Those who knew the way about the slopes of these hills could spy outposts of the Republican Army, men moving about the hills with telescopes, sometimes the flutter of a signalling flag. What a draught for bold youth this mountain air! The veriest bent-backed clerk, taken out here from his city office, would begin to straighten and stamp in the high romantic manner; how then some fiery country boy led to these high places and told Ireland’s fatal story? High up there, each man his individual eagle, staring down with unfilmed eye upon the faint white roads netting the fair country, they could mark the hurrying police tenders and exult at their freedom.
These hills held caves where men retreated in extremity after the police had raided the farmhouses that usually gave them shelter.
On a shoulder of the outside range of these hills—high enough for the sea to be seen, so near to Dublin that the city seemed to be lying a few miles away in a smoky pool—Mrs. Desmond Fitzgerald had a cottage and a garden plot. She dug in the garden while there was excuse for digging, and it was there she seemed to soften for a few moments, and let some of this Republican load, which she had taken upon herself to carry, fall off her back.
To the peasants of that hamlet, which went climbing up the pass for a mile, she must have been some one come from the bigger world, a sojourner with people whose names were in the papers, on whose heads was a price, to stimulate the cottagers and hold them to their purpose, to refill the cup of village louts drunk with the grandeur of the times.
The fact that the Republicans were a small man fighting a giant was worth a second army to them, for however just the big man’s cause, his efforts against a smaller man are thankless, and the world, which never goes to the roots of a matter, has no sympathy to give him.
On the British Army and the Police fell none of the glory the gods were raining down. They carried out their orders under the most adverse conditions, and got the knocks and fatigues without the applause. They must have had to prop their energies now and then with the remembrance that though the nation whose servants they were had little interest in their doings, dismissed them with the morning bacon and the propped-up newspaper, their thankless task had as great use as any which trumpets heralded and all the world streamed out to cheer.
One day I ran across 47, in Phœnix Park of all places. Some tender moment had brought him to walk among the flowers there. It was one of the few times I saw him before he saw me. He seemed to be communing with himself, like a monk pacing a cloisteral retreat. I supposed he was wondering how long his lonely vigil was still to last.
I crossed the green behind him and said, “Hallo. I see you have the pip.”
“I’ve not got the pip. I’ve had enough of Ireland, though.”
“It’s a tip-top day.”