The Irish get credit, even from their enemies, for being a quick-witted,
imaginative, and artistic people, yet they display astonishingly little
taste or originality in their domestic architecture. In Connaught, where
the Celtic genius may be supposed to have the freest opportunity
for expressing itself, the towns are all exactly alike, and their
resemblance consists in the absence of any beauty which can please
the eye. An English country town, although the English bucolic is
notoriously as stupid as an ox, has certain features of its own. So has
a Swiss cottage or a French village. It is possible to represent these
upon Christmas cards or the lids of chocolate-boxes without labelling
them English, Swiss, or French. Any moderately well educated young lady
will recognise them at once, and exclaim without hesitation, ‘How truly
English!’ or ‘How sweetly Swiss!’ But no one can depict an Irish town
with any hope of having it recognised unless he idealizes boldly,
introducing a highly-intelligent pig, or a man in knee-breeches kissing
a fancifully-attired colleen. And then, after all, he might as well have
labelled it Irish at once in good plain print, and saved himself the
trouble of drawing the symbolic figures.
To describe Ballymoy, therefore, mountains, rivers, and such like
natural eccentricities being left out of the count, is to describe fifty
other West of Ireland towns. There is a railway-station, bleak, gray,
and windswept, situated, for the benefit of local car-owners, a mile and
a half from the town, and the road which connects the two is execrable.
There is a workhouse, in Ballymoy as everywhere else in this lost land
the most prominent building. There is a convent, immense and wonderfully
white, with rows and rows of staring windows and a far-seen figure of
the Blessed Virgin, poised in a niche above the main door. There is
a Roman Catholic church, gray-walled, gray-roofed, and unspeakably
hideous, but large and, like the workhouse and the convent, obtruding
itself upon the eye. It seems as if the inhabitants of the town must all
of them be forced, and that at no distant date, either into religion
or pauperism, just as small bodies floating in a pond are sucked into
connection with one or other of the logs which lie among them. The shops
in the one tortuous street block the footpaths in front of their doors
with piles of empty packing-cases. The passenger is saluted, here by a
buffet in the face from a waterproof coat suspended outside a draper’s,
there by a hot breath of whisky-laden air. Two shops out of every
three are public-houses. These occupy a very beautiful position in the
economic life of the town. Their profits go to build the church, to
pay the priests, and to fill the coffers of the nuns. The making of
the profits fills the workhouse. A little aloof stands the Protestant
church, austere to look upon, expressing in all its lines a grim
reproach of the people’s life. Beyond it, among scanty, stooped trees,
is the rectory, gray, as everything else is, wearing, like a decayed
lady, the air of having lived through better days.
Such, save for one feature, is Ballymoy, as the traveller sees it, as
Hyacinth Conneally saw it when he arrived there one gusty afternoon.
The one unusual feature is Mr. James Quinn’s woollen mill. It stands,
a gaunt and indeed somewhat dilapidated building, at the bottom of the
street, in the angle where the river turns sharply to flow under the
bridge. The water just above the bridge is swept into a channel and
forced to turn the wheel which works some primitive machinery within.
In the centre of the mill’s front is an archway through which carts pass
into the paved square behind. Here is the weighbridge, and here great
bundles of heavy-smelling fleeces are unloaded. Off the square is the
office where Mr. Quinn sits, pays for the wool, and enters the weight
of it in damp ledgers. Here on Saturdays two or three men and a score of
girls receive their wages. The business is a peculiar one. You may bring
your wool to Mr. Quinn in fleeces, just as you sheer it off the sheep’s
back. He will pay you for it, more or less, according to the amount
of trouble you have taken with your sheep. This is the way the younger
generation likes to treat its wool. If you are older, and are blessed
with a wife able to card and spin, you deal differently with Mr. Quinn.
For many evenings after the shearing your wife sits by the fireside
with two carding-combs in her hands, and wipes off them wonderfully soft
rolls of wool. Afterwards she fetches the great wheel from its nook, and
you watch her pulling out an endless gray thread while she steps back
and forwards across the floor. The girls watch her, too, but not, as
you do, with sleepy admiration. Their emotion is amused contempt.
Nevertheless, your kitchen wall is gradually decorated with bunches of
great gray balls. When these have accumulated sufficiently, you take
them to Mr. Quinn. A certain number of them become his property. Out of
the rest he will weave what you like--coarse yellow flannel, good for
bawneens, and, when it is dyed crimson, for petticoats; or blankets--not
fluffy like the blankets that are bought in shops, but warm to sleep
under when the winter comes; or perhaps frieze, very thick and rough,
the one fabric that will resist the winter rain.
This portion of his business Mr. Quinn finds to be decreasing year by
year. Fewer and fewer women care to card and spin the wool. The younger
men find it more profitable to sell it at once, and to wear, instead
of the old bawneens, shirts called flannel which are brought over from
cotton-spinning Lancashire, and sold in the shops. The younger women
think that they look prettier in gowns made artfully by the local
dressmaker out of feeble materials got up to catch the eye. If now and
then, for the sake of real warmth, one of them makes a petticoat of the
old crimson flannel, it is kept so short that, save in very heavy rain,
it can be concealed. Unfortunately, while these old-fashioned profits
are vanishing, Mr. Quinn finds it very hard to increase the other branch
of his business. The fabrics which he makes are good, so good that he
finds it difficult to sell them in the teeth of competition. The
country shops are flooded with what he calls ‘shoddy.’ An army of eager
commercial travellers pushes showy goods on the shopkeepers and the
public at half his price. Even the farmers in remote districts are
beginning to acquire a taste for smartness. Some things in which he used
to do a useful trade are now scarcely worth making. There is hardly
any demand for the checked head-kerchiefs. The women prefer hats and
bonnets, decked with cheap ribbons or artificial flowers; and these
bring no trade to Mr. Quinn’s mill. Still, he manages to hold on. The
Lancashire people, though they have invented flannelette, cannot as yet
make a passable imitation of frieze, and there is a Dublin house which
buys annually all the blankets he can turn out. It is true that even
there, and for the best class of customers, prices have to be cut so as
to leave a bare margin of profit. Yet since there is a margin, Mr. Quinn
holds on, though not very hopefully.
Hyacinth left the bulk of his luggage--a packing-case containing the
books which the auctioneer had failed to dispose of in Carrowkeel--at
the station, and walked into Ballymoy carrying his bag. He had little
difficulty in making his way to the mill, and found the owner of it in
his office. It was difficult at first to believe that James Quinn could
be any relation to Captain Albert, the traveller, horse-dealer, soldier,
and thief. This man was tall, though he stooped when he stood to receive
his visitor. His movements were slow. His fair hair lay thin across his
forehead, and was touched above the ears with gray. His blue eyes were
very gentle, and had a way of looking long and steadily at what they
saw. A glance at his face left the impression that life, perhaps by no
very gentle means, had taught him patience.
‘This letter will introduce me,’ said Hyacinth; ‘it is from your
brother, Captain, or Mr. Albert, Quinn.’
James Quinn took the letter, and turned it over slowly. Then, without
opening it, he laid it on the table in front of him. His eyes travelled
from it to Hyacinth’s face, and rested there. It was some time before he
spoke, and then it was to correct Hyacinth upon a trivial point.
‘My half-brother,’ he said. ‘My father married twice, and Albert is the
son of his second wife. You may have noticed that he is a great deal
younger than I am.’
‘He looks younger, certainly,’ said Hyacinth, for the other was waiting
for a reply.
‘Nearly twenty years younger. Albert is only just thirty.’
The exact age of the Captain was uninteresting and seemed to be beside
the purpose of the visit. Hyacinth shifted his chair and fidgeted,
uncertain what to do or say next.
‘Albert gave you this letter to me. Is he a friend of yours?’
‘No.’
James Quinn looked at him again steadily. It seemed--but this may have
been fancy--that there was a kindlier expression in his eyes after the
emphatic repudiation of friendship with Albert. At length he took up the
letter, and read it through slowly.
‘Why did my brother give you this letter?’
The question was a puzzling one. Hyacinth had never thought of trying
to understand the Captain’s motives. Then the conversation in the hotel
recurred to him.
‘He said that he wanted to do a good turn to me and to you also.’
‘What had you done for him?’
‘Nothing whatever.’
Apparently James Quinn was not in the least vexed at the brevity of
the answers he received, or disturbed because his cross-examination was
obviously disagreeable to Hyacinth.
‘In this letter,’ he went on, referring to the document as he spoke,
‘he describes you as a young man who is “certainly honest, probably
religious, and possibly intelligent.” I presume you know my brother, and
if you do, you may be surprised to hear that I am quite prepared to take
his word for all this. I have very seldom known Albert to tell me lies,
and I don’t know why he should want to deceive me in this case. Still,
I am a little puzzled to account for his giving you the letter. Can you
add nothing in the way of explanation to what you have said?’
‘I don’t know that I can,’ said Hyacinth.
‘Will you tell me how you met my brother, and what he is doing now, or
where he is?’
‘I do not think I should be justified in doing so.’
‘Ah, well! I can understand that in certain circumstances Albert would
be very grateful to a man who would hold his tongue. He might be quite
willing to do you a good turn if you undertook to answer no questions
about him.’
He smiled as he spoke, a little grimly, but there was laughter lurking
in the corners of his eyes. A Puritan will sometimes smile in such a
way at the thought of a sinful situation, too solemn to be laughed
at openly, but appealing to a not entirely atrophied sense of humour.
Hyacinth felt reassured.
‘Indeed,’ he said, ‘I made no promise of silence. It is only that--well,
I don’t think----’
James Quinn waited patiently for the conclusion of the sentence, but
Hyacinth never arrived at it.
‘In this letter,’ he said at last, ‘my brother asks me to give you the
place he lately held in my business. Now, I don’t want to press you to
say anything you don’t want to, but before we go further I must ask you
this, Were you implicated in the affair yourself?’
‘I beg your pardon. I don’t quite understand what you mean.’
‘Well, I suppose that since my brother is anxious that you should hold
your tongue, he has done something that won’t bear talking about. Were
you implicated in--in whatever the trouble was?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Hyacinth. ‘In fact, it was on account of what you
speak of as “trouble” that I declined to have anything more to do with
your brother.’
‘That is probably very much to your credit, and, in the light of my
brother’s estimate of your character, I may say that I entirely believe
what you say. Am I to understand that you are an applicant for the post
in my business which Albert held, and which this letter tells me I may
consider vacant?’
‘That is what brought me down here,’ said Hyacinth.
‘Have you any other recommendations or testimonials as to character to
show me?’
‘No. But there are several people who would answer questions about me if
you wrote to them: Dr. Henry, of Trinity College, would, or Miss Augusta
Goold, or Father Moran, of Carrowkeel, in County Galway.’
‘You have given me the most remarkable list of references I ever came
across in my life. I don’t suppose anyone ever before was recommended
for a post by a Protestant divinity professor, a notoriously violent
political agitator, a Roman Catholic priest, and a--well, we won’t
describe my brother. How do you come to be mixed up with all these
people? Who are you?’
‘I am the son of Æneas Conneally, Rector of Carrowkeel, who died last
Christmas.’
‘Well,’ said James Quinn, ‘I suppose if all these people are prepared
to recommend you, your character must be all right. Now, tell me, do you
know what the post is you are applying for?’
‘No,’ said Hyacinth. ‘And I may as well say that I have had no
experience or business training whatever.’
‘So I should suppose from the way you have come to me. Well, my brother
was clerk and traveller for my business. He was supposed to help me to
keep accounts and to push the sale of my goods among the shopkeepers
in Connaught. As a matter of fact, he never did either the one or the
other. When he was at home he did nothing. When he was on the road
he bought and sold horses. I paid him eighty pounds a year and his
travelling expenses. I also promised him a percentage on the profits of
the sales he effected. Now, do you think this work would suit you?’
‘I might not be able to do it,’ said Hyacinth, ‘but I should very much
like to be allowed to try. I can understand that I shall be very little
use at first, and I am willing to work without any salary for a time,
perhaps six months, until I have learned something about your business.’
‘Come, now, that’s a business-like offer. I’ll give you a trial, if it
was only for the sake of your list of references. I won’t keep you six
months without paying you if you turn out to be any good at all. And I
think there must be something in you, for you’ve gone about getting this
job in the queerest way I ever heard of. Would you like any time to make
up your mind finally before accepting the post?’
‘No,’ said Hyacinth; ‘I accept at once.’
They walked together through the mill, and looked at the machines and
the workers. The girls smiled when Mr. Quinn stopped to speak to them,
and looked with frank curiosity at Hyacinth. The three or four men who
did the heavier work stopped and chatted for a few minutes when they
came to them. Evidently there was no soreness or distrust here between
the employer and the employed. When they had gone through the rooms
where the work was going on, they climbed a staircase like a ladder, and
came to the loft where the wool was stored. Hyacinth handled it as he
was directed, and endeavoured to appreciate the difference between the
good and the inferior qualities. They passed by an unglazed window at
the back of the mill, and Mr. Quinn pointed out his own house. It stood
among trees and shrubs, now for the most part bare, but giving promise
of shady privacy in summertime. Long windows opened out on to a lawn
stretching down to the watercourse which fed the millwheel. A gravel
path skirted one side of the house leading to a bridge, and thence to
a doorway in a high wall, beyond which lay the road. As they looked
the door opened, and a woman with two little girls came through. They
crossed the bridge, and walked up to the house.
‘That is my wife,’ said Mr. Quinn, ‘and my two little girls.’
He stretched out between the bars of the window, and shouted to them.
All three looked back. Mrs. Quinn waved her hand, and the two children
shouted in reply. Then a light appeared in one of the windows, and
Hyacinth caught a glimpse of a trim maid-servant pulling the curtains
across it.
‘We shall be having tea at half-past six,’ said Mr. Quinn. ‘Will you
come and join us? By the way, where are you staying?’
Hyacinth accepted the invitation, and confessed that he had not as yet
looked for any place to lay his head.
‘Ah! Better go to the hotel for to-night. It’s not much of a place,
but you will have to learn to put up with that sort of accommodation.
Tomorrow we’ll try and find you some decent lodgings.’
The hotel struck even Hyacinth as of inferior quality, though it
boasted great things in the timetable advertisements, and called itself
‘Imperial’ in large gold letters above its door. A smell of whisky and
tobacco greeted him as he entered, and a waiter with a greasy coat, in
answer to inquiries about a bed, sent him down a dark passage to seek
a lady called Miss Sweeney at the bar. Large leather cases with broad
straps and waterproof-covered baskets blocked the passage, and Hyacinth
stumbled among them for some time before he discovered Miss Sweeney
reading a periodical called _Spicy Bits_ among her whisky-bottles.
She was a young woman of would-be fashionable appearance, and acted
apparently in the double capacity of barmaid and clerk. On hearing that
Hyacinth required, not whisky, but a bedroom, she requested him to go
forward to the office, indicating a glass case at the far end of the bar
counter. Here he repeated his request to her through a small opening in
the glass, and received her assurance, given with great condescension,
that No. 42 was vacant, and, further, that there was a fire in the
commercial room. A boy whom she summoned carried Hyacinth’s bag to an
extremely dirty and ill-furnished bedroom, and afterwards conducted
him to the promised fire. Two other guests were seated at it when he
entered, who, after a long stare, made room for him. Apparently there
was no one else stopping in the hotel, and the whole mass of cumbrous
baggage which blocked the passage to the bar must belong to them.
Hyacinth realized, with a feeling of disgust which he could
not account for, that these were two members of his new
profession--fellow-travellers in the voyages of commerce. He
gathered--for they talked loudly, without regarding his presence--that
they represented two Manchester firms which were rivals in the wholesale
drapery business. Very much of what they said was unintelligible to him,
though the words were familiar. He knew that ‘lines’ could be ‘quoted,’
but not apparently in the same sense in which they discussed these
operations, and it puzzled him to hear of muslins being ‘done at one and
seven-eighths.’ He sat for a time wondering at the waste of money and
energy involved in sending these men to remote corners of Ireland to
search for customers. Then he left them, and made his way down the muddy
street to Mr. Quinn’s house.
The room into which he was shown was different from any he had ever
seen. It was lit by a single lamp with a dull glass globe and a turf
fire which burnt brightly. Two straight-backed, leather-covered chairs
stood one on either side of the tiled hearth. Near one stood a little
table covered with neatly-arranged books, and, rising from among them,
a reading-lamp, as yet unlit. Beyond the other was a work-table
strewed with reels and scissors, on which lay a child’s frock and some
stockings. The table was laid for tea. On it were plates piled up with
floury scones, delicate beleek saucers full of butter patted thin into
the shapes of shells, and jam in coloured glass dishes cased in silver
filigree. A large home-baked loaf of soda bread on a wooden platter
stood at one end of the table, and near it a sponge-cake. At the other
end was an array of cups and saucers with silver spoons that glittered,
a jug of cream, and one of milk. Two of the cups were larger than the
others, and had those curious bars across them which are designed to
save men from wetting their moustaches when they drink. No room and no
preparation for a meal could have offered a more striking contrast to
Augusta Goold’s dining-room, her groups of wineglasses, multiplicity of
heavy-handled knives and forks, and her candles shrouded in silk. Nor
was the dainty neatness less remote from the cracked delf and huddled
sordidness of his old home.
Long before Hyacinth had realized an impression of the scene before him
Mrs. Quinn greeted him, and led him to the fire. Her two little girls,
who lay on the hearthrug with a picture-book between them, were bidden
to make room for him. When her husband appeared she bustled off, and in
a minute or two she and the maid came in bringing toast and tea and hot
water hissing in a silver urn.
As the evening passed Hyacinth began to realize that he had entered into
a home of peace. He felt that these people were neither greatly anxious
to be rich nor much afraid of being poor. They seemed in no way fretted
that there were others higher in the social scale, cleverer or more
brilliant than they were. He understood that they were both of them
religious in a way quite different from any he had known. They neither
spoke of mysteries, like his father, nor were eager about disputings,
like the men who had been his fellow-students. They were living a very
simple life, of which faith and a wide charity formed a part as natural
as eating or sleeping. When the children’s bedtime came it seemed to
him a very wonderful thing that they should kneel in turns beside their
father’s knee and say their prayers aloud, when he, a stranger, was in
the room. It seemed to him less strange, because then he had been two
hours longer in the company of the Quinns, that before leaving he,
too, should kneel beside his hostess and listen while his new employer
repeated the familiar words of some of the old collects he had heard his
father read in church.