Kitabı oku: «The Landleaguers», sayfa 8
CHAPTER XII.
"DON'T HATE HIM, ADA."
Among those who had gone as far as Mr. Lambert's, but had not proceeded further, had been Frank Jones. He had heard and seen what has been narrated, and was as much impressed as others with the condition of the country. The populace generally – for so it had seemed to be – had risen en masse to put down the amusement of the gentry, and there had been a secret conspiracy, so that they had been able to do the same thing in different parts of the county. Frank, as he rode back to Morony Castle, a long way from Mr. Lambert's covert, was very melancholy in his mind. The persecution of Mahomet M. Moss and of the Landleaguers together was almost too much for him.
When he got home his father also was melancholy, and the girls were melancholy. "What sport have you had, Frank?" said the father. But he asked the question in a melancholy tone, simply as being one which the son expects on returning from hunting. In this expectation Mr. Jones gave way. Frank shook his head, but did not utter a word.
"What do you mean by that?" asked the father.
"The whole country is in arms." This, no doubt, was an exaggeration, as the only arms that had been brought to Moytubber on the occasion had been the pistol in Tom Daly's pocket.
"In arms?" said Philip Jones.
"Well, yes! I call it so. I call men in arms, when they are prepared to carry out any illegal purpose by violence, and these men have done that all through the County Galway."
"What have they done?"
"You know where the meet was; well, they drew Ballytowngal, and found no fox there. It was not expected, and nothing happened there. The people did not come into old Nick Bodkin's demesne, but we had heard by the time that we were there that we should come across a lot of Landleaguers at Moytubber. There they were as thick as bees round the covert, and there was one man who had the impudence to tell Tom Daly that draw where he might, he would draw in vain for a fox to-day in County Galway."
"Do you mean that there was a crowd?" asked Mr. Jones.
"A crowd! Yes, all Claregalway seemed to have turned out. Claregalway is not much of a place, but everyone was there from Oranmore and from Athenry, and half the town from Galway city." This certainly was an exaggeration on the part of Frank, but was excused by his desire to impress his father with the real truth in the matter. "I never saw half such a number of people by a covert side. But the truth was soon known. They had beat Moytubber, and kicked up such a row as the foxes in that gorse had never heard before. And they were not slow in obtaining their object."
"Their object was clear enough."
"They didn't intend that the hounds should hunt that day either at Moytubber or elsewhere. Daly did not put his hounds into the covert at all; but rode away as fast as his horse's legs could carry him to Kilcornan."
"That must be ten miles at least," said his father.
"Twenty, I should think. But we rode away at a hand-gallop, leaving the crowd behind us." This again was an exaggeration. "But when we got to the covert at Kilcornan there was just the same sort of crowd, and just the same work had been on foot. The men there all told us that we need not expect to find a fox. A rumour had got about the field by this time that Tom Daly had a loaded pistol in his pocket. What he meant to do with it I don't know. He could have done no good without a regular massacre."
"Did he show his pistol?"
"I didn't see it; but I do believe it was there. Some of the old fogies were awfully solemn about it."
"What was the end of it all?" asked Edith, who together with her sister was now listening to Frank's narrative.
"You know Mr. Lambert's place on the road towards Gort. It's a long way off, and I'm a little out of my latitude there. But I went as far as that, and found a bigger crowd than ever. They said that all Gort was there; but Tom having drawn the covert, went on, and swore that he wouldn't leave a place in all County Galway untried. He borrowed fresh horses, and went on with Barney Smith as grim as death. He is still drawing his covert somewhere."
It was thus that Frank Jones told the story of that day's hunting. To his father's ears it sounded as being very ominous. He did not care much for hunting himself, nor would it much perplex him if the Landleaguers would confine themselves to this mode of operations. But as he heard of the crowds surrounding the coverts through the county, he thought also of his many acres still under water, by the operation of a man who had taken upon himself to be his enemy. And the whole morning had been spent in fruitless endeavours to make Florian tell the truth. The boy had remained surly, sullen, and silent. "He will tell me at last," Edith had said to her father. But her father had said, that unless the truth were now told, he must allow the affair to go by. "The time for dealing with the matter will be gone," he had said. "Pat Carroll is going about the country as bold as brass, and says that he will fix his own rent; whereas I know, and all the tenants know, that he ought to be in Galway jail. There isn't a man on the estate who isn't certain that it was he, with five or six others, who let the waters in upon the meadows."
"Then why on earth cannot you make them tell?"
"They say that they only think it," said Edith.
"The very best of them only think it," said Ada.
"And there is not one of them," said Mr. Jones, "whom you could trust to put into a witness-box. To tell the truth, I do not see what right I have to ask them to go there. If I was to select a man, – or two, how can I say to them, 'forget yourself, forget your wife and children, encounter possible murder, and probable ruin, in order that I may get my revenge on this man'?"
"It is not revenge but justice," said Frank.
"It would be revenge to their minds. And if it came to pass that there was a man who would thus sacrifice himself to me, what must I do with him afterwards? Were I to send him to America with money, and take his land into my own hand, see what horrible things would be said of me. The sort of witness I want to back up others, who would then be made to come, is Florian."
"What would they do to him?" asked Edith.
"I could send him to an English school for a couple of years, till all this should have passed by. I have thought of that."
"That, too, would cost money," said Ada.
"Of course it would cost money, but it would be forthcoming, rather than that the boy should be in danger. But the feeling, to me, as to the boy himself, comes uppermost. It is that he himself should have such a secret in his bosom, and keep it there, locked fast, in opposition to his own father. I want to get it out of him while he is yet a boy, so that his name shall not go abroad as one who, by such manifest falsehood, took part against his own father. It is the injury done to him, rather than the injury done to me."
"He has promised his priest that he will not tell," said Edith, making what excuse she could for her brother.
"He has not promised his priest," said Mr. Jones. "He has made no promise to Father Malachi, of Ballintubber. If he has promised at all it is to that pestilent fellow at Headford. The curate at Headford is not his priest, and why should a promise made to any priest be more sacred than one made to another, unless it were made in confession? I cannot understand Florian. It seems as though he were anxious to take part with these wretches against his country, against his religion, and against his father. It is unintelligible to me that a boy of his age should, at the same time, be so precocious and so stupid. I have told him that I know him to be a liar, and that until he will tell the truth he shall not come into my presence." Having so spoken the father sat silent, while Frank went off to dress.
It was felt by them all that a terrible decision had been come to in the family. A verdict had gone out and had pronounced Florian guilty. They had all gradually come to think that it was so. But now the judge had pronounced the doom. The lad was not to be allowed into his presence during the continuance of the present state of things. In the first place, how was he to be kept out of his father's presence? And the boy was one who would turn mutinous in spirit under such a command. The meaning of it was that he should not sit at table with his father. But, in accordance with the ways of the family, he had always done so. A separate breakfast must be provided for him, and a separate dinner. Then would there not be danger that he should be driven to look for his friends elsewhere? Would he not associate with Father Brosnan, or, worse again, with Pat Carroll? "Ada," said Edith that night as they sat together, "Florian must be made to confess."
"How make him?"
"You and I must do it."
"That's all very well," said Ada, "but how? You have been at him now for nine months, and have not moved him. He's the most obstinate boy, I think, that ever lived."
"Do you know, there is something in it all that makes me love him the better?" said Edith.
"Is there? There is something in it that almost makes me hate him."
"Don't hate him, Ada – if you can help it. He has got some religious idea into his head. It is all stupid."
"It is beastly," said Ada.
"You may call it as you please," said the other, "it is stupid and beastly. He is travelling altogether in a wrong direction, and is putting everybody concerned with him in immense trouble. It may be quite right that a person should be a Roman Catholic – or that he should be a Protestant; but before one turns from one to the other, one should be old enough to know something about it. It is very vexatious; but with Flory there is, I think, some idea of an idea. He has got it into his head that the Catholics are a downtrodden people, and therefore he will be one of them."
"That is such bosh," said Ada.
"It is so, to your thinking, but not to his. In loving him or hating him you've got to love him or hate him as a boy. Of course it's wicked that a boy should lie, – or a man, or a woman, or a girl; but they do. I don't see why we are to turn against a boy of our own, when we know that other boys lie. He has got a notion into his head that he is doing quite right, because the priest has told him."
"He is doing quite wrong," said Ada.
"And now what are we to do about his breakfast? Papa says that he is not to be allowed to come into the room, and papa means it. You and I will have to breakfast with him and dine with him, first one and then the other."
"But papa will miss us."
"We must go through the ceremony of a second breakfast and a second dinner." This was the beginning of Edith's scheme. "Of course it's a bore; all things are bores. This about the flood is the most terrible bore I ever knew. But I'm not going to let Flory go to the devil without making an effort to save him. It would be going to the devil, if he were left alone in his present position."
"Papa will see that we don't eat anything."
"Of course he must be told. There never ought to be any secrets in anything. Of course he'll grow used to it, and won't expect us to sit there always and eat nothing. He thinks he's right, and perhaps he is. Flory will feel the weight of his displeasure; and if we talk to him we may persuade him."
This state of things at Morony Castle was allowed to go on with few other words said upon the subject. The father became more and more gloomy, as the floods held their own upon the broad meadows. Pat Carroll had been before the magistrates at Headford, and had been discharged, as all evidence was lacking to connect him with the occurrence. Further effort none was made, and Pat Carroll went on in his course, swearing that not a shilling of rent should be paid by him in next March. "The floods had done him a great injury," he said laughingly among his companions, "so that it was unreasonable to expect that he should pay." It was true he had owed a half-year's rent last November; but then it had become customary with Mr. Jones's tenants to be allowed the indulgence of six months. No more at any rate would be said about rent till March should come.
And now, superinduced upon this cause of misery, had come the tidings which had been spread everywhere through the county in regard to the Galway hunt. Tom Daly had gone on regularly with his meets, and had not indeed been stopped everywhere. His heart had been gladdened by a wonderful run which he had had from Carnlough. The people had not interfered there, and the day had been altogether propitious. Tom had for the moment been in high good humour; but the interruption had come again, and had been so repeated as to make him feel that his occupation was in truth gone. The gentry of the county had then held a meeting at Ballinasloe, and had decided that the hounds should be withdrawn for the remainder of the season. No one who has not ridden with the hounds regularly can understand the effect of such an order. There was no old woman with a turkey in her possession who did not feel herself thereby entitled to destroy the fox who came lurking about her poultry-yard. Nor was there a gentleman who owned a pheasant who did not feel himself animated in some degree by the same feeling. "As there's to be an end of fox-hunting in County Galway, we can do what we like with our own coverts." "I shall go in for shooting," Sir Nicholas Bodkin had been heard to say.
But Black Tom Daly sat alone gloomily in his room at Ahaseragh, where it suited him still to be present and look after the hounds, and told himself that the occupation of his life was gone. Who would want to buy a horse even, now that the chief object for horses was at an end?
CHAPTER XIII.
EDITH'S ELOQUENCE
Thus they lived through the months of January and February, 1881, at Morony Castle, and Florian had not as yet told his secret. As a boy his nature had seemed to be entirely altered during the last six months. He was thoughtful, morose, and obstinate to a degree, which his father was unable to fathom. But during these last two months there had been no intercourse between them. It may almost be said that no word had been addressed by either to the other. No further kind of punishment had been inflicted. Indeed, the boy enjoyed a much wider liberty than had been given to him before, or than was good for him. For his father not only gave no orders to him, but seldom spoke concerning him. It was, however, a terrible trouble to his mind, the fact that his own son should be thus possessed of his own peculiar secret, and should continue from month to month hiding it within his own bosom. With Father Malachi Mr. Jones was on good terms, but to him he could say nothing on the subject. The absurdity of the conversion, or perversion, of the boy, in reference to his religion, made Mr. Jones unwilling to speak of him to any Roman Catholic priest. Father Malachi would no doubt have owned that the boy had been altogether unable to see, by his own light, the difference between the two religions. But he would have attributed the change to the direct interposition of God. He would not have declared in so many words that a miracle had been performed in the boy's favour, but this would have been the meaning of the argument he would have used. In fact, the gaining of a proselyte under any circumstances would have been an advantage too great to jeopardise by any arguments in the matter. The Protestant clergyman at Headford, in whose parish Morony Castle was supposed to have been situated, was a thin, bigoted Protestant, of that kind which used to be common in Ireland. Mr. Armstrong was a gentleman, who held it to be an established fact that a Roman Catholic must necessarily go to the devil. In all the moralities he was perfect. He was a married man, with a wife and six children, all of whom he brought up and educated on £250 a year. He never was in debt; he performed all his duties – such as they were – and passed his time in making rude and unavailing attempts to convert his poorer neighbours. There was a union, – or poor-house – in the neighbourhood, to which he would carry morsels of meat in his pocket on Friday, thinking that the poor wretches who had flown in the face of their priest by eating the unhallowed morsels, would then have made a first step towards Protestantism. He was charitable, with so little means for charity; he was very eager in his discourses, in the course of which he would preach to a dozen Protestants for three-quarters of an hour, and would confine himself to one subject, the iniquities of the Roman Catholic religion. He had heard of Florian's perversion, and had made it the topic on which he had declaimed for two Sundays. He had attempted to argue with Father Brosnan, but had been like a babe in his hands. He ate and drank of the poorest, and clothed himself so as just to maintain his clerical aspect. All his aspirations were of such a nature as to entitle him to a crown of martyrdom. But they were certainly not of a nature to justify him in expecting any promotion on this earth. Such was Mr. Joseph Armstrong, of Headford, and from him no aid, or counsel, or pleasant friendship could be expected in this matter.
The trouble of Florian's education fell for the nonce into Edith's hands. He had hitherto worked under various preceptors; his father, his sister, and his brother; also a private school at Galway for a time had had the charge of him. But now Edith alone undertook the duty. Gradually the boy began to have a way of his own, and to tell himself that he was only bound to be obedient during certain hours of the morning. In this way the whole day after twelve o'clock was at his own disposal, and he never told any of the family what he then did. Peter, the butler, perhaps knew where he went, but even to Peter the butler, the knowledge was a trouble; for Peter, though a stanch Roman Catholic, was not inclined to side with anyone against his own master. Florian, in truth, did see more of Pat Carroll than he should have done; and, though it would be wrong to suppose that he took a part against his father, he no doubt discussed the questions which were of interest to Pat Carroll, in a manner that would have been very displeasing to his father. "Faix, Mr. Flory," Pat would say to him, "'av you're one of us, you've got to be one of us; you've had a glimmer of light, as Father Brosnan says, to see the errors of your way; but you've got to see the errors of your way on 'arth as well as above. Dragging the rint out o' the body and bones o' the people, like hair from a woman's head, isn't the way, and so you'll have to larn." Then Florian would endeavour to argue with his friend, and struggle to make him understand that in the present complicated state of things it was necessary that a certain amount of rent should go to Morony Castle to keep up the expenses there.
"We couldn't do, you know, without Peter; nor yet very well without the carriage and horses. It's all nonsense saying that there should be no rent; where are we to get our clothes from?" But these arguments, though very good of their kind, had no weight with Pat Carroll, whose great doctrine it was that rent was an evil per se; and that his world would certainly go on a great deal better if there were no rent.
"Haven't you got half the land of Ballintubber in your hands?" said Carroll. Here Florian in a whisper reminded Pat that the lands of Ballintubber were at this moment under water, and had been put so by his operation. "Why wouldn't he make me a statement when I asked for it?" said Carroll, with a coarse grin, which almost frightened the boy.
"Flory," said Edith to the boy that afternoon, "you did see the men at work upon the sluices that afternoon?"
"I didn't," said Florian.
"We all believe that you did."
"But I didn't."
"You may as well listen to me this once. We all believe that you did – papa and I, and Frank and Ada; Peter believes it; there's not a servant about the place but what believes it. Everybody believes it at Headford. Mr. Blake at Carnlough, and all the Blakes believe it."
"I don't care a bit about Mr. Blake," said the boy.
"But you do care about your own father. If you were to go up and down to Galway by the boat, you would find that everybody on board believes it. The country people would say that you had turned against your father because of your religion. Mr. Morris, from beyond Cong, was here the other day, and from what he said about the floods it was easy to see that he believed it."
"If you believe Mr. Morris better than you do me, you may go your own ways by yourself."
"I don't see that, Flory. I may believe Mr. Morris in this matter better than I do you, and yet not intend to go my own ways by myself. I don't believe you at all on this subject."
"Very well, then, don't."
"But I want to find out, if I can, what may be the cause of so terrible a falsehood on your part. It has come to that, that though you tell the lie, you almost admit that it is a lie."
"I don't admit it."
"It is as good as admitted. The position you assume is this: 'I saw the gates destroyed, but I am not going to say so in evidence, because it suits me to take part with Pat Carroll, and to go against my own father.'"
"You've no business to put words like that into my mouth."
"I'm telling you what everybody thinks. Would your father treat you as he does now without a cause? And are you to remain here, and to go down and down in the world till you become such a one as Pat Carroll? And you will have to live like Pat Carroll, with the knowledge in everyone's heart that you have been untrue to your father. They are becoming dishonest, false knaves, untrue to their promises, the very scum of the earth, because of their credulity and broken vows; but what am I to say of you? You will have been as false and perfidious and credulous as they. You will have thrown away everything good to gratify the ambition of some empty traitor. And you will have done it all against your own father." Here she paused and looked at him. They were roaming at the time round the demesne, and he walked on, but said nothing. "I know what you are thinking of, Flory."
"What am I thinking of?"
"You're thinking of your duty; you are thinking whether you can bring yourself to make a clean breast of it, and break the promises which you have made."
"Nobody should break a promise," said he.
"And nobody should tell a lie. When one finds oneself in the difficulty one has to go back and find out where the evil thing first began."
"I gave the promise first," said Florian.
"No such promise should ever have been given. Your first duty in the matter was to your father."
"I don't see that at all," said Florian. "My first duty is to my religion."
"Even to do evil for its sake? Go to Father Malachi, and ask him."
"Father Malachi isn't the man to whom I should like to tell everything. Father Brosnan is a much better sort of clergyman. He is my confessor, and I choose to go by what he tells me."
"Then you will be a traitor to your father."
"I am not a traitor," said Florian.
"And yet you admit that some promise has been given – some promise which you dare not own. You cannot but know in your own heart that I know the truth. You have seen that man Carroll doing the mischief, and have promised him to hold your tongue about it. You have not, then, understood at all the nature or extent of the evil done. You have not, then, known that it would be your father's duty to put down this turbulent ruffian. You have promised, and having promised, Father Brosnan has frightened you. He and Pat Carroll together have cowed the very heart within you. The consequence is that you are becoming one of them, and instead of moving as a gentleman on the face of the earth, you will be such as they are. Tell the truth, and your father will at once send you to some school in England, where you will be educated as becomes my brother."
The boy now was sobbing in tears. He lacked the resolution to continue his lie, but did not dare to tell the truth.
"I will," he whispered.
"What will you do?"
"I will tell all that I know about it."
"Tell me, then, now."
"No, Edith, not now," he said.
"Will you tell papa, then?" said Edith.
"Papa is so hard to me."
"Whom will you tell, and when?"
"I will tell you, but not now. I will first tell Father Brosnan that I am going to do it; I shall not then have told the lie absolutely to my priest."
On this occasion Edith could do nothing further with him; and, indeed, the nature of the confession which she expected him to make was such that it should be made to some person beyond herself. She could understand that it must be taken down in some form that would be presentable to a magistrate, and that evidence of the guilt of Pat Carroll and evidence as to the possible guilt of others must not be whispered simply into her own ears. But she had now brought him to such a condition that she did think that his story would be told.
