When Padna called on the shoemaker for the boots that had been left for
repair they were almost ready. The tips only remained to be put on the
heels. Padna sat down in the little workshop, and under the agreeable
influence of the place he made bold to ask the shoemaker if he had grown
up to be a shoemaker as the geranium had grown up to be a geranium in
its pot on the window.
"What!" exclaimed the shoemaker. "Did you never hear tell that I was
found in the country under a head of cabbage? No! Well, well! What do
they talk to you at home about at all?"
"The most thing they tell me," said Padna, "is to go to bed and get up
in the morning. What is the name of the place in the country where they
found you?"
"Gobstown," said the shoemaker. "It was the most miserable place within
the ring of Ireland. It lay under the blight of a good landlord, no
better. That was its misfortune, and especially my misfortune. If the
Gobstown landlord was not such a good landlord it's driving on the box
of an empire I would be to-day instead of whacking tips on the heels of
your boots. How could that be? I'll tell you that.
"In Gobstown the tenants rose up and demanded a reduction of rent; the
good landlord gave it to them. They rose up again and demanded another
reduction of rent; he gave it to them. They went on rising up, asking
reductions, and getting them, until there was no rent left for anyone to
reduce. The landlord was as good and as poor as our best.
"And while all this was going on Gobstown was surrounded by estates
where there were the most ferocious landlords--rack-renting, absentee,
evicting landlords, landlords as wild as tigers. And these tiger
landlords were leaping at their tenants and their tenants slashing back
at them as best they could. Nothing, my dear, but blood and the music of
grape-shot and shouts in the night from the jungle. In Gobstown we had
to sit down and look on, pretending, moryah, that we were as happy as
the day was long.
"Not a scalp was ever brought into Gobstown. No man of us ever went out
on an adventure which might bring him home again through the mouth of
the county jail. Not a secret enterprise that might become a great
public excitement was ever hatched, not to speak of being launched. We
had not as much as a fife-and-drum band. We did not know how to play a
tin whistle or beat upon the tintinnabulum. We never waved a green flag.
We had not a branch of any kind of a league. We had no men of skill to
draft a resolution, indite a threatening letter, draw a coffin, skull,
and cross-bones, fight a policeman, or even make a speech. We were never
a delegate at a convention, an envoy to America, a divisional executive,
a deputation, or a demonstration. We were nothing. We wilted under the
blight of our good landlord as the green stalk wilts under the frost of
the black night.... Hand me that knife. The one with the wooden handle.
"In desperation we used rouse ourselves and march into the
demonstrations on other estates. We were a small and an unknown tribe.
The Gobstown contingent always brought up the rear of the procession--a
gawky, straggling, bad-stepping, hay-foot, straw-foot lot! The onlookers
hardly glanced at us. We stood for nothing. We had no name. Once we
rigged up a banner with the words on it, 'Gobstown to the Front!' but
still we were put to the back, and when we walked through this town the
servant girls came out of their kitchens, laughed at us, and called out,
'Gobstown to the Back of the Front!'
"The fighting men came to us, took us aside, and asked us what we were
doing in Gobstown. We had no case to make. We offered to bring forward
our good landlord as a shining example, to lead our lamb forward in
order that he might show up the man-eaters on the other estates. The
organisers were all hostile. They would not allow us into the
processions any more. If we could bring forward some sort of roaring
black devil we would be more than welcome. Shining examples were not in
favour. We were sent home in disgrace and broke up. As the preachers
say, our last state was worse than our first.
"We became sullen and drowsy and fat and dull. We got to hate the sight
of each other, so much so that we began to pay our rents behind each
other's backs, at first the reduced rents, then, gale day by gale day,
we got back to the original rent, and kept on paying it. Our good
landlord took his rents and said nothing. Gobstown became the most
accursed place in all Ireland. Brother could not trust brother. And
there were our neighbours going from one sensation to another. They were
as lively as trout, as enterprising as goats, as intelligent as
Corkmen. They were thin and eager and good-tempered. They ate very
little, drank water, slept well, men with hard knuckles, clean bowels,
and pale eyes. Anything they hit went down. They were always ready to go
to the gallows for each other.
"I had a famous cousin on one of these estates, and I suppose you heard
of him? You didn't! What are they teaching you at school at all? Latin
grammar? Well, well!... My cousin was a clumsy fellow with only a little
of middling kind of brains, but a bit of fight in him. Yet look at the
way he got on, and look at me, shodding little boys like yourself! I was
born under a lucky star but my cousin was born under a lucky landlord--a
ferocious fellow who got into a garret in London and kept roaring across
at Ireland for more and more blood. Every time I thought of that old
skin of a man howling in the London garret I said to myself, 'He'll be
the making of my cousin.' And so, indeed, he was. Three agents were
brought down on my cousin's estate. State trials were running like great
plays in the courthouse. Blood was always up. They had six fife-and-drum
bands and one brass band. They had green and gold banners with harps
and streamers, and mottoes in yellow lettering, that took four hardy men
to carry on a windy day. The heads of the Peelers were hardly ever out
of their helmets. The resident magistrate rose one day in the bosom of
his family, his eyes closed, to say grace before meals, and from dint of
habit he was chanting the Riot Act over the table until his wife flew at
him with, 'How dare you, George! The mutton is quite all right!' Little
boys no bigger than yourself walking along the roads to school in that
splendid estate could jump up on the ditch and make good speeches.
"My cousin's minute books--he was secretary of everything--would stock a
book-shop, and were noted for beautiful expressions. He was the author
of ten styles of resolution construction. An enemy christened him
Resolving Kavanagh. Every time he resolved to stand where he always
stood he revolved. Everybody put up at his house. He was seen in more
torchlight processions than Bryan O'Lynn. A room in his house was
decorated in a beautiful scheme of illuminated addresses with border
designs from the Book of Kells. The homes of the people were full of
the stumps of burned-down candles, the remains of great illuminations
for my cousin whenever he came out of prison. I tell you no lie when I
say that that clumsy cousin of mine became clever and polished, all
through pure practice. He had the best of tutors. The skin of a landlord
in the London garret, his agents, their understrappers, removable
magistrates, judges, Crown solicitors, county inspectors of police,
sergeants, constables, secret service men,--all drove him from fame to
fame until in the end they chased him out the only gap that was left
open to the like of him--the English Parliament. Think of the streak of
that man's career! And there was I, a man of capacity and brains, born
with the golden spoon of talent in my mouth, dead to the world in
Gobstown! I was rotting like a turnip under the best and the most
accursed of landlords. In the end I could not stand it--no man of spirit
could.
"One day I took down my ashplant, spat on my fist, and set out for my
cousin's place. He gave me no welcome. I informed him as to how the land
lay in Gobstown. I said we must be allowed to make a name for ourselves
as the producers of a shining example of a landlord. My cousin let his
head lie over a little to one side and then said, 'In this country
shining examples ought only be used with the greatest moderation.' He
looked out through the window and after some time said, 'That Gobstown
landlord is the most dangerous lunatic in all Ireland.' 'How is that?'
said I. 'Because,' said my famous cousin, 'he has a perfect heart.' He
put his head over to the other side, looked at me and said, 'If Gobstown
does not do something he may be the means of destroying us all.' 'How?'
said I. 'He may become contagious,' said my cousin. 'Only think of his
example being followed and Ireland turned into one vast tract of
Gobstowns! Would not any fate at all be better than that?' I who knew
said, 'God knows it would.'
"My cousin sighed heavily. He turned from me, leaving me standing there
in the kitchen, and I saw him moving with a ladder to the loft overhead.
This he mounted and disappeared in the black rafters. I could hear him
fumbling somewhere under the thatch. Presently down he came the ladder,
a gun in one hand, and a fistful of cartridges in the other. He spoke no
word, and I spoke no word. He came to me and put the gun in my hand and
the handful of cartridges in my pocket. He walked to the fire and stood
there with his back turned. I stood where I was, a Gobstown mohawk, with
the gun in my hand. At last I said, 'What is this for?' and grounded the
gun a little on the floor. My cousin did not answer at once. At last he
said without moving, 'It's for stirring your tea, what else?' I looked
at him and he remained as he was and, the sweat breaking out on the back
of my neck, I left the house and made across the fields for home, the
cartridges rattling in my pocket every ditch I leapt, the feel of the
gun in my hand becoming more familiar and more friendly.
"At last I came to the summit of a little green hill overlooking
Gobstown, and there I sat me down. The sight of Gobstown rose the gorge
in me. Nothing came out of it but weak puffs of turf smoke from the
chimneys--little pallid thin streaks that wobbled in the wind. There,
says I, is the height of Gobstown. And no sound came up out of it
except the cackle of geese, and then the bawl of an old ass in the bog.
There, says I, is the depth of Gobstown. And rising up from the green
hill I made up my mind to save Ireland from Gobstown even if I lost my
own soul. I would put a bullet in the perfect heart of our good
landlord.
"That night I lay behind a certain ditch. The moon shone on the nape of
my neck. The good landlord passed me by on the road, he and his good
wife, chattering and happy as a pair of lovers. I groped for the gun.
The queerest feeling came over me. I did not even raise it. I had no
nerve. I quaked behind the ditch. His footsteps and her footsteps were
like cracks of this hammer on my head. I knew, then, in that minute,
that I was no good, and that Gobstown was for ever lost.... What
happened me? Who can say that for certain? Many a time have I wondered
what came over me in that hour. I can only guess.... Nobody belonging to
me had ever been rack-rented. I had never seen any of my own people
evicted. No great judge of assize had ever looked down on me from his
bench to the dock and addressed to me stern words. I had never heard
the clang behind me of a prison door. No royal hand of an Irish
constabularyman had ever brought a baton down on my head. No carbine had
ever butted the soft places of my body. I had no scars that might redden
with memories. The memories I had and that might give me courage were
not memories of landlords. There was nothing of anger in my heart for
the Gobstown landlord, and he went by. I dragged my legs out of the
ditch and drowned my cousin's gun in a boghole. After it I dropped in
the handful of cartridges. They made a little gurgle in the dark water
like blood in a shot man's throat. And that same night I went home, put
a few things in a red handkerchief, and stole out of Gobstown like a
thief. I walked along the roads until I came to this town, learned my
trade, became a respectable shoemaker, and--tell your mother I never use
anything only the best leather. There are your boots, Padna, tips and
all ... half-a-crown. Thanks, and well wear!"