【英文读物】Orange and Green.docx

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1、【英文读物】Orange and GreenPreface.The subject of Ireland is one which has, for some years, been a very prominent one, and is likely, I fear, for some time yet to occupy a large share of public attention. The discontent, manifested in the troubles of recent years, has had its root in an old sense of grie

2、vance, for which there was, unhappily, only too abundant reason. The great proportion of the soil of Ireland was taken from the original owners, and handed over to Cromwells followers, and for years the land that still remained in the hands of Irishmen was subject to the covetousness of a party of g

3、reedy intriguers, who had sufficient influence to sway the proceedings of government. The result was the rising of Ireland, nominally in defence of the rights of King James, but really as an effort of despair on the part of those who deemed their religion, their property, and even their lives threat

4、ened, by the absolute ascendency of the Protestant party in the government of the country. I have taken my information from a variety of sources; but, as I wished you to see the matter from the Irish point of view, I have drawn most largely from the history of those events by Mr. ODriscol, published

5、 sixty years ago. There is, however, but little difference of opinion between Irish and English authors, as to the general course of the war, or as to the atrocious conduct of Williams army of foreign mercenaries towards the people of Ireland. G. A. Henty.Chapter 1: A Shipwreck. A few miles to the s

6、outh of Bray Head, on the crest of a hill falling sharply down to the sea, stood Castle Davenant, a conspicuous landmark to mariners skirting the coast on their way from Cork or Waterford to Dublin Bay. Castle Davenant it was called, although it had long since ceased to be defensible; but when it wa

7、s built by Sir Godfrey Davenant, who came over with Strongbow, it was a place of strength. Strongbows followers did well for themselves. They had reckoned on hard fighting, but the Irish were too much divided among themselves to oppose any serious resistance to the invaders. Strongbow had married th

8、e daughter of Dermid, Prince of Leinster, and at the death of that prince succeeded him, and the greater portion of Leinster was soon divided among the knights and men-at-arms who had followed his standard. Godfrey Davenant, who was a favourite of the earl, had no reason to be dissatisfied with his

9、share, which consisted of a domain including many square miles of fertile land, stretching back from the seacoast. Here for many generations his descendants lived, for the most part taking an active share in the wars and disturbances which, with scarcely an interval of rest, agitated the country. Th

10、e castle had continued to deserve its name until forty years before the time this story commences, when Cromwells gunners had battered a breach in it, and left it a heap of smoking ruins. Walter Davenant had died, fighting to the last, in his own hall. At that time, the greater part of his estate wa

11、s bestowed upon officers and soldiers in Cromwells army, among whom no less than four million acres of Irish land were divided. Had it not been that Walter Davenants widow was an Englishwoman, and a relation of General Ireton, the whole of the estate would have gone; but his influence was sufficient

12、 to secure for her the possession of the ruins of her home, and a few hundred acres surrounding it. Fortunately, the dowry which Mrs. Davenant had brought her husband was untouched, and a new house was reared within the ruins of the castle, the new work being dovetailed with the old. The family now

13、consisted of Mrs. Davenant, a lady sixty-eight years old; her son Fergus, who was, when Cromwell devastated the land, a child of five years; his wife Katherine, daughter of Lawrence McCarthy, a large landowner near Cork; and their two sons, Walter, a lad of sixteen, and Godfrey, twelve years old. Tw

14、o miles west of the castle stood a square-built stone house, surrounded by solidly-constructed barns and outbuildings. This was the abode of old Zephaniah Whitefoot, the man upon whom had been bestowed the broad lands of Walter Davenant. Zephaniah had fought stoutly, as lieutenant in one of Cromwell

15、s regiments of horse, and had always considered himself an ill-treated man, because, although he had obtained all the most fertile portion of the Davenant estate, the old family were permitted to retain the castle, and a few hundred acres by the sea. He was one of those who contended that the Amalek

16、ites should be utterly destroyed by the sword, and he considered that the retention of the corner of their domains, by the Davenants, was a direct flying in the face of the providence who had given them into the hands of the faithful. Not that, had he obtained possession of the ruined castle, Zephan

17、iah Whitefoot would have repaired it or set up his abode there. The followers of Cromwell had no eyes for the beautiful. They were too much in earnest to care aught for the amenities of life, and despised, as almost sinful, anything approximating to beauty, either in dress, person, or surroundings.

18、The houses that they reared, in this land of which they had taken possession, were bare to the point of ugliness, and their interior was as cold and hard as was the exterior. Everything was for use, nothing for ornament. Scarce a flower was to be seen in their gardens, and laughter was a sign of lev

19、ity, to be sternly repressed. Their isolation, in the midst of a hostile population, caused them no concern whatever. They cared for no society or companionship, save that of their own households, which they ruled with a rod of iron; and an occasional gathering, for religious purposes, with the othe

20、r settlers of their own faith. They regarded the Irish as Papists, doomed to everlasting perdition, and indeed consigned to that fate all outside their own narrow sect. Such a people could no more mix with the surrounding population than oil with water. As a rule, they tilled as much ground in the i

21、mmediate vicinity of their houses as they and their families could manage, and the rest of the land which had fallen into their possession they let, either for a money payment, or, more often, for a portion of the crops raised upon it, to such natives as were willing to hold it on these terms. The n

22、ext generation had fallen away somewhat from their fathers standards. It is not in human nature to stand such a strain as their families had been subjected to. There is an innate yearning for joy and happiness, and even the sternest discipline cannot keep man forever in the gloomy bonds of fanaticis

23、m. In most cases, the immediate descendants of Cromwells soldiers would gladly have made some sort of compromise, would have surrendered much of their outlying land to obtain secure and peaceful possession of the rest, and would have emerged from the life of gloomy seclusion, in which they found the

24、mselves; but no whisper of any such feeling as this would be heard in the household of Zephaniah Whitefoot, so long as he lived. He was an old man now, but as hard, as gloomy, and as unlovable as he had been when in his prime. His wife had died very many years before, of no disease that Zephaniah or

25、 the doctor he called in could discover, but, in fact, of utter weariness at the dull life of repression and gloom which crushed her down. Of a naturally meek and docile disposition, she had submitted without murmuring to her husbands commands, and had, during her whole married life, never shocked h

26、im so much as she did the day before her death, when, for the first time, she exhibited the possession of an opinion of her own, by saying earnestly: You may say what you like, Zephaniah, but I do think we were meant to have some happiness and pleasure on earth. If we were intended to go through lif

27、e without laughing, why should we be able to laugh? Oh, how I should like to hear one hearty, natural laugh again before I die, such as I used to hear when I was a girl! Jabez Whitefoot inherited his mothers docility of disposition, and, even when he grew to middle age, never dreamt of disputing his

28、 fathers absolute rule, and remained strictly neutral when his wife, the daughter of an old comrade of his father, settled a few miles away, fought stoutly at times against his tyranny. You are less than a man, Jabez, she would say to him, indignantly, to put up, at your age, with being lectured as

29、if you were a child. Parental obedience is all very well, and I hope I was always obedient to my father; but when it comes to a body not being permitted to have a soul of his own, it is going too far. If you had told me that, when I became your wife, I was to become the inmate of a dungeon for the r

30、est of my existence, I wouldnt have had you, not if you had been master of all the broad lands of Leinster. But, though unable to rouse her husband into making an effort for some sort of freedom, Hannah Whitefoot had battled more successfully in behalf of her son, John. You have had the management o

31、f your son, sir, and I will manage mine, she said. I will see that he does not grow up a reprobate or a Papist, but at least he shall grow up a man, and his life shall not be as hateful as mine is, if I can help it. Many battles had already been fought on this point, but in the end Hannah Whitefoot

32、triumphed. Although her husband never, himself, opposed his fathers authority, he refused absolutely to use his own to compel his wife to submission. You know, sir, he said, you had your own way with my mother and me, and I say nothing for or against it. Hannah has other ideas. No one can say that s

33、he is not a good woman, or that she fails in her duty to me. All people do not see life from the same point of view. She is just as conscientious, in her way, as you are in yours. She reads her Bible and draws her own conclusions from it, just as you do; and as she is the mother of the child, and as

34、 I know she will do her best for it, I shall not interfere with her way of doing it. And so Hannah won at last, and although, according to modern ideas, the boys training would have been considered strict in the extreme, it differed very widely from that which his father had had before him. Sounds o

35、f laughter, such as never had been heard within the walls of the house, since Zephaniah laid stone upon stone, sometimes issued from the room where Hannah and the child were together alone, and Zephaniah was out with Jabez about the farm; and Hannah herself benefited, as much as did the child, by he

36、r rebellion against the authorities. Jabez, too, was conscious that home was brighter and pleasanter than it had been, and when Zephaniah burst into a torrent of indignation, when he discovered that the child had absolutely heard some fairy stories from its mother, Jabez said quietly: Father, I wish

37、 no dispute. I have been an obedient son to you, and will continue so to my lifes end; but if you are not satisfied with the doings of my wife, I will depart with her. There are plenty who will be glad to let me a piece of land; and if I only work there as hard as I work here, I shall assuredly be a

38、ble to support her and my boy. So let this be the last word between us. This threat put an end to the struggle. Zephaniah had, like most of his class, a keen eye to the main chance, and could ill spare the services of Jabez and his thrifty and hard-working wife; and henceforth, except by pointed ref

39、erences, in the lengthy morning and evening prayers, to the backsliding in his household, he held his peace. Between the Castle and Zephaniah Whitefoot there had never been any intercourse. The dowager Mrs. Davenant hated the Cromwellite occupier of her estate, not only as a usurper, but as the repr

40、esentative of the man who had slain her husband. She never alluded to his existence, and had always contrived, in her rides and walks, to avoid any point from which she could obtain so much as a distant view of the square, ugly house which formed a blot on the fair landscape. She still spoke of the

41、estate as if it extended to its original boundaries, and ignored absolutely the very existence of Zephaniah Whitefoot, and all that belonged to him. But when her son and Jabez grew to mans estate, at about the same period, they necessarily at times crossed each others paths; and as in them the preju

42、dices and enmities of their elders were somewhat softened, they would, when they met on the road, exchange a passing nod or a brief Good morning. Another generation still, and the boys of the two houses met as friends. Thanks to his mothers successful rebellion, John Whitefoot grew up a hearty, heal

43、thy boy, with a bright eye, a merry laugh, and a frank, open bearing. One would think, his grandfather remarked angrily one day, as the boy went out, whistling gaily, to fetch in a young colt Jabez was about to break, that John was the son of a malignant, or one of the men of Charles Stuart, rather

44、than of a God-fearing tiller of the soil. So long as he fears God, and walks in the right way, he is none the worse for that, father, Jabez said stoutly; and even you would hardly say that his mother has failed in her teachings in that respect. I do not know that, so long as one has the words of Scr

45、ipture in his heart, he is any the better for having them always on his lips; in other respects, I regret not that the boy should have a spirit and a fire which I know I lack myself. Who can say what may yet take place here! The Stuarts are again upon the throne, and, with Jamess leaning towards Pap

46、acy, there is no saying whether, some day, all the lands which Cromwell divided among his soldiers may not be restored to their original possessors, and in that case our sons may have to make their way in other paths of life than ours; and, if it be so, John will assuredly be more likely to make his

47、 way than I should have done. We would never surrender, save with our lives, what our swords have won. We will hold the inheritance which the Lord has given us, the old man said fiercely. Yes, father; and so said those whose lands we have inherited. So said Walter Davenant, of whose lands we are pos

48、sessed. It will be as God wills it. He has given to us the lands of others, and it may be that he will take them away again. The times have changed, father, and the manners; and I am well pleased to see that John, while I am sure he is as true to the faith as I am myself, will take broader and, perh

49、aps, happier views of life than I have done. Zephaniah gave a snort of displeasure. He grieved continually at the influence which his daughter-in-law exercised over her son, and which now extended clearly to her husband; but Jabez was now a man of five-and-forty, and had lately shown that, in some respects at least, he intended to have his way, while Zephaniah himself, though still erect and strong, was well-nigh eighty.