I left my wife and wandered out of the hotel and across O’Connell Bridge. The tide was high, and something about the lights that lay upon the Liffey waters, and something about the numerous bridges spanning the river, brought me dreams of Venice. It is said there is truth in first impressions. I had a first impression of Dublin then. In that shining summer weather the city, which was at once so pleasantly conceived and so down at heels, impressed me as some likeab

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CHAPTER IV FINDING A ROOF

Next morning Himself and I breakfasted early and went flat hunting. We went light-heartedly, not knowing what was before us. I had started with some idea of comfort and cleanliness: I had made up my mind that my life should be comfortable as well as interesting. But that dream was soon dispelled. The flats we saw had never seen brooms since the days of Cuchulan, a man the Irish are very fond of. We were eyed up and down by frowsy maids and dilapidated landladies. “God knows where we’ll end if we

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CHAPTER V WE SETTLE IN

Three days later we took up our abode with Mrs. Slaney. She directed our arrival. She was like a busy bird on several twigs. She did not seem able to keep away. The flat had been imperfectly cleaned; the curtains had been imperfectly put up; the window-cleaner had not come, but was coming at some date known only to himself; the door locks had not been mended. “There are one or two little items I’ve overlooked,” Mrs. Slaney said. “I make a small charge for cleaning the front hall. I allow Mrs. O’

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CHAPTER VI WE MAKE ACQUAINTANCES

Himself and I had got a grip of Dublin at the end of a week by using a map and doing a lot of walking. All this time Mrs. Slaney was becoming more friendly. She swallowed rebuffs as an ostrich swallows stones. We began to know by sight the people in the neighbourhood. A number of officers lived in one of the houses. Sometimes they were in uniform, and sometimes in mufti. They went out at night very late, returning during or after curfew as they felt inclined. Usually a car called for them, drive

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CHAPTER VII THE BIRTH OF SINN FEIN

During our first months, September, October, and November, Ireland passed into a state of war. The country had been going there step by step, by way of raid and arrest on the one hand, and hedge and ditch shooting on the other; but the walk turned to a run and the run to a slide when the system of reprisals began. As summer turned into autumn, and autumn wore out, the hate and terror engendered by the deeds of either side were to beget the shameful happenings of the winter, so that Ireland, like

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CHAPTER VIII AUTUMN WEARS OUT

September wore out; October wore out; November arrived. The long, unkind evenings of those months seemed a forcing ground for the terror, which was going about like a disease that one person after another catches. The private citizen, who asked only for peace, seemed to pass to and fro looking neither to right nor left, as if he feared above anything else to stir the curiosity of some partisan of the British Government or of Sinn Fein. Some evening walks I took through the chilly streets, seeing

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CHAPTER IX THE HUNGER STRIKE

I took the tram back to College Green, and found the paper boys raising a great clamour there. The first of the Cork hunger strikers had died. As I left the tram and threaded through the crowd towards Grafton Street, I felt that, like myself, all these people I was rubbing shoulders with were fearful this was an augury of more terrible events. For more than two months the incredible fast of fifty Irishmen had been capturing the public imagination, and, according to the Nationalist Press, the ima

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CHAPTER X BLOODY SUNDAY

Sunday, November 21st, Himself and I went to Howth, and spent all day by the sea on that wild bit of foreland, which Dublin City has not managed to tame. It was getting dusk as we came back on the tram. The ride is long, and it was too late in the year for the tops of trams. We were soon shivering and wanting to be back home. Then something happened to make us forget the wind. As we came among the houses the reflection of a great fire caught our eyes. It was on the far side of the water, a stron

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CHAPTER XI AFTERMATH

The officers met their ends in their beds, in their baths, at shaving. One and all were shot in cold blood, and, extraordinary to relate, no defence seems to have been made. In every case the victim was taken unawares. This veritable Slaughter of the Innocents could only have occurred to such a race as the British. These officers, on a par with their behaviour in the hotels, went to bed in an enemy country with unlocked doors and locked-up guns. That supreme British contempt for the enemy—at onc

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CHAPTER XII VISIT TO A TOP STORY

As soon as Himself and I had had dinner, we went to look up 47’s wife. There was no time to waste if we were to get back before curfew. I was longing to see her after all this time. They lived in a top story. A dilapidated servant opened the door, and gave us a peculiar, sidelong look. She did not know us, but she stood aside and made no effort to show the way up. The house seemed grubby in the dim light of the hall. The windows showed the city’s dust and fog; in the better light the curtains wo

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CHAPTER XIII FROM THE HOUSETOP

Tea was over when 47 came in. He was out of breath from climbing up the stairs; but he seemed satisfied with life and pleased to see us. “So you got here?” he said. My wife made room for him beside her. “Come over and get warm,” his wife said. When he came across she said eagerly, “What luck?” His answer was to put a hand into a pocket and pull out an automatic pistol. “That’s better,” she exclaimed, almost happily. “Now I’ll stop worrying. Have you plenty of bullets?” “Enough,” he answered. “I

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CHAPTER XIV AN AT HOME

“You were able to come. I’m glad,” my hostess exclaimed. “You know every one.” Himself drifted to a far corner, where I lost him. I made my way across the great warm room towards the fireplace. Tea was progressing merrily, and I was soon seated with a cup in my hand, eating potato cakes hot from the kitchen. There were about thirty people present—grave professors, elderly people who might have been doctors or lawyers, one or two who looked like decadent poets, and lots of wives. Everybody was ta

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CHAPTER XV HEIGHT OF THE TERROR

Passing from bad to worse, the year drew to an end. As if the fury of those days were breeding them and putting them upon the streets, the shaking lorries increased in number; and the flying Crossley tenders swept by in the hunt—hunting, hunting, hunting for the elusive foe, which was everywhere and nowhere—which was on the pavements, which was behind the counters of the shops, which was wrapped in the uniforms of tram conductor, of railway porter, of postman, which made use of any refuge that i

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CHAPTER XVI THE MINISTER OF PROPAGANDA

One March morning Mrs. Slaney rapped at the door. Himself was out. I put down my pen with a sigh. “I see you have ‘engaged’ on the door,” she said cheerfully, “but I must come in for a moment to tell you something. It’s very bad for you to sit writing like this, you should be out in the sun. We don’t get much sunshine as a rule at this time of the year.” She shut the door, walked over to the sofa, and lowered her voice. “I’ve let the hall flat,” she said. “I had to come and tell you.” “But you l

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CHAPTER XVII CAPTURE OF A CABINET MINISTER

Himself was out; but I was not alone. Mrs. Slaney sat upon my sofa, and Mrs. Slaney smoked a cigarette, and once again Mrs. Slaney poured into my dulled ears the story of Ireland’s martyrdom. “It’s going to be a cold night,” she said, in the middle of a fiery sentence. “Cold?” My voice was like the night. “I must take my bulbs in from the window; I don’t want them frost nipped now.” I rose and went to the window and opened it with difficulty, for the sash had never been mended. “I really mustn’t

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CHAPTER XVIII WINTER WEARS OUT

Our road came in for a spell of peace after the departure of the Minister of Propaganda. From time to time other houses up and down the way had been looked up by the Crown Forces; but for a while the neighbourhood seemed to pass out of the public eye, and the lorries rolled down other streets. I had been out when the Auxiliaries made their call, and I returned to find a gaping congregation at the mouth of our street, and outside our house the glaring headlights of an armoured car, and two great

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CHAPTER XIX MRS. O’GRADY’S FOREBODINGS

Mrs. O’Grady rose from the ashes in the fender one morning, and balancing herself so that she threw her minimum weight on her bad leg, said: “They do be saying that poor Mike Collins is dead.” “Michael Collins!” “Himself. I was after hearing it from my priest, who knows the priest who attended him.” She sniffed. “But, if he is dead, why should they hide it?” “And why should they tell? Mike’s given the Government a long run for him sure enough, and faith they’re running still. But he’s dead and b

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CHAPTER XX TO DUBLIN CASTLE

Mrs. O’Grady’s forebodings were to prove themselves only too true. The fatal evening came at the end of an April day when the Crown Forces made a great haul of propaganda in Molesworth Street. Rumour had it they had penetrated into a basement and found there the temporary offices of the Irish Bulletin , the official organ of Sinn Fein. Six typewriters and two tons of literature to do with propaganda were borne off in triumph to the Castle. Rumour also had it that Darrel Figgis had incriminated h

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CHAPTER XXI INSIDE THE CASTLE

In a few seconds the lorries were empty and everybody was disappearing into the dark. A voice had cried out, “Come along, boys, the bar’s open for another half-hour.” Not everybody succumbed to the magic of those words, for O’Grady and I were led away to the left to a place which must have been a guardroom. The spell of the army was upon everything. There were endless unbrushed passages as a start, and everybody we came upon seemed to come to life suddenly, and to wave us on to somebody else. In

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CHAPTER XXII LOST: A HUSBAND

We stood shivering on the steps, and watched Himself and O’Grady climb into one of the lorries. Himself was wrapped up well enough; but I had a pang at the sight of O’Grady, who was elderly and had on a threadbare overcoat and scarf. Mrs. Slaney denounced the British Government until the last sounds of the wheels had died away. I listened dazed. A plait of Mrs. O’Grady’s hair hung down her back. The spell was broken by Mrs. Slaney retreating upstairs; but with a bound Mrs. O’Grady outstripped he

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CHAPTER XXIII LAST WEEKS OF WAR.

We did at last seem to be putting the winter behind, and like divers in a sea, to be coming out of darkness and cold. Spring did seem to be arriving. The sun shone, the days lengthened, and the leaves began to poke out of the barren boughs of the lilacs and the hawthorns across the way. One could not do other than grow cheerful with the carolling birds. And surely the Republican Volunteers lying out on the mountains, and surely the police driving up hill and down hill, found time to do as we oth

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CHAPTER XXIV THE COMING OF SUMMER

With the arrival of June a long dry summer made a beginning. The leaves were thick upon the trees, the birds had done their spring singing and were sending their families out into the world, and the nursemaids and children had all come back again to Stephen’s Green. The babies that had filled the perambulators of last year toddled beside the wheels this year, and new babies were lying upon the old cushions. But political affairs showed no alteration, and though it was fixed in everybody’s mind t

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CHAPTER XXV THE EVE OF PEACE

The concussion of the bomb nearly threw me off my feet. For a few moments I thought that I was hit. In a dream I could see people falling, and I realised that things were darting by me like fast and furious flies. The lorry had slackened speed, and the Auxiliaries were standing up shooting. A man prone on the ground a few yards away raised himself cautiously on his hands. Then I came to life. At the same moment a man in the gutter decided that the moment to retire had come. He scrambled to his f

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CHAPTER XXVI THE TWELFTH OF JULY

Now that the height of the summer had come, and each day was hotter than the last, there began an exodus from Dublin of all who had opportunity, and among the speeding guests was myself. I left my wife behind and winged a flight to Ulster, being primed that I would have taken no true stock of Ireland until I had examined the strange race that moved, and lived, and had its being in the north-east of the country. It was said that the first half of July was the season to study these people, as thei

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CHAPTER XXVII TRUCE

Now that an armistice had been signed, and Dublin was again the centre of affairs, my wife and I packed up at the end of the Orange celebrations and returned home. We arrived in the middle of another blazing hot day, and as we rattled from the station on a jaunting-car, Crossley tenders full of unarmed Auxiliaries with towels about their necks passed us, going in the direction of the sea. It was an astonishing sight, and more eloquent than all the newspaper accounts. There had been no public rej

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CHAPTER XXVIII LAST OF IRELAND

“God save us!” Mrs. O’Grady exclaimed to Himself when she heard of the truce, and to this day I have not made up my mind whether the exclamation was one of hope or despair. She had summered in the stifling basement and had grown thin. She toiled hopelessly upstairs with sweat upon her forehead, she limped hopelessly downstairs, groaning with the burden of living, as she stooped to gather into her hands some particularly obvious trail of dust left by her broom. As she grew lean the man in the str

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