The Red Hand of Ulster/Chapter 6

HE Finola steamed out of our bay next morning. Marion saw her go, and became quite lyrical at breakfast about the beauty of her “lines,” a word which, as applied to the appearance of a yacht, she can only have learned from Bob Power. I was not able to share her rapture because the Finola went out at 6 a. m., an hour at which I make it a settled rule to be in bed. Marion is generally in bed at 6 a. m. too. She made an exceptional effort that morning.

For a week I enjoyed almost unbroken peace, and accumulated quite a large sheaf of notes for my work on the Irish Rebellions. Even Godfrey refrained from worrying me. But such happiness was too good to last long. On Saturday morning three things happened, every one of them of a disturbing kind. I received a letter from Lady Moyne in which she invited me to spend three days during the following week at Castle Affey. Castle Affey is Lord Moyne’s chief Irish place. He has three others in various parts of the country and one in England. It is about ten miles from my home. Lady Moyne invited Marion too; but this was evidently an after thought, and she discounted the value of the invitation by saying that her party was to consist almost entirely of men and might be dull for Marion. I suspected politics at once, and advised Marion to refuse the invitation. I accepted it. Politics bore me a good deal; but it is interesting to watch politicians at their game. It is also pleasant, very pleasant, to be in the company of Lady Moyne. The prospect of the visit was as I have said disturbing. I prefer monotony. But if things must fall splashing into the pool of my life, I would as soon they took the form of visits to Castle Affey as any other.

The next thing which happened that morning was a deputation. It consisted of six out of the twenty carters whom Crossan has organized in the interests of our fishing industry. They made the modest request that I should drive my nephew Godfrey out of the neighbourhood. I felt the strongest possible sympathy with them. If I were a carter, a fisherman, a shopkeeper, or a farmer, and lived in Kilmore, I should certainly wish Godfrey to live somewhere else. I did not even question the members of the deputation about their special reasons for wanting to get rid of Godfrey. They told me in general terms that he was interfering in business which was “none of his.” I wanted no evidence in support of such a statement. Godfrey always interferes in everything. A very freckled young man who seemed to be junior member of the deputation, added that Godfrey “spied” upon them. Of course Godfrey spied on them. He spies on me.

Strong as my sympathy was with the perfectly reasonable request of the deputation, I could not act as I was asked. Godfrey is, of course, in my employment. He collects the head rents still payable to me from some parts of the town which were not sold when I parted with the rest of my estate. For this I pay him £200 a year. I could, I suppose, dismiss him if I chose; but the plain fact is that if I dismissed Godfrey he would immediately starve or go to the workhouse. He is quite unfit to earn his living in any way. Once, after great exertions, I secured for him a kind of minor clerkship in a government office. His duties, so far as I was able to learn, were to put stamps on envelopes, and he was provided with a damp sponge to prevent any injury which might happen to his tongue through licking the stamps. At the end of a year he was dismissed as hopelessly incompetent. He came back to me, beautifully dressed, with a small despatch-box full of tradesmen’s bills, and a grievance against the government. It was plain to me after that experiment that Godfrey could never earn his own living. I did not see my way to let him drift into the workhouse. He is, little as I like him, the heir to my title, and, in mere decency, I could not allow the cost of his support to fall on the rates.

This is just one of the ways in which the democratic spirit of independence has affected us all without our knowing it. In the seventeenth century any member of the aristocracy who was afflicted with an heir like Godfrey had him shut up in the Bastille, or the Tower, by means of lettres de cachet or whatever corresponded to such instruments in England. There the objectionable young man ate bread and drank water at the expense of the public funds. Nobody seems to have suffered any discomfort at the thought that the cost of the support of his relative was falling either on the rates or the taxes. (I am not sure which it was but it must have been one or the other.) Nowadays we are horribly self-conscious in such matters. The debilitated labourer began it, objecting, absurdly, to being fed by other people in the workhouse. His spirit spread to the upper classes, and it is now impossible, morally, for me, a peer, to send my heir to the workhouse. Fortunately public opinion is swinging round again. The latest type of working-man has no objection to receiving an Old Age Pension, and likes to hear of his children being given free breakfasts at school. In time this new feeling will soak through to the class to which I belong. Then I shall be able, without a qualm, to send Godfrey to the workhouse. At present, I regret to say, I cannot.

I explained all this carefully to the deputation. It pained me to have to say no to their request, but I said it quite firmly. My decision, I think, was understood. My feelings I fear were not.

Very soon after the deputation left, Godfrey himself arrived. He wanted me to dismiss Crossan. I am not at all sure that I could dismiss Crossan even if I wanted to do so. He is the manager of our co-operative store, and although most of the money which went to the starting of that enterprise was mine there is a considerable number of small shareholders. Crossan also runs the fishing business and our saw mill. I capitalized both these industries, lending money to the men to buy nets and good boats, and buying the various saws which are necessary to the making of planks. This no doubt gives me some hold over Crossan, but not enough to enable me to dismiss him as I might a cook. Besides, I do not want to dismiss Crossan. He is managing these different enterprises in such a way that they earn fair interest on the capital I put into them.

“I’ve been looking into things a bit, Excellency,” said Godfrey.

I quite believed that. The deputation of carters said the same thing in other words.

“And you’ll find yourself in an awkward place one of these days if that fellow Crossan is allowed to go on as he’s going.”

“I hope you’re not going to drag up that dispute about the carters, Godfrey. I’m sick of it.”

The dispute about the carters is really an unpleasant business. As originally organized there were eight Protestant carters and four Roman Catholics. A year ago Crossan dismissed the four Roman Catholic carters, and one of the Protestants who was suspected of religious indifference. Their places were filled by five Orangemen of the most determined kind. Now the profits of this carting business are considerable. The five men who were dismissed appealed to Godfrey. Godfrey laid their case before me. I gathered that Godfrey had a high opinion of the outcasts who always spoke to him with the respect due to his position. He had a low opinion of the five interlopers who were men of rude speech and democratic independence of manner. I was foolish enough to speak to Crossan about the matter. He met me with a blunt assertion that it was impossible to trust what he called “Papishes.” There, as a lover of peace rather than justice, I wanted to let the matter rest; but Godfrey took up the subject again and again in the course of the following year. He persisted, not out of any love for justice though this once he was on the side of justice, but simply out of hatred of Crossan.

“It’s not only the dismissal of those carters,” said Godfrey. “There’s a great deal more behind that. There’s something going on which I don’t understand.”

“If you don’t understand it,” I said, “you can’t expect me to.”

“Look here, Excellency, you remember the time that yacht of Conroy’s, the Finola, was in here?”

“Of course I do. You went and left my cards on Bob Power.”

“I’m very sorry now that I did. There’s something fishy about that yacht. What was she doing on the night she was here?”

“Coaling,” I said; “I don’t see why I should dismiss Crossan because Conroy’s yacht came in here for coal.”

“She wasn’t coaling,” said Godfrey.

I knew that, of course; so I said nothing, but left Godfrey to develope his grievance whatever it was.

“Ever since that night,” said Godfrey, “there has been something or other going on in the yard behind the stores. Those carters are in it, whatever it is, and a lot more men, fishermen and young farmers. They’re up there every night.”

“Probably dancing,” I said.

“Much more likely to be drinking.”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk nonsense, Godfrey. You know perfectly well that the store has not got a licence, and there’s no drink sold there. Besides Crossan is a fanatical teetotaller.”

“That wouldn’t stop him,” said Godfrey, “if he could sell the stuff cheap and make money on it; if”—here he sank his voice—“if it hadn’t paid duty.”

Now Crossan is one of those Christians who has added to the original Ten Commandments a Mohammedan prohibition of alcohol in any form. Godfrey, I have no doubt, would break any of the commandments which he recognized, if he saw his way to making a small profit on the sin. But I did not think that even a 25 per cent. dividend would tempt Crossan to disregard his self-imposed prohibition of alcohol.

“That’s all nonsense,” I said. “In the first place the Finola didn’t come in here to land a cargo of smuggled goods.”

“Then what did she come for?”

I did not know, so I ignored Godfrey’s question.

“And in the second place Crossan wouldn’t debauch the whole place by making the men drunk night after night on smuggled spirits. Why, only three weeks ago he spoke to me seriously about the glass of claret I drink at dinner. He did it quite respectfully and entirely for my good. I respected him for it.”

“He’s up to some mischief,” said Godfrey, sulkily, “and it won’t be too pleasant for you, Excellency, when the Inland Revenue people find out, and you are let in for a prosecution. I tell you that every night for the last week men have been going up to that store after dark, twenty or thirty of them, truculent, disrespectful blackguards out of the Orange Lodge. I’ve watched them.”

“Did you watch them coming out again?”

“I did, twice,” said Godfrey. “They didn’t go home till nearly one o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t stop up every night, so I only saw them twice.”

“Well,” I said, “were they drunk?”

“No,” said Godfrey, unwillingly, “they were not. They walked quite straight.”

“That explodes your theory then. If they had been drinking smuggled spirits for hours and hours, they would have been drunk.”

“They were at some mischief,” said Godfrey.

“They were probably getting up a concert,” I said.

“No, they weren’t, for—”

“Look here, Godfrey,” I said, “I’ve listened to you pretty patiently for a long time; but I really cannot spare you the whole morning. If you have anything to do I wish you’d go and do it. If you haven’t you’d better go to bed and sleep off your absurd suspicions.”

One has to speak very plainly to Godfrey. Hints are simply wasted on him. Even after my last remark he hesitated for a moment. Then he turned and went.

I felt in the mood to write a short story which I have had in my mind for some time. I very often write short stories; but have never yet got an editor who cares to print any of them. The one I had in my mind when Godfrey left me was, however, likely to be particularly good. It was to be the autobiography of a murderer; not an ordinary murderer who slays through desire of gain or in obedience to an inborn criminal instinct. My murderer was to be a highly respectable, God-fearing man, a useful citizen, a good father, a man of blameless life and almost blameless thoughts, generous, high-principled, beloved. He was to slay his victim with one of the fire-irons on his hearth. The murderous impulse was to take possession of him quite suddenly but with absolutely irresistible force. He was to kill a man who had been boring him for hours. My intention was to write the story in such a way as to win public sympathy for my murderer and to make every one feel that the dead man deserved his fate. I meant to model the dead man on my nephew Godfrey.

I still think that a very good short story might be written along those lines, but I doubt whether I shall ever write it. I wrote about two thousand words that morning before I was interrupted by the luncheon gong. I was unable to go on writing after luncheon because the conversation I had with Marion distracted my mind and turned my thoughts to another subject.

“Father,” she said, “do you think that Mr. Power could really have been smuggling things in that yacht?”

“No,” I said; “he couldn’t possibly.”

“It’s very queer,” said Marion.

“What’s queer?”

“Oh, nothing. Only this morning Rose had a new gold brooch, quite a handsome one.”

Rose is Marion’s maid, a pleasant and I believe efficient girl of agreeable appearance.

“Even if Mr. Power was smuggling,” I said, “it’s exceedingly unlikely that he’d bring in a cargo of gold brooches to give to the servants in the district.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” said Marion. “In fact Rose told me that her young man gave her the brooch. He’s a very nice, steady young fellow with a freckly face and he drives one of the carts for Crossan.”

He must, I suspect, be the same young man who accused Godfrey of being a spy. If so he is evidently a judge of character, and his selection of Rose as a sweet-heart is a high compliment to her.

“He promised her a gold bracelet next week,” said Marion, “and Rose is very mysterious about where he gets the money.”

“As long as he doesn’t steal it from me,” I said, “I don’t care where he gets it.”

“It’s very queer all the same. Rose says that a lot of the young men in the village have heaps of money lately, and I thought it might have something to do with smuggling.”

This is what distracted my mind from the story of the man who murdered Godfrey. I could not help wondering where Rose’s young man and the others got their money. They were, I assumed, the same young men who frequented the co-operation store during the midnight hours. It was, of course, possible that they might earn the money there by some form of honest labour. But I could not imagine that Crossan had started one of those ridiculous industries by means of which Government Boards and philanthropic ladies think they will add to the wealth of the Irish peasants. Besides, even if Crossan had suddenly developed symptoms of kindly idiocy, neither wood-carving or lace-making could possibly have made Rose’s freckly faced young man rich enough to buy a gold brooch. The thing puzzled me nearly as much as did the Finola’s midnight activity.