THE MAN IN THE MASK.
Edith, before she went to bed that night, crept up to her brother's
bedroom and seated herself on the bedside. It was a little room which
Florian occupied alone, and lay at the back of the house, next to
that in which Peter slept. Here, as she sat on the bed, she could see
by a glance that young Florian feigned to be asleep.
"Flory, you are pretending to be asleep." Flory uttered a short
snore,--or rather snort, for he was not a good actor. "You may as
well wake up, because otherwise I shall shake you."
"Why am I to be shaked up in bed?"
"Because I want to speak to you."
"Why am I to be made to speak when I want to sleep?"
"Papa has been talking about you downstairs. He has come home from
Ballintubber, very tired and very unhappy, and he thinks you have
been made to go to bed without your supper because we have been
attacking you about religion. I have told him that nobody has said
a word to you."
"But you did."
"Not a word."
"You didn't tell him all that you told me--about letting in the
water?" This was asked in a tone of great anxiety.
"Not a word,--not as yet."
"And you won't? Mind, I tell you it's all untrue. What do I know
about letting in the water?"
"Who did it?"
"I'm not going to tell."
"You know, then?"
"No, I don't. But I'm not going to tell as though I knew it. You
don't care about it in your religion, but we Catholics don't like
telling lies."
"You saw nothing?"
"Whatever I saw I'm not to tell a lie about it."
"You've promised not, you mean?"
"Now, Edy, you're not going to trap me. You've got your own religion
and I've got mine. It's a great thing in our religion to be able to
hold your tongue. Father Malachi says it's one of the greatest trials
which a man has to go through."
"Then, Flory, am I to gather that you will say nothing further to
me?" Here the boy shook his head. "Because in that case I must tell
father. At any rate, he must be told, and if you do not tell him, I
shall."
"What is there to be told?"
"I shall tell him exactly what I saw,--and Ada. I saw,--we saw,--that
when the news came about the flood, you were conscious of it all.
If you will go to father and tell him the truth he will be but
very little angry with you. I don't suppose you had a hand in it
yourself."
"No!" shouted the boy.
"But I think you saw it, and that they made you swear an oath. Was
that not so?"
"No!" whispered the boy.
"I am sure it was so." Then the boy again plucked up his courage, and
declared with a loud voice, that it was not so.
That night before she retired to rest, Edith went to her father and
told him all that she had to say. She took Ada with her, and together
they used all their eloquence to make their father believe as they
believed.
"No," said Edith, "he has not confessed. But words drop from him
which make us sure that he knows who did it. I am certain that he saw
it done. I don't mean to say that he saw the whole thing. The water,
I suppose, was coming in all night."
"The whole night! While we were sleeping in our beds, the waters of
the lough were ruining me," said the father.
"But he saw enough to be able to tell you who did it."
"I know who did it. It was that ruffian Carroll."
"But father, you will want evidence."
"Am I to bring up my own boy to swear that he was there, witnessing
what was done, as the friend of my enemies? I do not believe that he
was there at all."
"If you question him, he will probably own to it. It will be better
to get at the truth and face it. He is only ten years old. You must
tell me the story of his pretended conversion."
"Why should it be pretended?" asked the father.
"Well; of his conversion," said Edith.
"I don't see what it has to do with it? Am I to put myself forward as
a bigoted Protestant? Florian has been foolish, but am I to say that
I am angry, where I am not angry--not specially angry."
"It will show the influence under which he has taken up Carroll's
side," said Edith.
"Or the influence under which he has been made to hold his tongue,"
said Ada.
"Just so," said Edith. "We do not think that he has made one with
your enemies in the matter. But he has seen them at work and has been
made to promise that he will hold his tongue. I don't suppose you
mean to let the affair slip by without punishing any one."
When the girls left him, Mr. Jones was by no means persuaded. As
far as he could ascertain from examination of the persons about the
locality, there was no one willing to state in evidence that he
had seen anything. The injury had been done in November, on a wet,
dreary, dull afternoon. He did learn that at half-past three the
meadows were in their usual condition. As to the sluices, the gates
of which had been pulled out and thrown away in twenty different
places, he could learn nothing; no one had seen a sluice gate
touched. As to Florian, and what Florian had been seen to do, he
had asked no question, because Florian's name had not then been
mentioned. But he had been struck by the awful silence of the people.
There were women there, living on the spot, with whose families
his family had been on the most kindly terms. When rheumatism
was rife,--and rheumatism down on the lough side had often been
rife--they had all come up to the Castle for port wine and solace. He
had refused them nothing,--he, or his dear wife, who had gone, or his
daughters; and, to give them their due, they had always been willing
to work for him at a moment's notice. He would have declared that no
man in Ireland was on better terms with his tenantry than he; and
now, because there had been a quarrel between him and that pestilent
fellow Carroll,--whom he had been willing to buy out from his bit
of land and let him go to America, so that they might all be at
peace,--could they all have turned against him and taken Carroll's
part? As far as he had been able to gather the feelings of the
people, from conversations with them, they had all acknowledged
Carroll to be wrong. He would have said that there was not one among
them who was not his friend rather than Carroll's. He was aware that
there had been ill-feeling about in other parts of the country. There
had been,--so he was told,--a few demagogues in Galway town, American
chiefly, who had come thither to do what harm they could; and he had
heard that there was discontent in parts of Mayo, about Ballyhaunis
and Lough Glinn; but where he lived, round Lough Corrib, there had
been no evil symptoms of such a nature. Now suddenly he found himself
as though surrounded by a nest of hornets. There were eighty acres of
his land under water, and no one would tell him how it was done, or
by whom.
And now, to make the matter worse, there had come upon him this
trouble with reference to his own boy. He would not believe the story
which his daughters had told him; and yet he knew within his heart
that they were infinitely the better worthy of credit. He believed in
them. He knew them to be good and honest and zealous on his behalf;
but how much better did he love poor Florian! And in this matter of
the child's change of religion, in which he had foolishly taken the
child's part, he could not but think that Father Malachi had been
most unkind to him; not that he knew what Father Malachi had done
in the matter, but Florian talked as though he had been supported
all through by the priest. Father Malachi had, in truth, done very
little. He had told the boy to go to his father. The boy had said
that he had done so, and that his father had assented. "But Frank and
the girls are totally against it. They have no sense of religion at
all." Then Father Malachi had told him to say his prayers, and come
regularly to mass.
Mr. Jones agreed with his daughters that it behoved him to punish the
culprit in this matter, but, nevertheless, he thought that it would
be better for him to let it go unpunished than to bring his boy
into collision with such a one as Pat Carroll. He twice talked the
matter over with Florian, and twice did so to no effect. At first he
threatened the young sinner, and frowned at him. But his frowns did
no good. Florian, if he could stand firm against his sister Edith,
was sure that he could do so against his father. Then Mr. Jones spoke
him fair, and endeavoured to explain to him how sad a thing it would
be if his boy were to turn against his own father and the interests
of the family generally.
"But I haven't," said Florian confidently.
"You should tell me what you saw on that afternoon."
"I didn't see anything," said Florian sulkily.
"I don't believe he knew anything about it," said Mr. Jones to Edith
afterwards. Edith could only receive this in silence, and keep her
own opinion to herself. Ada was altogether of her mind, but Frank at
last came round to his father's view. "It isn't probable," he said
to his sisters, "that a boy of his age should be able to keep such
a secret against four of us; and then it is most improbable that he
should have seen anything of the occurrence and not have come at once
to his father." But the girls held to their own opinion, till at last
they were told by Frank that they were two pig-headed nincompoops.
Things were going on in this way, and Mr. Jones was still striving to
find out evidence by which a case might be substantiated against Pat
Carroll, when that gentleman, one winter afternoon, was using his
eloquence upon Master Florian Jones. It was four o'clock, and the
darkness of the night was now coming on very quickly. The scene was
a cottage, almost in the town of Headford, and about two miles from
the nearest part of the Morony estate. In this cottage Carroll was
sitting at one side of a turf fire, while an old woman was standing
by the doorway making a stocking. And in this cottage also was
another man, whose face was concealed by an old crape mask, which
covered his eyes and nose and mouth. He was standing on the other
side of the fireplace, and Florian was seated on a stool in front of
the fire. Ever and anon he turned his gaze round on the mysterious
man in the mask, whom he did not at all know; and, in truth, he was
frightened awfully through the whole interview by the man in the
mask, who stood there by the fireside, almost close to Florian's
elbow, without speaking a word; nor did the old woman say much,
though it must be presumed that she heard all that was said.
"Faix, Mr. Flory, an' it's well for you you've come," said Carroll.
"Jist you sit steady there, 'cause it won't do the laist good in
life you're moving about where all the world'd see you." It was
thus that the boy was addressed by him, whom we may now call his
co-conspirator, and Carroll showed plainly, by his movements and by
the glances which he cast around him, that he understood perfectly
the dreadful nature of the business in which he was engaged. "You see
that jintl'man there?" And Carroll pointed to the man in the mask.
"I see him," said poor Florian, almost in tears.
"You'd better mark him, that's all. If he cotches a hould o'ye he'd
tear ye to tatthers, that's all. Not that he'd do ye the laist harum
in life if ye'd just hould yer pace, and say nothin' to nobody."
"Not a word I'll say, Pat."
"Don't! That's all about it. Don't! We knows,--he knows,--what
they're driving at down at the Castle. Sorra a word comes out of the
mouth o' one on 'em, but that he knows it." Here the man in the mask
shook his head and looked as horrible as a man in a mask can look.
"They'll tell ye that the father who owns ye ought to know all about
it. It's just him as shouldn't know."
"He don't," said Florian.
"Not a know;--an' if you main to keep yourself from being holed as
they holed Muster Bingham the other day away at Hollymount." The boy
understood perfectly well what was meant by the process of "holing."
The Mr. Bingham, a small landlord, who had been acting as his
own agent some twenty miles off, in the County of Mayo, had been
frightfully murdered three months since. It was the first murder that
had stained the quarrel which had now commenced in that part of the
country. Mr. Bingham had been unpopular, but he had had to deal with
such a small property, that no one had imagined that an attack would
be made on him. But he had been shot down as he was driving home from
Hollymount, whither he had gone to receive rent. He had been shot
down during daylight, and no one had as yet been brought to justice
for the murder. "You mind's Muster Bingham, Muster Flory; eh? He's
gone, and sorra a soul knows anything about it. It's I'd be sorry to
think you'd be polished off that way." Again the man in the mask made
signs that he was wide awake.
To tell the truth of Florian, he felt rather complimented in the
midst of all his horrors in being thus threatened with the fate of
Mr. Bingham. He had heard much about Mr. Bingham, and regarded him
as a person of much importance since his death. He was raised to
a level now with Mr. Bingham. And then his immediate position was
very much better than Bingham's. He was alive, and up to the present
moment,--as long as he held his tongue and told nothing,--he would
be regarded with friendly eyes by that terrible man in the mask. But,
through it all, there was the agonising feeling that he was betraying
them all at home. His father and Edith and Frank would not murder him
when they found him out, but they would despise him. And the boy knew
something,--he knew much of what was due by him to his father. At
this moment he was much in dread of Pat Carroll. He was in greater
dread of the man in the mask. But as he sat there, terrified by them
as they intended to terrify him, he was aware of all that courage
would demand from him. If he could once escape from that horrid
cabin, he thought that he might be able to make a clean breast and
tell everything. "It's I that'd be awful sorry that anything like
what happened Bingham, should happen to you, Muster Flory."
"Why wouldn't you; and I'd have done nothing against you?" said
Florian. He did feel that his conduct up to the present moment
deserved more of gratitude than of threats from Pat Carroll.
"You're to remimber your oath, Muster Flory. You're become one of us,
as Father Brosnan was telling you. You're not to be one of us, and
then go over among them schaming Prothestants."
"I haven't gone over among them,--only my father is one of them."
"What's yer father to do with it now you're a Catholic? Av you is
ever false to a Catholic on behalf of them Prothestants, though he's
twice yer own father, you'd go t' hell for it; that's where you'd be
going. And it's not only that, but the jintl'man as is there will
be sending you on the journey." Then Pat signified that he alluded
to the man in the mask, and the gentleman in the mask clenched his
fist and shook it,--and shook his head also. "You ask Father Brosnan
also, whether you ain't to be thrue to us Catholics now you're one
of us? It's a great favour as has been done you. You're mindful o'
that--ain't you?" Poor Flory said that he was mindful.
Here they were joined by another conspirator, a man whom Florian had
seen down by the sluices with Pat Carroll, and whom he thought he
remembered to have noticed among the tenants from the other side of
Ballintubber. "What's the chap up to now?" asked the stranger.
"He ain't up to nothin'," said Carroll. "We're only a cautioning of
him."
"Not to be splitting on yourself?"
"Nor yet on you," said Carroll.
"Sorra a word he can say agin me," said the stranger. "I wasn't in it
at all."
"But you was," said Florian. "I saw you pick the latch up and throw
it away."
"You've sharp eyes, ain't you, to be seeing what warn't there to be
seen at all? If you say you saw me in it, I'll have the tongue out of
your mouth, you young liar."
"What's the good of frightening the boy, Michael. He's a good boy,
and isn't a going to peach upon any of us."
"But I ain't a liar. He's a liar." This Florian said, plucking up
renewed courage from the kind words Pat Carroll had said in his
favour.
"Never mind," said Pat, throwing oil on the troubled waters. "We're
all frinds at present, and shall be as long as we don't split on
nobody."
"It's the meanest thing out,--that splitting on a pal," said the man
who had been called Michael. "It's twice worse when one does it to
one's father. I wouldn't show a ha'porth of mercy to such a chap as
that."
"And to a Catholic as peached to a Prothestant," said Carroll,
intending to signify his hatred of such a wretch by spitting on the
ground.
"Or to a son as split because his father was in question." Then
Michael spat twice upon the floor, showing the extremity of the
disgust which in such a case would overpower him.
"I suppose I may go now," said Florian. He was told by Pat Carroll
that he might go. But just at that moment the man in the mask, who
had not spoken a word, extemporised a cross out of two bits of burned
wood from the hearth, and put it right before Florian's nose; one
hand held one stick, and the other, the other. "Swear," said the man
in the mask.
"Bedad! he's in the right of it. Another oath will make it all the
stronger. 'That ye'll never say a word of this to mortial ears,
whether father or sister or brother, let 'em say what they will to
yer, s'help yer the Blessed Virgin.'"
"I won't then," said Florian, struggling to get at the cross to kiss
it.
"Stop a moment, me fine fellow," said Michael. "Nor yet to no one
else--and you'll give yourself up to hell flames av you don't keep
the blessed oath to the last day of your life. Now let him kiss it,
Pat. I wouldn't be in his shoes for a ten-pun note if he breaks that
oath."
"Nor I neither," said Pat. "Oh laws, no." Then Florian was allowed to
escape from the cabin. This he did, and going out into the dark, and
looking about him to see that he was not watched, made his way in at
the back door of a fairly large house which stood near, still in the
outskirts of the town of Headford. It was a fairly large house in
Headford; but Headford does not contain many large houses. It was
that in which lived Father Giles, the old parish priest of Tuam;--and
with Father Giles lived his curate, that Father Brosnan of whom
mention has above been made.