Spanish Gold/Chapter 1

OY BAY is full of islands, inhabited and uninhabited, and has many smaller bays leading from its main waters far inland. If it were anywhere but in Connacht it would be the haunt of yachtsmen. Being where it is, a pleasure boat rarely sails on it. At the south-eastern corner of the bay stands the town of Ballymoy. It is rich, like most West of Ireland towns, in public-houses and ecclesiastical buildings. It is rich in nothing else. Westwards, along the shore of the bay, runs the road which connects the town with the farmhouses of the neighbourhood and at last with the poverty-stricken villages which are scattered over the great bog. On this road there is a great deal of traffic. Country carts, droves of cattle, donkeys laden with panniers of turf and Major Kent's smart dogcart come into the town along it on market days and fair days. Therefore during nine-tenths of the year it is extremely muddy. When it is not muddy the dust blows in great clouds over it, to the discomfort of wayfarers who are accustomed to wet feet and mud-clogged boots, but hate to feel limestone grit between their teeth and in their eyes.

The Rev. Joseph John Meldon bicycled along this road one afternoon near the end of May. The day was very hot and the little wind there was blew against him as he rode. The dust had powdered his black clothes till they looked grey, and lay thick in the creases of his trousers, which were bound round his ankles by thin steel clasps. He rode rapidly and was most uncomfortably hot. His hands were red and moist. Every now and then a drop of sweat gathered beside his nose, trickled down and lodged among the hairs of his thick red moustache. A soft felt hat, grey with dust like his clothes, was pushed back from his glistening forehead.

There was no reason why Mr. Meldon, curate of Ballymoy, should have ridden fast on such a day. He was out upon no desperate enterprise, rode no race against death or misfortune, would win no bet by arriving anywhere at any specified time. His day's work, not a very arduous one for members of the Church of Ireland are few in Ballymoy was done. He might have ridden slowly if he liked, might have walked, need not have travelled the road at all unless he chose. The afternoon and evening were before him, and he proposed to spend them with Major Kent at Portsmouth Lodge. It made no difference when he arrived there. Four o'clock, five o'clock, six o'clock, any hour up to seven o'clock, when he dined, would be the same to Major Kent, who was one of those fortunate gentlemen who have nothing particular to do in life. Mr. Meldon rode fast and got hot, when he might have ridden slowly and been no more than warm, because he was a young man of impetuous energy and liked going as quickly as he could on all occasions.

"I hope," he murmured, conscious of the heat while he enjoyed increasing it, "that old Kent will give me a proper drink when I arrive. I could do nicely this minute with a lemon squash."

Another man, while dwelling with pleasure on the expectation of a drink, would have also wished for a wash and the use of a clothes brush. The ideal curate, the "dilettante, delicate-handed priest" of Tennyson's poems, the beloved of ladies in English country towns, would have wished first to be clean and then desired some mild refreshment—tea, perhaps, served in an old china cup. But Mr. Meldon was no such curate. Indeed, those who knew him well wondered at his being a curate at all. He was more at his ease in a smoking-room than a drawing-room, and preferred a gun to a Sunday-school roll-book. He cared very little about his personal appearance, and considered that he paid sufficient respect to the virtue of cleanliness if he washed every morning. He was physically strong, played most games well, had been distinguished as an athlete in college, smoked black tobacco, and was engaged to be married. Also though no one ever gave him credit for being studious, he read a great many books.

"A dash of whisky," he murmured again, "would improve that lemon squash. To do the Major justice, he's free with his drinks. A fellow has to be careful of himself with that old boy."

A dogcart approached him, driven towards Ballymoy. The driver was a stout, fair man. Beside him, wrapped in a shabby, fur-lined coat, sat a thin, sallow youth.

"Hullo, Doyle," shouted Meldon, "what brings you out here?"

He dismounted from his bicycle and stood in the middle of the road. He recognized that the sallow youth in the fur coat was a stranger in Ballymoy. Meldon wanted to find out something about him all about him if possible. Ballymoy is situated in a district not frequented by tourists. Therefore strangers are rare and objects of great curiosity to the regular inhabitants. There are, broadly speaking, just two classes of strangers to be met in West of Ireland towns which lie off the tourist track. There are gentlemen connected with the Government, the engineers, surveyors, and inspectors of our various benevolent boards; Members of Parliament on tour, and journalists despatched by editors to report on the state of Ireland, who are regarded by the people of Ballymoy as more or less connected with the Government, a sort of camp followers. This class of strangers is only moderately interesting. In Connacht we are getting quite familiar with the Government, and familiarity breeds, if not actual contempt, at all events a lack of curiosity. The second class consists of men who have come to grief somewhere else, through wine, women, or one of the other usual causes of disgrace, and are seeking seclusion till the memory of their misdeeds has faded from the minds of relatives and friends. Respectable relatives and friends, English for the most part, have apparently come to the conclusion that the pastures of the West of Ireland are peculiarly suitable to black sheep. This class is smaller than the other, but much more interesting. The stories of the exile's misdeeds, when we get to know them, as we always do in the end, are frequently most diverting.

Meldon leaped to the conclusion that Mr. Doyle's Companion belonged to the class of scandalous livers. He had not the look of benevolent intelligence which is always to be found on the faces of men connected with the Government, and he wore a fur coat, whereas officials, Members of Parliament, and journalists always wear brown tweed suits and disdain luxurious overcoats when they wander in wild places. Besides, Mr. Doyle, the owner of the principal inn in Ballymoy, was likely to have a stranger of the second class under his care, while any one connected with the Government would prefer to go round the country with a priest or a policeman. Meldon wondered whether it was love, or debt, or whisky, which had brought this prodigal to Ballymoy.

Mr. Doyle pulled up his horse and greeted the curate.

"Good-evening to you, Mr. Meldon. A warm evening for the end of May. I'd rather be driving, than riding that machine of yours to-day. On your way to see the Major, eh? You'll find him at home. We've just been out at his place."

"Oh, have you? Wanting to buy the chestnut filly? Take my advice and don't do it. She wouldn't suit your work at all. She's cut out for a polo pony, that one. You're too fat to start polo, Doyle. It wouldn't agree with you at your time of life. You may take my word for that."

Doyle grinned.

"It wasn't the filly I was after. The fact is that this gentleman, Mr. Langley"

"Langton," said the stranger.

"That this gentleman," said Doyle, avoiding a second attempt at the name, "wants to hire a yacht, and I thought the Major might let him have the Spindrift. She's the best boat about these parts, though there's others, of course plenty of others."

"I have one myself," said Meldon.

"You have," said Doyle, "and I was intending to take the gentleman round to your place this evening. Your boat would just suit him."

"What sort of a boat does he want?" said Meldon.

"I'm looking out for a small yacht," said Langton, "anything from ten tons down to five would do. I and a friend intend to take a little cruise together, and we want something that we can work without professional assistance."

"The Major didn't see his way to hiring his," said Doyle.

Meldon eyed the stranger and thought that the Major was quite right in refusing to trust the smart, well found Spindrift to Mr. Langton. The man didn't look as if he ought to go to sea without professional assistance. He looked like a man who might make a wreck of a boat through incapacity to manage her. Meldon's own boat was neither smart nor well found. He had got her cheap because her hull was rotten and most of her rigging untrustworthy. It was one thing to hire the trim Spindrift to a chance stranger, who might knock the bottom out of her or ruin her sails; it was quite a different thing to bargain for the use of his own Aureole, which no amount of battering could make much worse than she was. Like every one else in the West of Ireland, cleric or layman, Meldon had a keen taste for making money out of a stranger. He looked at Langton and hoped that it was love or whisky, not debt, which had driven him to Ballymoy.

"There's more boats in the country than the Major's," he said.

"That's what I'm just after telling the gentleman," said Doyle, "there's yours."

"I'm wanting her for my own use."

"She's a good boat," said Doyle.

"I must be getting along," said Meldon. "Good-evening to you, Doyle. Good-evening, Mr. Langton."

"You wouldn't be wanting to hire her?" said Doyle, unimpressed by the curate's farewell. "It's not often you take her out."

"How long would your friend require her for?"

"One month," said Langton. "My friend and I want to have a cruise on your charming coast, to take a pleasure trip. To find repose from the tumult of the world on the bosom of the Atlantic."

Doyle winked at the curate. Meldon, reflecting that a man who talked in such a way in broad daylight must be a fool about money, determined to hire the Aureole to the stranger.

"I can't wait now," he said, "but I'll call round at your place to-night, Doyle. Don't go to bed till I come. We'll talk the matter over."

He mounted his bicycle and rode on towards Portsmouth Lodge.

Kent is an English name. The traveller meets it in Connacht with surprise; perhaps, if he is an amateur of local colour, with disgust. An inhabitant of Mayo or Galway ought to have a name beginning with O', a name with several apparently unnecessary letters in it. He has no business to sign himself John Kent. Still less has a house in the West of Ireland any right to a name like Portsmouth Lodge. It raises thoughts of merry England, of the concreted parade of some naval town. It is incongruous. It meets the sentimental traveller, who expects the Celtic glamour, Tir-na-noge, and fairy lore, like a slap in the face. Yet it never occurred to the Major to alter one name or the other. He was born too early to come under the spell of the Gaelic revival, and never felt the slightest inclination to write himself Seaghan Ceannt, or to translate his address into Béal an Chuain. He had inherited both names from his grandfather, an English sailor, the first of his family to settle in Ireland.

The Major himself had served for many consecutive years in a line regiment. The drill, to which he took naturally, being the kind of man who enjoys drill, had straightened his back, and it continued to be straight long after his retirement from military life. The feeling in favour of smartness of attire which prevails among men holding His Majesty's commission remained with Major Kent and distinguished him among the small landholders and professional men of the Ballymoy district. They preferred comfort to neatness. Major Kent, at great sacrifice of leisure, creased his trousers and dressed for dinner every night. He had a taste for discipline which he carried into the management of his small estate and into the business of the petty sessions court. He annoyed both his tenants and his neighbours by his fads, but was a popular man because of the real goodness of his heart. He was an excellent shot, a good amateur yachtsman, a regular subscriber to the funds of the church, and a bachelor. He had formed a friendship with the Rev. Joseph John Meldon in spite of the curate's free-and-easy manners, habitual unpunctuality, and incurable untidiness. It is said that men are attracted to those who differ from them, that like does not readily mate with like. If this is a law of nature, the friendship between Major Kent and the curate formed a fine example of its working.

Meldon entered the dining-room of Portsmouth Lodge and found the Major at the writing-table with a pile of papers and parchments beside him. Papers of any kind, except the Times, which the Major read regularly, were rare in Portsmouth Lodge. To see his friend occupied with what looked like legal documents was unprecedented in Meldon's experience. He stood amazed at the sight. The Major looked up.

"Who the devil's disturbing me now? Oh, it's you, J. J. I beg your reverence's pardon for swearing, but this is the fourth time I've been interrupted this afternoon already. First there was James Fintan, the publican from Ballyglunin, wanting an occasional licence for the day of the races, the old reprobate. He'll poison half the county with the stuff he sells as whisky in those tents of his. Then nothing would do the chestnut filly but to cut her near hind leg on the barbed wire, and she had to be seen to. Then Jemmy Doyle came over with some stranger who wanted to hire the Spindrift. As if I'd lend my boat to a man I've never set eyes on before—a fellow in a fur coat, who most likely knows no more about sailing than I do about midwifery. And now it's you, J. J. But sit down and light your pipe. I suppose you want a drink. There's whisky and a syphon of soda on the side-board."

"I want a lemon," said the curate, "and a big tumbler."

"Well, then, you'll have to ring the bell. The housekeeper will get them for you. When you've settled yourself you may as well give me a hand with the job I'm at."

"I'll go out to the kitchen and get what I want," said Meldon. "That'll be quicker and easier than ringing bells."

He secured his lemon and concocted for himself the drink he desired. With the tumbler on the floor beside him, he stretched himself in a deep chair and lit his pipe.

"Now, Major," he said, "I'm ready. What can I do for you?"

"Can you read Latin and Greek?" said the Major.

"Of course I can. I'm a B.A. of Trinity College, Dublin, and that means that I've read a heap of Latin and Greek in my day. At the same time, Major, I warn you fairly, that if you want me to sit here translating Plato or Aristotle to you all the evening, I'm not on. The weather's too hot."

"What are you talking about?" said the Major. "Who wants you to translate Plato? When I asked if you could read Latin and Greek what I meant was, can you read lawyer's English?"

"Oh, you meant that, did you? Well, I can read lawyer's English or any other kind of English for that matter. I tell you, Major, a man who has been through the Divinity School of T.C.D. and read Pearson on the Creed isn't likely to be beaten by anything a lawyer could write. What's your difficulty?"

"Old Sir Giles Buckley's dead," said the Major.

"I know that. The rector's in a fine fizz over losing his subscription to the church. The old boy hasn't been near the place this twenty years, but he paid up like a man. Now the property has gone to a nephew, who means to sell it, I hear, as soon as he can, and who doesn't care a rap about the church. By the way, isn't there a son somewhere?"

"There is. A bad lot—and always was a bad lot. Cards, women, horses, and the devil. The Lord alone knows where he is now. He got the baronetcy, of course, and the house and demesne, which were entailed. But that's all. Old Sir Giles didn't leave him a penny nor an acre more than he could help. But that's no affair of mine. The point for me is this. My grandfather got the land I hold now from old Sir Giles's father. He got it for services rendered in '98, when the French landed at Killala. He was a sailor, a naval man"

"I know," said Meldon. "'Hearts of oak are our ships, hearts of oak are our men,' and all that sort of thing."

"The Sir Giles of that day got into a panic when the French landed. It appears that he wasn't particularly popular in the county, and he didn't feel quite sure what the people might do to him."

"They might have done several things. They might, for instance, have hanged him."

"So he seemed to think. Well, my grandfather took him off in his sloop, which happened to be lying in the bay at the time, and kept him safe till the business was over. In return he got the land out of old Buckley, and here we are, father and son, three generations of us, ever since, the Kents of Portsmouth Lodge. Now that this new man is going to sell the estate, the question comes up what kind of title have I?"

"That'll be all right," said Meldon. "Don't you worry about the matter. I'll see you through. Just you hand me over those papers. You trot off and do anything you think you have to do before dinner. I'll get the meaning out of the papers for you and have a clear statement of the case ready when you get back. Give me the whole bundle. There's a little brown book left on your desk. Hand it over with the rest."

"It's of no importance."

"Is it private? No? Then pass it over. What you think of no importance is just as likely as not to be the vital document. It's always the papers that seem unimportant to the mere amateur which turn out to contain the clue in these cases of disputed inheritance, and so forth. You don't read many novels, I know, Major, but you must have noticed that fact."

"But this little book is nothing but an old diary of my grandfather's."

"Quite so," said Meldon. "That's just the sort of thing I want to get at. Now do you be off and leave me in peace."

"I'll go down and have a look at the Spindrift," said the Major. "I'm having her overhauled and fitted out for a cruise. What do you say, J. J.? Will you come with me for a week? We might go off to Inishgowlan and shoot seals."

"Are there seals on Inishgowlan?"

"There are, I believe. When do you get your holiday?"

"June," said Meldon. "The rector's taking July and a bit of August. I don't care to put off till September. But I can't go with you. I'm booked. I promised to spend a week with my old governor and the rest of the time with my little girl in Rathmines."

"Bother your little girl."

"You wouldn't say that if you saw her. She's a remarkably nice little girl, nicer than any you've ever seen. I have her photo here" He put his hand into his breast pocket.

"Thanks," said the Major. "You've shown me her photo before."

"This is a different photo. It's a new one, done by a first-rate man. Look here."

"Keep it till after dinner. I must be off to take a look at the Spindrift."

"Very well then, go. But you may whistle for the photo after dinner. I won't show it to you. No man shall say I rammed my little girl down his throat. You may be a callous old mysogynist, Major"

"A what? I wish you wouldn't use that sort of language out of the pulpit, J. J."

"A mysogynist. It means a sort of curmudgeon who doesn't care to look at the photo of a pretty girl when he gets the chance."

"A mysogynist shows some sense then," chuckled the Major.

"You may think so; but I can tell you a mysogynist is the exact opposite kind of man to what Solomon was, and he is generally given credit for not being quite a fool."