evicted, and I was carried off to the police-station, where I positively
spent the night. What a night it was! I had come direct from London,
sleeping on my road but once in Dublin, and now I found myself
accommodated with a stretcher in the police barracks at Ballymoy! And
the worst of it was that I had business to do at Ballymoy which required
that I should hold up my head and make much of myself. The few words
which had been spoken by the priest had comforted me and had enabled me
to think again of my own position. Why was I locked up? No magistrate
had committed me. It was really a question whether I had done anything
illegal. As that man whom Father Giles called Tom had very properly
explained, if people will have ladders instead of staircases in their
houses, how is anybody to put an intruder out of the room without risk
of breaking the intruder’s neck? And as to the fact--now an undoubted
fact--that Father Giles was no intruder, the fault in that lay with the
Kirwans, who had told me nothing of the truth. The boards of the
stretcher in the police-station were very hard, in spite of the blankets
with which I had been furnished; and as I lay there I began to remind
myself that there certainly must be law in county Galway. So I called to
the attendant policeman and asked him by whose authority I was locked
up.
“Ah, thin, don’t bother,” said the policeman; “shure, and you’ve given
throuble enough this night!” The dawn was at that moment breaking, so I
turned myself on the stretcher, and resolved that I would put a bold
face on it all when the day should come.
The first person I saw in the morning was Captain Tom, who came into the
room where I was lying, followed by a little boy with my portmanteau.
The sub-inspector of police who ruled over the men at Ballymoy lived; as
I afterwards learned, at Oranmore, so that I had not, at this
conjuncture, the honour of seeing him. Captain Tom assured me that he
was an excellent fellow, and rode to hounds like a bird. As in those
days I rode to hounds myself--as nearly like a bird as I was able--I was
glad to have such an account of my head-gaoler. The sub-constables
seemed to do just what Captain Tom told them, and there was, no doubt, a
very good understanding between the police force and the revenue
officer.
“Well, now, I’ll tell you what you must do, Mr. Green,” said the
captain.
“In the first place,” said I, “I must protest that I’m now locked up
here illegally.”
“Oh, bother; now don’t make yourself unaisy.”
“That’s all very well, Captain----. I beg your pardon, Sir, but I didn’t
catch any name plainly except the Christian name.”
“My name is Macdermot--Tom Macdermot. They call me captain--but that’s
neither here nor there.”
“I suppose, Captain Macdermot, the police here cannot lock up anybody
they please, without a warrant?”
“And where would you have been if they hadn’t locked you up? I’m blessed
if they wouldn’t have had you into the Lough before this time.”
There might be something in that, and I therefore resolved to forgive
the personal indignity which I had suffered, if I could secure something
like just treatment for the future. Captain Tom had already told me that
Father Giles was doing pretty well.
“He’s as sthrong as a horse, you see, or, sorrow a doubt, he’d be a dead
man this minute. The back of his neck is as black as your hat with the
bruises, and it’s the same way with him all down his loins. A man like
that, you know, not just as young as he was once, falls mortial heavy.
But he’s as jolly as a four-year old,” said Captain Tom, “and you’re to
go and ate your breakfast with him, in his bed-room, so that you may see
with your own eyes that there are two beds there.”
“I remembered it afterwards quite well,” said I.
“’Deed, and Father Giles got such a kick of laughter this morning, when
he came to understand that you thought he was going to get into bed
alongside of you, that he strained himself all over again, and I thought
he’d have frightened the house, yelling with the pain. But anyway you’ve
to go over and see him. So now you’d better get yourself dressed.”
This announcement was certainly very pleasant. Against Father Giles, of
course, I had no feeling of bitterness. He had behaved well throughout,
and I was quite alive to the fact that the light of his countenance
would afford me a better ægis against the ill-will of the people of
Ballymoy, than anything the law would do for me. So I dressed myself in
the barrack-room, while Captain Tom waited without, and then I sallied
out under his guidance to make a second visit to Pat Kirwan’s hotel. I
was amused to see that the police, though by no means subject to Captain
Tom’s orders, let me go without the least difficulty, and that the boy
was allowed to carry my portmanteau away with him.
“Oh, it’s all right,” said Captain Tom when I alluded to this. “You’re
not down in the sheet. You were only there for protection, you know.”
Nevertheless, I had been taken there by force, and had been locked up by
force. If, however, they were disposed to forget all that, so was I. I
did not return to the barracks again; and when, after that, the
policemen whom I had known met me in the street, they always accosted me
as though I were an old friend; hoping my honour had found a better bed
than when they last saw me. They had not looked at me with any
friendship in their eyes when they had stood over me in Pat Kirwan’s
parlour.
This was my first view of Ballymoy, and of the “hotel” by daylight. I
now saw that Mrs. Pat Kirwan kept a grocery establishment, and that the
three-cornered house which had so astonished me was very small. Had I
seen it before I entered it, I should hardly have dared to look there
for a night’s lodging. As it was, I stayed there for a fortnight, and
was by no means uncomfortable. Knots of men and women were now standing
in groups round the door, and, indeed, the lower end of the street was
almost crowded.
“They’re all here,” whispered Captain Tom, “because they’ve heard how
Father Giles has been murdered during the night by a terrible Saxon; and
there isn’t a man or woman among them who doesn’t know that you are the
man who did it.”
“But they know also, I suppose,” said I, “that Father Giles is alive.”
“Bedad, yes, they know that, or I wouldn’t be in your skin, my boy. But
come along. We mustn’t keep the priest waiting for his breakfast.”
I could see that they all looked at me, and there were some of them,
especially among the women, whose looks I did not even yet like. They
spoke among each other in Gaelic, and I could perceive that they were
talking of me.
“Can’t you understand, then,” said Captain Tom, speaking to them aloud,
just as he entered the house, “that father Giles, the Lord be praised,
is as well as ever he was in his life? Shure it was only an accident.”
“An accident done on purpose, Captain Tom,” said one person.
“What is it to you how it was done, Mick Healy? If Father Giles is
satisfied, isn’t that enough for the likes of you? Get out of that, and
let the gentleman pass.” Then Captain Tom pushed Mick away roughly, and
the others let us enter the house. “Only they wouldn’t do it unless
somebody gave them the wink, they’d pull you in pieces this moment for a
dandy of punch--they would, indeed.”
Perhaps Captain Tom exaggerated the prevailing feeling, thinking thereby
to raise the value of his own service in protecting me; but I was quite
alive to the fact that I had done a most dangerous deed, and had a most
narrow escape.
I found Father Giles sitting up in his bed, while Mrs. Kirwan was
rubbing his shoulder diligently with an embrocation of arnica. The girl
was standing by with a basin half full of the same, and I could see that
the priest’s neck and shoulders were as red as a raw beefsteak. He
winced grievously under the rubbing, but he bore it like a man.
“And here comes the hero,” said Father Giles. “Now stop a minute or
two, Mrs. Kirwan, while we have a mouthful of breakfast, for I’ll go
bail that Mr. Green is hungry after his night’s rest. I hope you got a
better bed, Mr. Green, than the one I found you in when I was
unfortunate enough to waken you last night. There it is, all ready for
you still,” said he; “and if you accept of it to-night, take my advice
and don’t let a trifle stand in the way of your dhraims.”
“I hope, thin, the gintleman will contrive to suit hisself elsewhere,”
said Mrs. Kirwan.
“He’ll be very welcome to take up his quarters here if he likes,” said
the priest. “And why not? But, bedad, Sir, you’d better be a little more
careful the next time you see a stranger using your clothes-brush. They
are not so strict here in their ideas of _meum_ and _tuum_ as they are
perhaps in England; and if you had broken my neck for so small an
offence, I don’t know but what they’d have stretched your own.”
We then had breakfast together, Father Giles, Captain Tom, and I; and a
very good breakfast we had. By degrees even Mrs. Kirwan was induced to
look favourably at me, and before the day was over I found myself to be
regarded as a friend in the establishment. And as a friend I certainly
was regarded by Father Giles--then, and for many a long day afterwards.
And many times when he has, in years since that, but years nevertheless
which are now long back, come over and visited me in my English home, he
has told the story of the manner in which we first became acquainted.
“When you find a gentleman asleep,” he would say, “always ask his leave
before you take a liberty with his clothes-brush.”
[Illustration: text decoration]
MALACHI’S COVE.
[Illustration: text decoration]
MALACHI’S COVE.
On the northern coast of Cornwall, between Tintagel and Bossiney, down
to the very margin of the sea, there lived not long since an old man who
got his living by saving seaweed from the waves, and selling it for
manure. The cliffs there are bold and fine, and the sea beats in upon
them from the north with a grand violence. I doubt whether it be not the
finest morsel of cliff scenery in England, though it is beaten by many
portions of the west coast of Ireland, and perhaps also by spots in
Wales and Scotland. Cliffs should be nearly precipitous, they should be
broken in their outlines, and should barely admit here and there of an
insecure passage from the summit of the sand at their feet. The sea
should come, if not up to them, at least very near to them, and then,
above all things, the water below them should be blue, and not of that
dead leaden colour which is so familiar to us in England. At Tintagel
all these requisites are there, except that bright blue colour which is
so lovely. But the cliffs themselves are bold and well broken, and the
margin of sand at high water is very narrow,--so narrow that at
spring-tides there is barely a footing there.
Close upon this margin was the cottage or hovel of Malachi Trenglos, the
old man of whom I have spoken.
But Malachi, or old Glos, as he was commonly called by the people around
him, had not built his house absolutely upon the sand. There was a
fissure in the rock so great that at the top it formed a narrow ravine,
and so complete from the summit to the base that it afforded an opening
for a steep and rugged track from the top of the rock to the bottom.
This fissure was so wide at the bottom that it had afforded space for
Trenglos to fix his habitation on a foundation of rock, and here he had
lived for many years. It was told of him that in the early days of his
trade he had always carried the weed in a basket on his back to the top,
but latterly he had been possessed of a donkey, which had been trained
to go up and down the steep track with a single pannier over his loins,
for the rocks would not admit of panniers hanging by his side; and for
this assistant he had built a shed adjoining his own, and almost as
large as that in which he himself resided.
But as years went on, old Glos procured other assistance than that of
the donkey, or, as I should rather say, Providence supplied him with
other help; and, indeed, had it not been so, the old man must have given
up his cabin and his independence and gone into the workhouse at
Camelford. For rheumatism had afflicted him, old age had bowed him till
he was nearly double, and by degrees he became unable to attend the
donkey on its upward passage to the world above, or even to assist in
rescuing the coveted weed from the waves.
At the time to which our story refers Trenglos had not been up the cliff
for twelve months, and for the last six months he had done nothing
towards the furtherance of his trade, except to take the money and keep
it, if any of it was kept, and occasionally to shake down a bundle of
fodder for the donkey. The real work of the business was done altogether
by Mahala Trenglos, his granddaughter.
Mally Trenglos was known to all the farmers round the coast, and to all
the small tradespeople in Camelford. She was a wild-looking, almost
unearthly creature, with wild flowing, black, uncombed hair, small in
stature, with small hands and bright black eyes; but people said that
she was very strong, and the children around declared that she worked
day and night and knew nothing of fatigue. As to her age there were many
doubts. Some said she was ten, and others five-and-twenty, but the
reader may be allowed to know that at this time she had in truth passed
her twentieth birthday. The old people spoke well of Mally, because she
was so good to her grandfather; and it was said of her that though she
carried to him a little gin and tobacco almost daily, she bought nothing
for herself;--and as to the gin, no one who looked at her would accuse
her of meddling with that. But she had no friends and but few
acquaintances among people of her own age. They said that she was fierce
and ill-natured, that she had not a good word for anyone, and that she
was, complete at all points, a thorough little vixen. The young men did
not care for her; for, as regarded dress, all days were alike with her.
She never made herself smart on Sundays. She was generally without
stockings, and seemed to care not at all to exercise any of those
feminine attractions which might have been hers had she studied to
attain them. All days were the same to her in regard to dress; and,
indeed, till lately, all days had, I fear, been the same to her in other
respects. Old Malachi had never been seen inside a place of worship
since he had taken to live under the cliff.
But within the last two years Mally had submitted herself to the
teaching of the clergyman at Tintagel, and had appeared at church on
Sundays, if not absolutely with punctuality, at any rate so often that
no one who knew the peculiarity of her residence was disposed to quarrel
with her on that subject. But she made no difference in her dress on
these occasions. She took her place on a low stone seat just inside the
church door, clothed as usual in her thick red serge petticoat and loose
brown serge jacket, such being the apparel which she had found to be
best adapted for her hard and perilous work among the waters. She had
pleaded to the clergyman when he attacked her on the subject of church
attendance with vigour that she had got no church-going clothes. He had
explained to her that she would be received there without distinction to
her clothing. Mally had taken him at his word, and had gone, with a
courage which certainly deserved admiration, though I doubt whether
there was not mingled with it an obstinacy which was less admirable.
For people said that old Glos was rich, and that Mally might have proper
clothes if she chose to buy them. Mr. Polwarth, the clergyman, who, as
the old man could not come to him, went down the rocks to the old man,
did make some hint on the matter in Mally’s absence. But old Glos, who
had been patient with him on other matters, turned upon him so angrily
when he made an allusion to money, that Mr. Polwarth found himself
obliged to give that matter up, and Mally continued to sit upon the
stone bench in her short serge petticoat, with her long hair streaming
down her face. She did so far sacrifice to decency as on such occasions
to tie up her back hair with an old shoestring. So tied it would remain
through the Monday and Tuesday, but by Wednesday afternoon Mally’s hair
had generally managed to escape.
As to Mally’s indefatigable industry there could be no manner of doubt,
for the quantity of seaweed which she and the donkey amassed between
them was very surprising. Old Glos, it was declared, had never collected
half what Mally gathered together; but then the article was becoming
cheaper, and it was necessary that the exertion should be greater. So
Mally and the donkey toiled and toiled, and the seaweed came up in heaps
which surprised those who looked at her little hands and light form. Was
there not some one who helped her at nights, some fairy, or demon, or
the like? Mally was so snappish in her answers to people that she had
no right to be surprised if ill-natured things were said of her.
No one ever heard Mally Trenglos complain of her work, but about this
time she was heard to make great and loud complaints of the treatment
she received from some of her neighbours. It was known that she went
with her plaints to Mr. Polwarth; and when he could not help her, or did
not give her such instant help as she needed, she went--ah, so
foolishly! to the office of a certain attorney at Camelford, who was not
likely to prove himself a better friend than Mr. Polwarth.
Now the nature of her injury was as follows. The place in which she
collected her seaweed was a little cove;--the people had come to call it
Malachi’s Cove from the name of the old man who lived there;--which was
so formed, that the margin of the sea therein could only be reached by
the passage from the top down to Trenglos’s hut. The breadth of the cove
when the sea was out might perhaps be two hundred yards, and on each
side the rocks ran out in such a way that both from north and south the
domain of Trenglos was guarded from intruders. And this locality had
been well chosen for its intended purpose.
There was a rush of the sea into the cove, which carried there large,
drifting masses of seaweed, leaving them among the rocks when the tide
was out. During the equinoctial winds of the spring and autumn the
supply would never fail; and even when the sea was calm, the long, soft,
salt-bedewed, trailing masses of the weed, could be gathered there when
they could not be found elsewhere for miles along the coast. The task of
getting the weed from the breakers was often difficult and
dangerous,--so difficult that much of it was left to be carried away by
the next incoming tide.
Mally doubtless did not gather half the crop that was there at her feet.
What was taken by the returning waves she did not regret; but when
interlopers came upon her cove, and gathered her wealth,--her
grandfather’s wealth, beneath her eyes, then her heart was broken. It
was this interloping, this intrusion, that drove poor Mally to the
Camelford attorney. But, alas, though the Camelford attorney took
Mally’s money, he could do nothing for her, and her heart was broken!
She had an idea, in which no doubt her grandfather shared, that the path
to the cove was, at any rate, their property. When she was told that the
cove, and sea running into the cove, were not the freeholds of her
grandfather, she understood that the statement might be true. But what
then as to the use of the path? Who had made the path what it was? Had
she not painfully, wearily, with exceeding toil, carried up bits of
rock with her own little hands, that her grandfather’s donkey might have
footing for his feet? Had she not scraped together crumbs of earth along
the face of the cliff that she might make easier to the animal the track
of that rugged way? And now, when she saw big farmers’ lads coming down
with other donkeys,--and, indeed, there was one who came with a pony; no
boy, but a young man, old enough to know better than rob a poor old man
and a young girl,--she reviled the whole human race, and swore that the
Camelford attorney was a fool.
Any attempt to explain to her that there was still weed enough for her
was worse than useless. Was it not all hers and his, or, at any rate,
was not the sole way to it his and hers? And was not her trade stopped
and impeded? Had she not been forced to back her laden donkey down,
twenty yards she said, but it had, in truth, been five, because Farmer
Gunliffe’s son had been in the way with his thieving pony? Farmer
Gunliffe had wanted to buy her weed at his own price, and because she
had refused he had set on his thieving son to destroy her in this wicked
way.
“I’ll hamstring the beast the next time as he’s down here!” said Mally
to old Glos, while the angry fire literally streamed from her eyes.
Farmer Gunliffe’s small homestead,--he held about fifty acres of
land,--was close by the village of Tintagel, and not a mile from the
cliff. The sea-wrack, as they call it, was pretty well the only manure
within his reach, and no doubt he thought it hard that he should be kept
from using it by Mally Trenglos and her obstinacy.
“There’s heaps of other coves, Barty,” said Mally to Barty Gunliffe, the
farmer’s son.
“But none so nigh, Mally, nor yet none that fills ’emselves as this
place.”
Then he explained to her that he would not take the weed that came up
close to hand. He was bigger than she was, and stronger, and would get
it from the outer rocks, with which she never meddled. Then, with scorn
in her eye, she swore that she could get it where he durst not venture,
and repeated her threat of hamstringing the pony. Barty laughed at her
wrath, jeered her because of her wild hair, and called her a mermaid.
“I’ll mermaid you!” she cried. “Mermaid, indeed! I wouldn’t be a man to
come and rob a poor girl and an old cripple. But you’re no man, Barty
Gunliffe! You’re not half a man.”
Nevertheless, Bartholomew Gunliffe was a very fine young fellow as far
as the eye went. He was about five feet eight inches high, with strong
arms and legs, with light curly brown hair and blue eyes. His father
was but in a small way as a farmer, but, nevertheless, Barty Gunliffe
was well thought of among the girls around. Everybody liked
Barty,--excepting only Mally Trenglos, and she hated him like poison.
Barty, when he was asked why so good natured a lad as he persecuted a
poor girl and an old man, threw himself upon the justice of the thing.
It wouldn’t do at all, according to his view, that any single person
should take upon himself to own that which God Almighty sent as the
common property of all. He would do Mally no harm, and so he had told
her. But Mally was a vixen,--a wicked little vixen; and she must be
taught to have a civil tongue in her head. When once Mally would speak
him civil as he went for weed, he would get his father to pay the old
man some sort of toll for the use of the path.
“Speak him civil?” said Mally. “Never; not while I have a tongue in my
mouth!” And I fear old Glos encouraged her rather than otherwise in her
view of the matter.
But her grandfather did not encourage her to hamstring the pony.
Hamstringing a pony would be a serious thing, and old Glos thought it
might be very awkward for both of them if Mally were put into prison.
He suggested, therefore, that all manner of impediments should be put
in the way of the pony’s feet, surmising that the well-trained donkey
might be able to work in spite of them. And Barty Gunliffe, on his next
descent, did find the passage very awkward when he came near to
Malachi’s hut, but he made his way down, and poor Mally saw the lumps of
rock at which she had laboured so hard pushed on one side or rolled out
of the way with a steady persistency of injury towards herself that
almost drove her frantic.
“Well, Barty, you’re a nice boy,” said old Glos, sitting in the doorway
of the hut, as he watched the intruder.
“I aint a doing no harm to none as doesn’t harm me,” said Barty. “The
sea’s free to all, Malachi.”
“And the sky’s free to all, but I mustn’t get up on the top of your big
barn to look at it,” said Mally, who was standing among the rocks with a
long hook in her hand. The long hook was the tool with which she worked
in dragging the weed from the waves. “But you aint got no justice, nor
yet no sperrit, or you wouldn’t come here to vex an old man like he.”
“I didn’t want to vex him, nor yet to vex you, Mally. You let me be for
a while, and we’ll be friends yet.”