and was led away up stairs. I asked where I was to eat my breakfast and
dine on the next day, and was assured that I should have the room so
strongly perfumed with whisky all to myself. I had been rather cross
before, but on hearing this, I became decidedly sulky. It was not that I
could not eat my breakfast in the chamber in question, but that I saw
before me seven days of absolute misery, if I could have no other place
of refuge for myself than a room in which, as was too plain, all
Ballymoy came to drink and smoke. But there was no alternative, at any
rate for that night and the following morning, and I therefore gulped
down my anger without further spoken complaint, and followed the
barefooted maiden up stairs, seeing my portmanteau carried up before me.
Ireland is not very well known now to all Englishmen, but it is much
better known than it was in those days. On this my first visit into
Connaught, I own that I was somewhat scared lest I should be made a
victim to the wild lawlessness and general savagery of the people; and I
fancied, as in the wet, windy gloom of the night, I could see the crowd
of natives standing round the doors of the inn, and just discern their
naked legs and old battered hats, that Ballymoy was probably one of
those places so far removed from civilisation and law, as to be an
unsafe residence for an English Protestant. I had undertaken the service
on which I was employed, with my eyes more or less open, and was
determined to go through with it;--but I confess that I was by this time
alive to its dangers. It was an early resolution with me that I would
not allow my portmanteau to be out of my sight. To that I would cling;
with that ever close to me would I live; on that, if needful, would I
die. I therefore required that it should be carried up the narrow stairs
before me, and I saw it deposited safely in the bed-room.
The stairs were very narrow and very steep. Ascending them was like
climbing into a loft. The whole house was built in a barbarous,
uncivilised manner, and as fit to be an hotel as it was to be a church.
It was triangular and all corners,--the most uncomfortably arranged
building I had ever seen. From the top of the stairs I was called upon
to turn abruptly into the room destined for me; but there was a side
step which I had not noticed under the glimmer of the small tallow
candle, and I stumbled headlong into the chamber, uttering imprecations
against Pat Kirwan, Ballymoy, and all Connaught.
I hope the reader will remember that I had travelled for thirty
consecutive hours, had passed sixteen in a small comfortless canal boat
without the power of stretching my legs, and that the wind had been at
work upon me sideways for the last three hours. I was terribly tired,
and I spoke very uncivilly to the young woman.
“Shure, yer honour, it’s as clane as clane, and as dhry as dhry, and has
been slept in every night since the big storm,” said the girl,
good-humouredly. Then she went on to tell me something more about Father
Giles, of which, however, I could catch nothing, as she was bending
over the bed, folding down the bedclothes. “Feel of ’em,” said she,
“they’s dhry as dhry.”
I did feel them, and the sheets were dry and clean, and the bed, though
very small, looked as if it would be comfortable. So I somewhat softened
my tone to her, and bade her call me the next morning at eight.
“Shure, yer honour, and Father Giles will call yer hisself,” said the
girl.
I begged that Father Giles might be instructed to do no such thing. The
girl, however, insisted that he would, and then left me. Could it be
that in this savage place, it was considered to be the duty of the
parish priest to go round, with matins perhaps, or some other abominable
papist ceremony, to the beds of all the strangers? My mother, who was a
strict woman, had warned me vehemently against the machinations of the
Irish priests, and I, in truth, had been disposed to ridicule her. Could
it be that there were such machinations? Was it possible that my
trousers might be refused me till I had taken mass? Or that force would
be put upon me in some other shape, perhaps equally disagreeable?
Regardless of that and other horrors, or rather, I should perhaps say,
determined to face manfully whatever horrors the night or morning might
bring upon me, I began to prepare for bed. There was something pleasant
in the romance of sleeping at Pat Kirwan’s house in Ballymoy, instead of
in my own room in Keppel Street, Russell Square. So I chuckled inwardly
at Pat Kirwan’s idea of an hotel, and unpacked my things.
There was a little table covered with a clean cloth, on which I espied a
small comb. I moved the comb carefully without touching it, and brought
the table up to my bedside. I put out my brushes and clean linen for the
morning, said my prayers, defying Father Giles and his machinations, and
jumped into bed. The bed certainly was good, and the sheets were very
pleasant. In five minutes I was fast asleep.
How long I had slept when I was awakened, I never knew. But it was at
some hour in the dead of night, when I was disturbed by footsteps in my
room, and on jumping up, I saw a tall, stout, elderly man standing with
his back towards me, in the middle of the room, brushing his clothes
with the utmost care. His coat was still on his back, and his pantaloons
on his legs; but he was most assiduous in his attention to every part of
his body which he could reach.
I sat upright, gazing at him, as I thought then, for ten minutes,--we
will say that I did so perhaps for forty seconds,--and of one thing I
became perfectly certain,--namely, that the clothes-brush was my own!
Whether, according to Irish hotel law, a gentleman would be justified in
entering a stranger’s room at midnight for the sake of brushing his
clothes, I could not say; but I felt quite sure that in such a case, he
would be bound at least to use the hotel brush or his own. There was a
manifest trespass in regard to my property.
“Sir,” said I, speaking very sharply, with the idea of startling him,
“what are you doing here in this chamber?”
“’Deed, then, and I’m sorry I’ve waked ye, my boy,” said the stout
gentleman.
“Will you have the goodness, Sir, to tell me what you are doing here?”
“Bedad, then, just at this moment it’s brushing my clothes, I am. It was
badly they wanted it.”
“I dare say they did. And you were doing it with my clothes-brush.”
“And that’s thrue too. And if a man hasn’t a clothes-brush of his own,
what else can he do but use somebody else’s?”
“I think it’s a great liberty, Sir,” said I.
“And I think it’s a little one. It’s only in the size of it we differ.
But I beg your pardon. There is your brush. I hope it will be none the
worse.”
Then he put down the brush, seated himself on one of the two chairs
which the room contained, and slowly proceeded to pull off his shoes,
looking me full in the face all the while.
“What are you going to do, Sir?” said I, getting a little further out
from under the clothes, and leaning over the table.
“I am going to bed,” said the gentleman.
“Going to bed! where?”
“Here,” said the gentleman; and he still went on untying the knot of his
shoe-string.
It had always been a theory with me, in regard not only to my own
country, but to all others, that civilisation displays itself never more
clearly than when it ordains that every man shall have a bed for
himself. In older days Englishmen of good position,--men supposed to be
gentlemen,--would sleep together and think nothing of it, as ladies, I
am told, will still do. And in outlandish regions, up to this time, the
same practice prevails. In parts of Spain you will be told that one bed
offers sufficient accommodation for two men, and in Spanish America the
traveller is considered to be fastidious who thinks that one on each
side of him is oppressive. Among the poorer classes with ourselves this
grand touchstone of civilisation has not yet made itself felt. For aught
I know there might be no such touchstone in Connaught at all. There
clearly seemed to be none such at Ballymoy.
“You can’t go to bed here,” said I, sitting bolt upright on the couch.
“You’ll find you are wrong there, my friend,” said the elderly
gentleman. “But make yourself aisy, I won’t do you the least harm in
life, and I sleep as quiet as a mouse.”
It was quite clear to me that time had come for action. I certainly
would not let this gentleman get into my bed. I had been the first
comer, and was for the night, at least, the proprietor of this room.
Whatever might be the custom of this country in these wild regions,
there could be no special law in the land justifying the landlord in
such treatment of me as this.
“You won’t sleep here, Sir,” said I, jumping out of the bed, over the
table, on to the floor, and confronting the stranger just as he had
succeeded in divesting himself of his second shoe. “You won’t sleep here
to-night, and so you may as well go away.”
With that I picked up his two shoes, took them to the door, and chucked
them out. I heard them go rattling down the stairs, and I was glad that
they made so much noise. He would see that I was quite in earnest.
“You must follow your shoes,” said I, “and the sooner the better.”
I had not even yet seen the man very plainly, and even now, at this
time, I hardly did so, though I went close up to him and put my hand
upon his shoulder. The light was very imperfect, coming from one small
farthing candle, which was nearly burnt out in the socket. And I,
myself, was confused, ill at ease, and for the moment unobservant. I
knew that the man was older than myself, but I had not recognised him as
being old enough to demand or enjoy personal protection by reason of his
age. He was tall, and big, and burly,--as he appeared to me then.
Hitherto, till his shoes had been chucked away, he had maintained
imperturbable good-humour. When he heard the shoes clattering down
stairs, it seemed that he did not like it, and he began to talk fast and
in an angry voice. I would not argue with him, and I did not understand
him, but still keeping my hand on the collar of his coat, I insisted
that he should not sleep there. Go away out of that chamber he should.
“But it’s my own,” he said, shouting the words a dozen times. “It’s my
own room. It’s my own room.”
So this was Pat Kirwan himself,--drunk probably, or mad.
“It may be your own,” said I; “but you’ve let it to me for to-night,
and you sha’n’t sleep here;” so saying I backed him towards the door,
and in so doing I trod upon his unguarded toe.
“Bother you, thin, for a pig-headed Englishman!” said he. “You’ve kilt
me entirely now. So take your hands off my neck, will ye, before you
have me throttled outright?”
I was sorry to have trod on his toe, but I stuck to him all the same. I
had him near the door now, and I was determined to put him out into the
passage. His face was very round and very red, and I thought that he
must be drunk; and since I had found out that it was Pat Kirwan the
landlord, I was more angry with the man than ever.
“You sha’n’t sleep here, so you might as well go,” I said, as I backed
him away towards the door. This had not been closed since the shoes had
been thrown out, and with something of a struggle between the doorposts,
I got him out. I remembered nothing whatever as to the suddenness of the
stairs. I had been fast asleep since I came up them, and hardly even as
yet knew exactly where I was. So, when I got him through the aperture of
the door, I gave him a push, as was most natural, I think, for me to do.
Down he went backwards,--down the stairs, all in a heap, and I could
hear that in his fall he had stumbled against Mrs. Kirwan, who was
coming up, doubtless to ascertain the cause of all the trouble above her
head.
A hope crossed my mind that the wife might be of assistance to her
husband in this time of his trouble. The man had fallen very heavily, I
knew, and had fallen backwards. And I remembered then how steep the
stairs were. Heaven and earth! Suppose that he were killed,--or even
seriously injured in his own house. What, in such case as that, would my
life be worth in that wild country? Then I began to regret that I had
been so hot. It might be that I had murdered a man on my first entrance
into Connaught!
For a moment or two I could not make up my mind what I would first do. I
was aware that both the landlady and the servant were occupied with the
body of the ejected occupier of my chamber, and I was aware also that I
had nothing on but my night-shirt. I returned, therefore, within the
door, but could not bring myself to shut myself in and return to bed
without making some enquiry as to the man’s fate. I put my head out,
therefore, and did make enquiry.
“I hope he is not much hurt by his fall,” I said.
“Ochone, ochone! murdher, murdher! Spake, Father Giles, dear, for the
love of God!” Such and many such exclamations I heard from the women at
the bottom of the stairs.
“I hope he is not much hurt,” I said again, putting my head out from the
doorway; “but he shouldn’t have forced himself into my room.”
“His room, the omadhaun!--the born idiot!” said the landlady.
“Faix, Ma’am, and Father Giles is a dead man,” said the girl, who was
kneeling over the prostrate body in the passage below.
I heard her say Father Giles as plain as possible, and then I became
aware that the man whom I had thrust out was not the landlord, but the
priest of the parish! My heart became sick within me as I thought of the
troubles around me. And I was sick also with fear lest the man who had
fallen should be seriously hurt. But why--why--why had he forced his way
into my room? How was it to be expected that I should have remembered
that the stairs of the accursed house came flush up to the door of the
chamber?
“He shall be hanged if there’s law in Ireland,” said a voice down below;
and as far as I could see it might be that I should be hung. When I
heard that last voice I began to think that I had in truth killed a man,
and a cold sweat broke out all over me, and I stood for awhile
shivering where I was. Then I remembered that it behoved me as a man to
go down among my enemies below, and to see what had really happened, to
learn whom I had hurt--let the consequences to myself be what they
might. So I quickly put on some of my clothes--a pair of trousers, a
loose coat, and a pair of slippers, and I descended the stairs. By this
time they had taken the priest into the whisky-perfumed chamber below,
and although the hour was late, there were already six or seven persons
with him. Among them was the real Pat Kirwan himself, who had not been
so particular about his costume as I had.
Father Giles--for indeed it was Father Giles, the priest of the
parish--had been placed in an old arm-chair, and his head was resting
against Mrs. Kirwan’s body. I could tell from the moans which he emitted
that there was still, at any rate, hope of life.
Pat Kirwan, who did not quite understand what had happened, and who was
still half asleep, and as I afterwards learned, half tipsy, was standing
over him wagging his head. The girl was also standing by, with an old
woman and two men who had made their way in through the kitchen.
“Have you sent for a doctor?” said I.
“Oh, you born blagghuard!” said the woman. “You thief of the world!
That the like of you should ever have darkened my door!”
“You can’t repent it more than I do, Mrs. Kirwan; but hadn’t you better
send for the doctor?”
“Faix, and for the police too, you may be shure of that, young man. To
go and chuck him out of the room like that--his own room too, and he a
priest and an ould man--he that had given up the half of it, though I
axed him not to do so, for a sthranger as nobody knowed nothing about.”
The truth was coming out by degrees. Not only was the man I had put out
Father Giles, but he was also the proper occupier of the room. At any
rate somebody ought to have told me all this before they put me to sleep
in the same bed with the priest.
I made my way round to the injured man, and put my hand upon his
shoulder, thinking that perhaps I might be able to ascertain the extent
of the injury. But the angry woman, together with the girl, drove me
away, heaping on me terms of reproach, and threatening me with the
gallows at Galway.
I was very anxious that a doctor should be brought as soon as possible;
and as it seemed that nothing was being done, I offered to go and search
for one. But I was given to understand that I should not be allowed to
leave the house until the police had come. I had therefore to remain
there for half-an-hour, or nearly so, till a sergeant, with two other
policemen, really did come. During this time I was in a most wretched
frame of mind. I knew no one at Ballymoy or in the neighbourhood. From
the manner in which I was addressed, and also threatened by Mrs. Kirwan
and by those who came in and out of the room, I was aware that I should
encounter the most intense hostility. I had heard of Irish murders, and
heard also of the love of the people for their priests, and I really
began to doubt whether my life might not be in danger.
During this time, while I was thus waiting, Father Giles himself
recovered his consciousness. He had been stunned by the fall, but his
mind came back to him, though by no means all at once; and while I was
left in the room with him he hardly seemed to remember all the events of
the past hour.
I was able to discover from what was said that he had been for some days
past, or, as it afterwards turned out, for the last month, the tenant of
the room, and that when I arrived he had been drinking tea with Mrs.
Kirwan. The only other public bed-room in the hotel was occupied, and he
had with great kindness given the landlady permission to put the Saxon
stranger into his chamber. All this came out by degrees, and I could
see how the idea of my base and cruel ingratitude rankled in the heart
of Mrs. Kirwan. It was in vain that I expostulated and explained, and
submitted myself humbly to everything that was said around me.
“But, Ma’am,” I said, “if I had only been told that it was the reverend
gentleman’s bed!”
“Bed, indeed! To hear the blagghuard talk you’d think it was axing
Father Giles to sleep along with the likes of him we were. And there’s
two beds in the room as dacent as any Christian iver stretched in.”
It was a new light to me. And yet I had known over night, before I
undressed, that there were two bedsteads in the room! I had seen them,
and had quite forgotten the fact in my confusion when I was woken. I had
been very stupid, certainly. I felt that now. But I had truly believed
that that big man was going to get into my little bed. It was terrible
as I thought of it now. The good-natured priest, for the sake of
accommodating a stranger, had consented to give up half of his room, and
had been repaid for his kindness by being--perhaps murdered! And yet,
though just then I hated myself cordially, I could not quite bring
myself to look at the matter as they looked at it. There were excuses to
be made, if only I could get anyone to listen to them.
“He was using my brush--my clothes-brush--indeed he was,” I said. “Not
but what he’d be welcome; but it made me think he was an intruder.”
“And wasn’t it too much honour for the likes of ye?” said one of the
women, with infinite scorn in the tone of her voice.
“I did use the gentleman’s clothes-brush, certainly,” said the priest.
They were the first collected words he had spoken, and I felt very
grateful to him for them. It seemed to me that a man who could
condescend to remember that he had used a clothes-brush could not really
be hurt to death, even though he had been pushed down such very steep
stairs as those belonging to Pat Kirwan’s hotel.
“And I’m sure you were very welcome, Sir,” said I. “It wasn’t that I
minded the clothes-brush. It wasn’t, indeed; only I thought--indeed, I
did think that there was only one bed. And they had put me into the
room, and had not said anything about anybody else. And what was I to
think when I woke up in the middle of the night?”
“Faix, and you’ll have enough to think of in Galway gaol, for that’s
where you’re going to,” said one of the bystanders.
I can hardly explain the bitterness that was displayed against me. No
violence was absolutely shown to me, but I could not move without
eliciting a manifest determination that I was not to be allowed to stir
out of the room. Red angry eyes were glowering at me, and every word I
spoke called down some expression of scorn and ill-will. I was beginning
to feel glad that the police were coming, thinking that I needed
protection. I was thoroughly ashamed of what I had done, and yet I could
not discover that I had been very wrong at any particular moment. Let
any man ask himself the question, what he would do, if he supposed that
a stout old gentleman had entered his room at an inn and insisted on
getting into his bed? It was not my fault that there had been no proper
landing-place at the top of the stairs.
Two sub-constables had been in the room for some time before the
sergeant came, and with the sergeant arrived also the doctor, and
another priest--Father Columb he was called--who, as I afterwards
learned, was curate or coadjutor to Father Giles. By this time there was
quite a crowd in the house, although it was past one o’clock, and it
seemed that all Ballymoy knew that its priest had been foully misused.
It was manifest to me that there was something in the Roman Catholic
religion which made the priests very dear to the people; for I doubt
whether in any village in England, had such an accident happened to the
rector, all the people would have roused themselves at midnight to wreak
their vengeance on the assailant. For vengeance they were now beginning
to clamour, and even before the sergeant of police had come, the two
sub-constables were standing over me; and I felt that they were
protecting me from the people in order that they might give me up--to
the gallows!
I did not like the Ballymoy doctor at all--then, or even at a later
period of my visit to that town. On his arrival he made his way up to
the priest through the crowd, and would not satisfy their affection or
my anxiety by declaring at once that there was no danger. Instead of
doing so he insisted on the terrible nature of the outrage and the
brutality shown by the assailant. And at every hard word he said, Mrs.
Kirwan would urge him on.
“That’s thrue for you, doctor!” “’Deed, and you may say that, doctor;
two as good beds as ever Christian stretched in!” “’Deed, and it was
just Father Giles’s own room, as you may say, since the big storm
fetched the roof off his riverence’s house below there.”
Thus gradually I was learning the whole history. The roof had been blown
off Father Giles’s own house, and therefore he had gone to lodge at the
inn! He had been willing to share his lodging with a stranger, and this
had been his reward!
“I hope, doctor, that the gentleman is not much hurt,” said I, very
meekly.
“Do you suppose a gentleman like that, Sir, can be thrown down a long
flight of stairs without being hurt?” said the doctor, in an angry
voice. “It is no thanks to you, Sir, that his neck has not been
sacrificed.”
Then there arose a hum of indignation, and the two policemen standing
over me bustled about a little, coming very close to me, as though they
thought they should have something to do to protect me from being torn
to pieces.
I bethought me that it was my special duty in such a crisis to show a
spirit, if it were only for the honour of my Saxon blood among the
Celts. So I spoke up again, as loud as I could well speak.
“No one in this room is more distressed at what has occurred than I am.
I am most anxious to know, for the gentleman’s sake, whether he has been
seriously hurt?”
“Very seriously hurt indeed,” said the doctor; “very seriously hurt. The
vertebræ may have been injured for aught I know at present.”
“Arrah, blazes, man,” said a voice, which I learned afterwards had
belonged to an officer of the revenue corps of men which was then
stationed at Ballymoy, a gentleman with whom I became afterwards
familiarly acquainted; Tom Macdermot was his name, Captain Tom
Macdermot, and he came from the county of Leitrim,--“Arrah, blazes, man;
do ye think a gentleman’s to fall sthrait headlong backwards down such a
ladder as that, and not find it inconvanient? Only that he’s the priest,
and has had his own luck, sorrow a neck belonging to him there would be
this minute.”
“Be aisy, Tom,” said Father Giles himself; and I was delighted to hear
him speak. Then there was a pause for a moment. “Tell the gentleman I
aint so bad at all,” said the priest; and from that moment I felt an
affection to him which never afterwards waned.