CONG.
In those days Captain Clayton spent much of his time at Cong, and
Frank Jones was often with him. Frank, however, had returned from
London a much altered man. Rachel had knocked under to him. It was
thus that he spoke of it to himself. I do not think that she spoke of
it to herself exactly in the same way. She knew her own constancy,
and felt that she was to be rewarded.
"Nothing, I think, would ever have made me marry Lord Castlewell."
It was thus she talked to her father while he was awaiting the period
of his dismissal.
"I dare say not," said he. "Of course he is a poor weak creature. But
he would have been very good to you, and there would have been an end
to all your discomforts."
Rachel turned up her nose. An end to all her discomforts!
Her father knew nothing of what would comfort her and what would
discomfort.
She was utterly discomforted in that her voice was gone from her. She
would lie and sob on her bed half the morning, and would feel herself
to be inconsolable. Then she would think of Frank, and tell herself
that there was some consolation in store even for her. Had her voice
been left to her she would have found it to be very difficult to
escape from the Castlewell difficulty. She would have escaped, she
thought, though the heavens might have been brought down over her
head. When the time had come for appearing at the altar, she would
have got into the first train and disappeared, or have gone to bed
and refused to leave it. She would have summoned Frank at the last
moment, and would submit to be called the worst behaved young woman
that had ever appeared on the London boards. Now she was saved from
that; but,--but at what a cost!
"I might have been the greatest woman of the day, and now I must be
content to make his tea and toast."
Then she began to consider whether it was good that any girl should
be the greatest woman of the day.
"I don't suppose the Queen has so much the best of it with a pack of
troubles on her hands."
But Frank in the meantime had gone back to Galway, and Mr. Robert
Morris had been murdered. Soon after the death of Mr. Morris the man
had been killed as he was mending the ditch, and Captain Clayton
found that the tone of the people was varied in the answers which
they made to his inquiries. They were astounded, and, as it were,
struck dumb with surprise. Nobody knew anything, nobody had heard
anything, nobody had seen anything. They were as much in the dark
about poor Pat Gilligan as they had been as to Mr. Robert Morris.
They spoke of Pat as though he had been slaughtered by a direct blow
from heaven; but they trembled, and were evidently uncomfortable.
"That woman knows something about it," said Hunter to his master,
shaking his head.
"No doubt she knows a good deal about it; but it is not because she
knows that she is bewildered and bedevilled in her intellect. She
is beginning to be afraid that the country is one in which even she
herself cannot live in safety."
And the men looked to be dumbfoundered and sheepfaced. They kept out
of Captain Clayton's way, and answered him as little as possible.
"What's the good of axing when ye knows that I knows nothing?" This
was the answer of one man, and was a fair sample of the answers of
many; but they were given in such a tone that Clayton was beginning
to think that the evil was about to work its own cure.
"Frank," he said one day when he was walking with his friend in
the gloom of the evening, "this state of things is too horrible to
endure." The faithful Hunter followed them, and another policeman,
for the Captain was never allowed to stir two steps without the
accompaniment of a brace of guards.
"Much too horrible to be endured," said Frank. "My idea is that a
man, in order to make the best of himself, should run away from it.
Life in the United States has no such horrors as these. Though we're
apt to say that all this comes from America, I don't see American
hands in it."
"You see American money."
"American money in the shape of dollar bills; but they have all been
sent by Irish people. The United States is a large place, and there
is room there, I think, for an honest man."
"I'll never be frightened out of my own country," said Clayton. "Nor
do I think there is occasion. These abominable reprobates are not
going to prevail in the end."
"They have prevailed with poor Tom Daly. He was a man who worked
as hard as anyone to find amusement,--and employment too. He never
wronged anyone. He was even so honest as to charge a fair price for
his horses. And there he is, left high and dry, without a horse or
a hound that he can venture to keep about his own place. And simply
because the majority of the people have chosen that there shall be
no more hunting; and they have proved themselves to be able to have
their own way. It is impossible that poor Daly should hunt if they
will not permit him, and they carry their orders so far that he
cannot even keep a hound in his kennels because they do not choose
to allow it."
"And this you think will be continued always?" asked Clayton.
"For all that I can see it may go on for ever. My father has had
those water gates mended on the meadows though he could ill afford
it. I have told him that they may go again to-morrow. There is no
reason to judge that they should not do so. The only two men,--or
the man, rather, and the boy,--who have been punished for the last
attempt were those who endeavoured to tell of it. See what has come
of that!"
"All that is true."
"Will it not be better to go to America, to go to Africa, to go to
Asia, or to Russia even, than to live in a country like this, where
the law can afford you no protection, and where the lawgivers only
injure you?"
"I know nothing about the lawgivers," said Clayton, "but I have to
say a word or two about the law. Do you think this kind of thing is
going to remain?"
"It does remain, and every day becomes worse."
"An evil will always become worse till it begins to die away. I think
I see the end of things approaching. Evil-doers are afraid of each
other, and these poor fellows here live in mortal agony lest some Lax
of the moment should be turned loose at their own throats. I don't
think that Lax is an institution that will remain for ever in the
country. This present Lax we have fast locked up. Law at present, at
any rate, has so much of power that it is able to lock up a
Lax,--when it can catch him. As for this present man, I do hope that
the law will find itself powerful enough to fasten a rope round his
neck. No Galway jury would find him guilty, and that is bad enough.
But the lawgivers have done this for us, that we may try him before a
Dublin jury, and there are hopes. When Lax has been well hung out of
the world I can turn round and take a moment for my own happiness."
Yorke Clayton, as he said this, was alluding to his love affair with
Edith Jones. He had now conquered all the family with one exception.
Even the father had assented that it should be so, though tardily
and with sundry misgivings. The one person was Edith herself, and it
had come to be acknowledged by all around her that she loved Yorke
Clayton. As she herself never now denied it, it was admitted on all
sides at Morony Castle that the Captain was certainly the favoured
lover. But Edith still held out, and had gone so far as to tell the
Captain that he could not be allowed to come to the Castle unless he
would desist.
"I never shall desist," he had replied. "As to that you may take my
word." Then Edith had of course loved him so much the more.
"I don't think this kind of thing will go on," he continued, still
addressing Frank Jones. "The people are so fickle that they cannot be
constant even to anything evil. It is quite on the cards that Black
Tom Daly should next year be the most popular master of hounds in all
Ireland, and that Mr. Kit Mooney should not be allowed to show his
face within reach of Moytubber Gorse on hunting mornings."
"They'd have burned the gorse before they have come round to that
state of feeling. Look at Raheeny."
"It isn't so easy to destroy anything," said the philosophic Clayton.
"If the foxes are frightened out of Raheeny or Moytubber, they will
go somewhere else. And even if poor Tom Daly were to run away from
County Galway, as you're talking of doing, the county would find
another master."
"Not like Tom Daly," said Frank Jones, enthusiastically.
"There are as good fish in the sea as ever were caught. Tom Daly is a
first-class man, I admit; and he had no more obedient slave than
myself when I used to get out hunting two or three days in the
session. But he is a desponding man, and cannot look forward to
better times. For myself, I own that my hopes are fixed. Hang Lax,
and then the millennium!"
"I will quite agree as to the hanging of Lax," said Frank; "but for
any millennium, I want something more strong than Irish feeling.
You'll excuse me, old fellow."
"Oh, certainly! Of course, I'm an Irishman myself, and might have
been a Lax instead of a policeman, if chance had got hold of me in
time. As it is, I've a sort of feeling that the policeman is going to
have the best of it all through Ireland." Then there came a sudden
sound as of a sharp thud, and Yorke Clayton fell as it were dead at
Frank Jones's feet.
This occurred at a corner of the road, from which a little boreen or
lane ran up the side of the mountain between walls about three feet
high. But here some benevolent enterprising gentleman, wishing to
bring water through Lower Lough Cong to Lough Corrib, had caused
the beginnings of a canal to be built, which had, however, after
the expenditure of large sums of money, come to nothing. But the
ground, or rather rock, had so been moved and excavated as to make
it practicable for some men engaged, as had been this man, to drop
at once out of sight. Hunter was at once upon his track, with the
other policeman, both of whom fired at him. But as they acknowledged
afterwards, they had barely seen the skirt of his coat in the gloom
of the evening. The whole spot up and behind the corner of the road
was so honeycombed by the works of the intended canal as to afford
hiding-places and retreats for a score of murderers. Here, as
was afterwards ascertained, there was but one, and that one had
apparently sufficed.
Frank Jones had remained on the road with his friend, and had raised
him in his arms when he fell. "They have done for me this time,"
Clayton had said, but had said no more. He had in truth fainted,
but Frank Jones, in his ignorance, had thought that he was dead. It
turned out afterwards that the bullet had struck his ribs in the
front of his body, and, having been turned by the bone, had passed
round to his back, and had there buried itself in the flesh. It needs
not that we dwell with any length on this part of our tale, but may
say at once that the medical skill of Cong sufficed to extract the
bullet on the next morning.
After a while one of the two policemen came back to the road, and
assisted Frank Jones in carrying up poor Clayton to the inn. Hunter,
though still maimed by his wound, stuck to the pursuit, assisted by
two other policemen from Cong, who soon appeared upon the scene. But
the man escaped, and his flight was soon covered by the darkness
of night. It had been eight o'clock before the party had left the
inn, and had wandered with great imprudence further than they had
intended. At least, so it was said after the occurrence; though, had
nothing happened, they would have reached their homes before night
had in truth set in. But men said of Clayton that he had become so
hardened by the practices of his life, and by the failure of all
attempts hitherto made against him, that he had become incredulous of
harm.
"They have got me at last," he said to Frank the next morning. "Thank
God it was not you instead of me. I have been thinking of it as I lay
here in the night, and have blamed myself greatly. It is my business
and not yours." And then again further on in the day he sent a
message to Edith. "Tell her from me that it is all over now, but that
had I lived she would have had to be my wife."
But from that time forth he did in truth get better, though we in
these pages can never again be allowed to see him as an active
working man. It was his fault,--as the Galway doctor said his
egregious sin,--to spend the most of his time in lying on a couch
out in the garden at Morony Castle, and talking of the fate of Mr.
Lax. The remainder of his hours he devoted to the acceptance of
little sick-room favours from his hostess,--I would say from his two
hostesses, were it not that he soon came to terms with Ada, under
which Ada was not to attend to him with any particular care. "If I
could catch that fellow," he said to Ada, alluding to the man who
had intended to murder him, "I would have no harm done to him. He
should be let free at once; for I could not possibly have got such
an opportunity by any other means."
But poor Edith, the while, felt herself to be badly used. She and
Ada had often talked of the terrible perils to which Yorke Clayton
was subjected, and, as the reader may remember, had discussed the
propriety of a man so situated allowing himself to become familiar
with any girl. But now Captain Clayton was declared to be safe by
everybody. The doctors united in saying that his constitution would
carry him through a cannon-ball. But Edith felt that all the danger
had fallen to her lot.
In the meantime the search for the double murderers,--unless indeed
one murderer had been busy in both cases--was carried vainly along.
The horror of poor Mr. Morris's fate had almost disappeared under the
awe occasioned by the attack on Captain Clayton. It was astonishing
to see how entirely Mr. Morris, with all his family and his old
acres, and with Minas Cottage,--which, to the knowledge of the entire
population of Cong, was his own peculiar property,--was lost to
notice under the attack that had been made with so much audacity on
Captain Yorke Clayton. He, as one of four, all armed to the teeth,
was attacked by one individual, and attacked successfully. There
were those who said at first that the bars of Galway jail must have
been broken, and that Lax the omnipotent, Lax the omnipresent, had
escaped. And it certainly was the case that many were in ignorance
as to who the murderer had been. Probably all were ignorant,--all
of those who were in truth well acquainted with the person of Mr.
Morris' murderer. And in the minds of the people generally the awe
became greater than ever. To them it was evident that anybody could
murder anybody; and evident also that it was permitted to them to do
so by this new law which had sprung up of late in the country, almost
enjoining them to exercise this peculiar mode of retaliation. The
bravest thought that they were about to have their revenge against
their old masters, and determined that the revenge should be a bloody
one. But the more cowardly, and very much the more numerous on that
account, feared that, poor as they were, they might be the victims.
No man among them could be much poorer than Pat Gilligan, and he had
been chosen as one to be murdered, for some reason known only to the
murderer.
A new and terrible aristocracy was growing up among them,--the
aristocracy of hidden firearms. There was but little said among them,
even by the husband to the wife, or by the father to the son; because
the husband feared his wife, and the father his own child. There had
been a feeling of old among them that they were being ground down by
the old aristocracy. There must ever be such an idea on the part of
those who do not have enough to eat in regard to their betters, who
have more than plenty. It cannot be but that want should engender
such feeling. But now the dread of the new aristocracy was becoming
worse than that of the old. In the dull, dim minds of these poor
people there arose, gradually indeed but quickly, a conviction that
the new aristocracy might be worse even than the old; and that law,
as administered by Government, might be less tyrannical than the law
of those who had no law to govern them. So the people sat silent
at their hearths, or crawled miserably about their potato patches,
speaking not at all of the life around them.
When a week was over, tidings came to them that Captain Clayton,
though he had been shot right through the body,--though the bullet
had gone in at his breast and come out at his back, as the report
went,--was still alive, and likely to live. "He's a-spending every
hour of his blessed life a-making love to a young lady who is
a-nursing him." This was the report brought up to Cong by the steward
of the lake steamer, and was received as a new miracle by the Cong
people. The fates had decreed that Captain Clayton should not fall
by any bullet fired by Lax, the Landleaguer; for, though Lax, the
Landleaguer, was himself fast in prison when the attempt was made,
such became more than ever the creed of the people when it was
understood that Captain Clayton, with his own flesh and blood, was at
this moment making love to Mr. Jones's youngest daughter at Morony
Castle.