THE ROAD TO BALLYGLUNIN.
The days ran on for the trial of Pat Carroll, but Edith did not again
see Captain Clayton. There came tidings to Morony Castle of the new
honours which Mr. O'Mahony had achieved.
"I don't know that the country will be much the wiser for his
services," said Captain Clayton. "He will go altogether with those
wretched Landleaguers."
"He will be the best of the lot," said Mr. Jones.
"It is saying very little for him," said Captain Clayton.
"He is an honest man, and I take him to be the only honest man among
them."
"He won't remain a Landleaguer long if he is honest. But what about
his daughter?"
"Frank has seen her down in Cavan, and declares that she is about to
make any amount of money at the London theatres."
"I take it they will find it quite a new thing to have a Member of
Parliament among their number with an income," said Clayton. "But
I'll bet any man a new hat that there is a split between him and them
before the next Parliament is half over."
This took place during one of the visits which Captain Clayton had
made to Morony Castle in reference to the coming trial. Florian had
been already sent on to Mr. Blake's of Carnlough, and was to be
picked up there on that very afternoon by Mr. Jones, and driven to
Ballyglunin, so as to be taken from thence to the assize town by
train. This was thought to be most expedient, as the boy would not be
on the road for above half an hour.
After Captain Clayton had gone, Mr. Jones asked after Edith, and was
told that she was away in Headford. She had walked into town to call
on Mrs. Armstrong, with a view of getting a few articles which Mrs.
Armstrong had promised to buy for her. Such was the story as given to
Mr. Jones, and fully believed by him; but the reader may be permitted
to think that the young lady was not anxious to meet the young
gentleman.
"Ada," said Mr. Jones suddenly, "is there anything between Edith and
Captain Clayton?"
"What makes you ask, papa?"
"Because Peter has hinted it. I do not care to have such things told
me of my own family by the servant."
"Yes, there is, papa," said Ada boldly. "Captain Clayton is in love
with Edith."
"This is no time for marrying or giving in marriage."
Ada made no reply, but thought that it must at the same time be a
very good time for becoming engaged. It would have been so for her
had such been her luck. But of herself she said nothing. She had
made her statement openly and bravely to her sister, so that there
should be no departing from it. Mr. Jones said nothing further at the
moment, but before the girls had separated for the night Ada had told
Edith what had occurred.
At that time they were in the house alone together,--alone as
regarded the family, though they still had the protection of Peter.
Mr. Jones had started on his journey to Galway.
"Papa," said Ada, "knows all about Yorke."
"Knows what?" demanded Edith.
"That you and he are engaged together."
"He knows more than I do, then. He knows more than I ever shall know.
Ada, you should not have said so. It will have to be all unsaid."
"Not at all, dear."
"It will all have to be unsaid. Have you been speaking to Captain
Clayton on the subject?"
"Not a word. Indeed it was not I who told papa. It was Peter. Peter
said that there was something between you and him, and papa asked me.
I told papa that he was in love with you. That was true at any rate.
You won't deny that?"
"I will deny anything that connects my name with that of Captain
Yorke Clayton."
But Ada had determined how that matter should arrange itself. Since
the blow had first fallen on her, she had had time to think of
it,--and she had thought of it. Edith had done her best for her
(presuming that this brave Captain was the best) and she in return
would do her best for Edith. No one knew the whole story but they
two. They were to be to her the dearest friends of her future life,
and she would not let the knowledge of such a story stand in her way
or theirs.
The train was to start from the Ballyglunin station for Athenry at
4.20 p.m. It would then have left Tuam for Athenry, where it would
fall into the day mail-train from Dublin to Galway. It was something
out of the way for Mr. Jones to call at Carnlough; but Carnlough was
not three miles from Ballyglunin, and Mr. Jones made his arrangements
accordingly. He called at Carnlough, and there took up the boy on
his outside car. Peter had come with him, so as to take back the
car to Morony Castle. But Peter had made himself of late somewhat
disagreeable, and Mr. Jones had in truth been sulky.
"Look here, Peter," he had said, speaking from one side of the car
to the other, "if you are afraid to come to Ballyglunin with me and
Master Flory, say so, and get down."
"I'm not afeared, Mr. Jones."
"Then don't say so. I don't believe you are afeared as you call it."
"Then why do you be talking at me like that, sir?"
"I don't think you are a coward, but you are anxious to make the
most of your services on my behalf. You are telling everyone that
something special is due to you for staying in a boycotted house.
It's a kind of service for which I am grateful, but I can't be
grateful and pay too."
"Why do you talk to a poor boy in that way?"
"So that the poor boy may understand me. You are willing, I believe,
to stick to your old master,--from sheer good heart. But you like to
talk about it. Now I don't like to hear about it." After that Peter
drove on in silence till they came to Carnlough.
The car had been seen coming up the avenue, and Mr. Blake, with his
wife and Florian, were standing on the door-steps. "Now do take care
of the poor dear boy," said Mrs. Blake. "There are such dreadful
stories told of horrible men about the country."
"Don't mention such nonsense, Winifred," said her husband, "trying
to frighten the boy. There isn't a human being between this and
Ballyglunin for whom I won't be responsible. Till you come to a mile
of the station it's all my own property."
"But they can shoot--" Then Mrs. Blake left the rest of her sentence
unspoken, having been checked by her husband's eye. The boy, however,
had heard it and trembled.
"Come along, Florian," said the father. "Get up along with Peter."
The attempt which he had made to live with his son on affectionate
paternal relations had hardly been successful. The boy had been told
so much of murderers that he had been made to fear. Peter,--and other
Peters about the country,--had filled his mind with sad foreboding.
And there had always been something timid, something almost unmanly
in his nature. He had seemed to prefer to shrink and cower and be
mysterious with the Carrolls to coming forward boldly with such a man
as Yorke Clayton. The girls had seen this, and had declared that he
was no more than a boy; but his father had seen it and had made no
such allowance. And now he saw that he trembled. But Florian got up
on the car, and Peter drove them off to Ballyglunin.
Carnlough was not above three Irish miles from Ballyglunin; and Mr.
Jones started on the little journey without a misgiving. He sat alone
on the near side of the car, and Florian sat on the other, together
with Peter who was driving. The horse was a heavy, slow-going animal,
rough and hairy in its coat, but trustworthy and an old servant.
There had been a time when Mr. Jones kept a carriage, but that had
been before the bad times had begun. The carriage horses had been
sold after the flood,--as Ada had called the memorable incident;
and now there were but three cart horses at Morony Castle, of which
this one animal alone was habitually driven in the car. The floods,
indeed, had now retreated from the lands of Ballintubber and the
flood gates were mended; but there would be no crop of hay on all
those eighty acres this year, and Mr. Jones was in no condition to
replace his private stud. As he went along on this present journey he
was thinking bitterly of the injury which had been done him. He had
lost over two hundred tons of hay, and each ton of hay would have
been worth three pounds ten shillings. He had been unable to get a
sluice gate mended till men had been brought together from Monaghan
and parts of Cavan to mend them for him, and he had even to send
these men into Limerick to buy the material, as not a piece of timber
could be procured in Galway for the use of a household so well
boycotted as was Morony Castle. There had been also various calls on
Mr. Jones from those relatives whose money had been left as mortgages
on his property. And no rent had as yet come in, although various
tenants had been necessarily evicted. Every man's hand was against
him; so that there was no money in his coffers. He who had chiefly
sinned against him,--who was the first to sin,--was the sinner whom
he was about to prosecute at Galway. It must be supposed, therefore,
that he was not in a good humour as he was driven along the road to
Ballyglunin.
They had not yet passed the boundary fence between Carnlough and
the property of one of the numerous race of Bodkins, when Mr. Jones
saw a mask, which he supposed to be a mask worn by a man, through a
hole in the wall just in front of him, but high above his head. And
at the same moment he could see the muzzles of a double-barrelled
rifle presented through the hole in the wall. What he saw he saw
but for a few seconds; but he could see it plainly. He saw it so
plainly as to be able afterwards to swear to a black mask, and to a
double-barrelled gun. Then a trigger was pulled, and one bullet--the
second--went through the collar of his own coat, while the first had
had a more fatal and truer aim. The father jumped up and turning
round saw that his boy had fallen to the ground. "Oh, my God!" said
Peter, and he stopped the horse suddenly. The place was one where the
commencement had been made of a cutting in the road during the potato
failure of 1846; so that the wall and the rifle which had been passed
through it were about four or five feet above the car. Mr. Jones
rushed up the elevation, and clambered, he did not know how, into
the field. There he saw the back of a man speeding along from the
wall, and in the man's hand there was a gun. Mr. Jones looked around
but there was no one nigh him but Peter, the old servant, and his
dying boy. He could see, however, that the man who ran was short of
stature.
But though his rage had sufficed to carry him up from the road into
the field, the idea that his son had been shot caused him to pause
as he ran, and to return to the road. When he got there he found
two girls about seventeen and eighteen years of age, one sitting on
the road with Florian's head on her lap, and the other kneeling and
holding the boy's hands. "Oh, yer honour! sorrow a taste in life do
we know about it," said the kneeling girl.
"Not a sight did we see, or a sound did we hear," said the other,
"only the going off of the blunderbuss. Oh, wirra shure! oh, musha,
musha! and it's dead he is, the darling boy." Mr. Jones came round
and picked up poor Florian and laid him on the car. The bullet had
gone true to its mark and had buried itself in his brain. There was
the end of poor Florian Jones and all his troubles. The father did
not say a word, not even in reply to Peter's wailings or to the
girls' easy sorrow; but, taking the rein in his own hands, drove the
car with the body on it back to Carnlough.
We can hardly analyse the father's mind as he went. Not a tear came
to his relief. Nor during this half hour can he hardly have been said
to sorrow. An intensity of wrath filled his breast. He had spent his
time for many a long year in doing all in his power for those around
him, and now they had brought him to this. They had robbed him of his
boy's heart. They had taught his boy to be one of them, and to be
untrue to his own people. And now, because he had yielded to better
teachings, they had murdered him. They had taught his boy to be a
coward; for even in his bereavement he remembered poor Florian's
failing. The accursed Papist people were all cowards down to their
backbones. So he said of them in his rage. There was not one of
them who could look any peril in the face as did Yorke Clayton or
his son Frank. But they were terribly powerful in their wretched
want of manliness. They could murder, and were protected in their
bloodthirstiness one by another. He did not doubt but that those
two girls who were wailing on the road knew well enough who was the
murderer, but no one would tell in this accursed, unhallowed, godless
country. The honour and honesty of one man did not, in these days,
prompt another to abstain from vice. The only heroism left in the
country was the heroism of mystery, of secret bloodshed and of hidden
attacks.
He had driven back methodically to Carnlough gates, but he hesitated
to carry his burden up to the hall-door. Would it not be better for
him at once to go home, and there to endure the suffering that was
in store for him? But he remembered that it would behove him to take
what steps might be possible for tracing the murderer. That by no
steps could anything be done, he was sure; but still the attempt was
necessary. He had, however, paused a minute or two at the open gate
when he was rebuked by Peter. "Shure yer honour is going up to the
house to get the constables to scour the counthry."
"Scour the country!" said the father. "All the country will turn out
to defend the murderer of my boy." But he drove up to the front, and
Peter knocked at the door.
"Good heaven, Jones!" said Mr. Blake, as he looked at the car and its
occupant. The poor boy's head was supported on the pillow behind the
driver's seat, on which no one sat. Peter held him by both his feet,
and Mr. Jones had his hand within his grasp.
"So it is," said the father. "You know where they have cut the road
just where your property meres with Bodkin's. There was a man above
there who had loop-holed the wall. I saw his face wearing a mask as
plain as I can see yours. And he had a double-barrelled gun. He fired
the two shots, and my boy was killed by the first."
"They have struck you too on the collar of your coat."
"I got into the field with the murderer, and I could have caught the
man had I been younger. But what would have been the use? No jury
would have found him guilty. What am I to do? Oh, God! what am I to
do?" Mrs. Blake and her daughter were now out upon the steps, and
were filling the hall with their wailings. "Tell me, Blake, what had
I better do?" Then Mr. Blake decided that the body should remain
there that night, and Mr. Jones also, and that the police should be
sent for to do whatever might seem fitting to the policemen's mind.
Peter was sent off to Morony Castle with such a letter as Miss Blake
was able to write to the two Jones girls. The police came from Tuam,
but the result of their enquiries on that night need not be told
here.