Part 8

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.

They got him up stairs back into the room from which he had been 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.”

MALACHI’S COVE.

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.