Jack Hinton Part 42

CHAPTER x.x.xV. THE JOURNEY

As we issued from the glen the country became more open; patches of cultivation presented themselves, and an air of comfort and condition superior to what we had hitherto seen was observable in the dwellings of the country-people. The road lead through a broad valley bounded on one side by a chain of lofty mountains, and on the other separated by the Shannon from the swelling hills of Munster. Deeply engaged in our thoughts, we travelled along for some miles without speaking. The scene we had witnessed was of that kind that seemed to forbid our recurrence to it, save in our own gloomy reflections. We had not gone far when the noise of hors.e.m.e.n on the road behind us induced us to turn our heads.

They came along at a sharp trot, and we could soon perceive that although the two or three foremost were civilians, they who followed were dragoons. I thought I saw the priest change colour as the clank of the accoutrements struck upon his ear. I had, however, but little time for the observation, as the party soon overtook us.

'You are early on the road, gentlemen,' said a strong, powerfully-built man, who, mounted upon a grey horse of great bone and action, rode close up beside us.

'Ah, Sir Thomas, is it you?' said the priest, affecting at once his former easy and indifferent manner. 'I'd rather see the hounds at your back than those beagles of King George there. Is there anything wrong in the country?'

'Let me ask you another question,' said the knight in answer. 'How long have you been in it, and where did you pa.s.s the night, not to hear of what has occurred?'

''Faith, a home question,' said the priest, summoning up a hearty laugh to conceal his emotion; 'but if the truth must out, we came round by the priory at Glenduff, as my friend here being an Englishman--may I beg to present him to you? Mr. Hinton, Sir Thomas Garland--he heard wonders of the monks' way of living up there, and I wished to let him judge for himself.'

'Ah, that accounts for it,' said the tall man to himself. 'We have had a sad affair of it, Father Tom. Poor Tarleton has been murdered.'

'Murdered!' said the priest, with an expression of horror in his countenance I could scarcely believe feigned.

'Yes, murdered! The house was attacked a little after midnight. The party must have been a large one, for while they forced in the hall door, the haggard and the stables were seen in a blaze. Poor George had just retired to bed, a little later than usual; for his sons had returned a few hours before from Dublin, where they had been to attend their college examination. The villains, however, knew the house well, and made straight for his room. He got up in an instant, and seizing a sabre that hung beside his bed, defended himself, with the courage of desperation, against them all. The scuffle and the noise soon brought his sons to the spot, who, although mere boys, behaved in the most gallant manner. Overpowered at last by numbers, and covered with wounds, they dragged poor Tarleton downstairs, shouting out as they went, "Bring him down to Freney's! Let the b.l.o.o.d.y villain see the black walls and the cold hearth he has made, before he dies!" It was their intention to murder him on the spot where, a few weeks before, a distress for rent had been executed against some of his tenants. He grasped the banisters with a despairing clutch, while fixing his eyes upon his servant, who had lived with him for some years past, he called out to him in his agony to save him; but the fellow came deliberately forward and held the flame of a candle beneath the dying man's fingers, until he relaxed his hold and fell back among his murderers. Yes, yes, father, Henry Tarleton saw it with his own eyes, for while his brother was stretched senseless on the floor, he was struggling with the others at the head of the staircase; and, strange enough too, they never hurt the boys, but when they had wreaked their vengeance on the father, bound them back to back, and left them.'

'Can you identify any of them?' said the priest, with intense emotion in his voice and manner.

'Scarcely, I fear; their faces were blackened, and they wore s.h.i.+rts over their coats. Henry thinks he could swear to two or three of the number; but our best chance of discovery lies in the fact that several of them were badly wounded, and one in particular, whom he saw cut down by his father's sabre, was carried downstairs by his comrades, bathed in blood.'

'He didn't recognise him?' said the priest eagerly.

'No; but here comes the poor boy, so I'll wish you good-morning.'

He put spurs to his horse as he spoke and dashed forward, followed by the dragoons; while at the same moment, on the opposite side of the road, a young man--pale, with his dress disordered, his arm in a sling--rode by. He never turned a look aside; his filmy eye was fixed, as it were, on some far-off object, and he seemed scarce to guide his horse as he galloped onward over the rugged road.

The priest relaxed his pace to permit the crowd of hors.e.m.e.n to pa.s.s on, while his countenance once more a.s.sumed its drooping and despondent look, and he relapsed into his former silence.

'You see that high mountain to the left there?' said he after a long pause. 'Well, our road lies around the foot of it; and, please G.o.d, by to-morrow evening we 'll be some five-and-twenty miles on the other side, in the heart of my own wild country, with the big mountains behind you, and the great blue Atlantic rearing its frothing waves at your feet.' He stopped for an instant, and then grasping my arm with his strong hand, continued in a low, distinct voice: 'Never speak to me nor question me about what we saw last night, and try only to remember it as a dream. And now let me tell you how I intend to amuse you in the far west.'

Here the priest began a spirited and interesting description of the scenery and the people--their habits, their superst.i.tions, and their pastimes. He sustained the interest of his account with legend and story, now grave, now gay--sometimes recalling a trait from the older history of the land; sometimes detailing an incident of the fair or the market, but always by his wonderful knowledge of the peasantry, their modes of thinking and reasoning, and by his imitation of their figurative and forcible expressions, able to carry me with him, whether he took the mountain's side for his path, sat beside some cotter's turf-fire, or skimmed along the surface of the summer sea in the frail bark of an Achill fisherman. I learned from him that in the wild region where he lived there were above fifteen thousand persons, scarce one of whom could speak or understand a word of English. Of these he was not only the priest, but the ruler and judge. Before him all their disputes were settled, all their differences reconciled. His word, in the strongest sense of the phrase, was law--not indeed to be enforced by bayonets and policemen, by constables and sheriffs' officers, but which in its moral force demanded obedience, and would have made him who resisted it an outcast among his fellows.

'We are poor,' said the priest, 'but we are happy. Crime is unknown among us, and the blood of man has not been shed in strife for fifty years within the barony. When will ye learn this in England? When will ye know that these people may be led, but never driven; that they may be persuaded, but never compelled? When will ye condescend to bend so far the prerogative of your birth, your riches, and your rank, as to reason with the poor and humble peasant that looks up to you for protection?

Alas! my young friend, were you to ask me what is the great source of misery of this unhappy land, I should tell you the superior intelligence of its people. I see a smile, but hear me out. Unlike the peasantry of other countries, they are not content. Their characters are mistaken, their traits misconstrued---partly from indifference, partly from prejudice, and in a great measure because it is the fas.h.i.+on to recognise in the tiller of the soil a mere drudge, with scarce more intelligence than the cattle in his plough or the oxen in his team. But here you really have a people quick, sharp-sighted, and intelligent, able to scan your motives with ten times the accuracy you can guess at theirs; suspicious, because their credulity has been abused; revengeful, because their wild nature knows no other vindicator than their own right arm; lawless, for they look upon your inst.i.tutions as the sources of their misery and the instruments of your tyranny towards them; reckless, for they have nothing to lose; indolent, for they have nothing to gain.

Without an effort to win their confidence or secure their good-will, you overwhelm them with your inst.i.tutions, c.u.mbrous, complicated, and unsuitable; and while you neglect or despise all appeal to their feelings or affections, you place your faith in your soldiery or a special commission. Heaven help you! you may thin them off by the gallows and transportation, but the root of the evil is as far from you as ever. You do not know them, you will not know them. More p.r.o.ne to punish than prevent, you are satisfied with the working of the law, and not shocked with the acc.u.mulation of crime; and when, broken by poverty and paralysed by famine, a gloomy desolation spreads over the land, you meet in terms of congratulation to talk over tranquilised Ireland.'

In this strain did the good priest continue to develop his views concerning his country--the pivot of his argument being, that, to a people so essentially different in every respect, English inst.i.tutions and English laws were inadequate and unsuitable. Sometimes I could not only but agree with him. At others I could but dimly perceive his meaning and dissent from the very little I could catch.

Enough of this, however. In a biography so flimsy as mine, politics would play but an unseemly part; and even were it otherwise, my opportunities were too few and my own incapacity too great to make my opinions of any value on a subject so complicated and so vast. Still, the topic served to shorten the road, and when towards evening we found ourselves in the comfortable parlour of the little inn at Ballyhocsousth,* so far had we both regained our spirits that once more the priest's jovial good-humour irradiated his happy countenance; and I myself, hourly improving in health and strength, felt already the bracing influence of the mountain air, and that strong sense of liberty never more thoroughly appreciated than when regaining vigour after the sufferings of a sick-bed.

* Town of the Fight of Flails.

We were seated by an open window, looking out upon the landscape. It was past sunset, and the tall shadows of the mountains were meeting across the lake, like spirits who waited for the night-hour to interchange their embraces. A thin pale crescent of a new moon marked the blue sky, but did not dim the l.u.s.tre of the thousand stars that glittered round it. All was hushed and still, save the deep note of the rail, or the measured plash of oars heard from a long distance. The rich meadows that sloped down to the water sent up their delicious odours in the balmy air, and there stole over the senses a kind of calm and peaceful pleasure as such a scene at such an hour can alone impart.

'This is beautiful--this is very beautiful, father,' said I.

'So it is, sir,' said the priest. 'Let no Irishman wander for scenery; he has as much right to go travel in search of wit and good fellows.h.i.+p.

We don't want for blessings; all we need is, to know how to enjoy them.

And, believe me, there is a plentiful feast on the table if gentlemen would only pa.s.s down the dishes. And, now, that reminds me: what are you drinking--negus? I wouldn't wish it to my greatest enemy. But, to be sure, I am always forgetting you are not one of ourselves. There, reach me over that square decanter. It wouldn't have been so full now if we had had poor Bob here--poor fellow! But one thing is certain---wherever he is, he is happy. I believe I never told you how he got into his present sc.r.a.pe.'

'No, father; and that's precisely the very thing I wish to ask you.'

'You shall hear it, and it isn't a bad story in its way. But don't you think the night-air is a little too much for you? Shall we close the window?'

'If it depend on me, father, pray leave it open.'

'Ha, ha! I was forgetting again,' said the old fellow, laughing roguishly--'_Stella sunt amantium oculi_, as Pharis says. There now, don't be blus.h.i.+ng, but listen to me.

'It was somewhere about last November that Bob got a quiet hint from some one at Daly's that the sooner he got out of Dublin the more conducive it would be to his personal freedom, as various writs were flying about the capital after him. He took the hint, and set off the same night, and reached his beautiful chateau of Newgate without let or molestation--which having victualled for the winter, he could, if necessary, sustain in it a reasonable siege against any force the law was likely to bring up. The house had an abundant supply of arms. There were guns that figured in '41, pikes that had done good service a little later, swords of every shape, from the two-handed weapon of the twelfth century to a Roman pattern made out of a scythe by a smith in the neighbourhood; but the grand terror of the country was an old four-pounder of Cromwell's time, that the Major had mounted on the roof, and whose effects, if only proportionately injurious to the enemy to the results nearer home, must indeed have been a formidable engine, for the only time it was fired--I believe to celebrate Bob's birthday--it knocked down a chimney with the recoil, blew the gardener and another man about ten feet into the air, and hurled Bob himself through a skylight into the housekeeper's room. No matter for that; it had a great effect in raising the confidence of the country-people, some of whom verily believed that the ball was rolling for a week after.

'Bob, I say, victualled the fortress; but he did more, for he a.s.sembled all the tenants, and in a short but pithy speech told them the state of his affairs, explaining with considerable eloquence what a misfortune it would be for them if by any chance they were to lose him for a landlord.

'"See, now, boys," said he, "there's no knowing what misfortune wouldn't happen ye; they'd put a receiver on the property--a spalpeen with bailiffs and constables after him--that would be making you pay up the rent, and 'faith I wouldn't say but maybe he 'd ask you for the arrears."

'"Oh, murther, murther! did any one ever hear the like!" the people cried on every side; and Bob, like a clever orator, continued to picture forth additional miseries and misfortunes to them if such a calamitous event were to happen, explaining at the same time the contemptible nature of the persecution practised against him.

'"No, boys," cried he, "there isn't a man among them all that has the courage to come down and ask for his money, face to face; but they set up a pair of fellows they call John Doe and Richard Roe--there's names for you! Did you ever hear of a gentleman in the country with names like that? But that's not the worst of it, for you see even these two chaps can't be found. It's truth I'm telling you, and some people go so far as to say that there is no such people at all, and it's only a way they have to worry and annoy country gentlemen with what they call a fiction of the law; and my own notion is, that the law is nothing but lies and fiction from beginning to end."

'A very loud cheer from Bob's audience proclaimed how perfectly they coincided in his opinion; and a keg of whisky being brought into the lawn, each man drained a gla.s.s to his health, uttering at the same time a determination with respect to the law-officers of the crown that boded but little happiness to them when they made a tour in the neighbourhood.

'In about a week after this there was a grand drawing-home: that's, you understand, what we call in Ireland bringing in the harvest. And sure enough, the farmyard presented a very comely sight, with ricks of hay, and stacks of corn and oats and barley, and outhouses full of potatoes, and in fact everything the country produces, besides cows and horses, sheep, pigs, goats, and even turkeys; for most of the tenants paid their rents in kind, and as Bob was an easy landlord, very few came without a little present--a game-c.o.c.k, a jacka.s.s, a ram, or some amusing beast or other. Well, the next day--it was a fine dry day with a light frost, and as the bog was hard, Bob sent them all away to bring in the turf. Why, then, but it is a beautiful sight, Captain, and I wish you saw it--maybe two or three hundred cars all going as fast as they can pelt, on a fine bright day, with a blue sky and a sharp air, the boys standing up in the kishes driving without rein or halter, always at a gallop--for all the world like Ajax, Ulysses, and the rest of them that we read of; and the girls, as pretty craytures as ever you threw an eye upon, with their short red petticoats, and their hair plaited and fastened up at the back of their heads: on my conscience the Trojan women was nothing to them!

'But to come back. Bob Mahon was coming home from the bog about five o'clock in the evening, cantering along on a little dun pony he had, thinking of nothing at all, except maybe the elegant rick of turf that he 'd be bringing home in the morning, when what did he see before him but a troop of dragoons, and at their head old Ba.s.set, the sub-sheriff, and another fellow whose face he had often seen in the Four Courts of Dublin. "By the mortial," said Bob, "I am done for!" for he saw in a moment that Ba.s.set had waited until all the country-people were employed at a distance, to come over and take him. However, he was no ways discouraged, but brus.h.i.+ng his way through the dragoons, he rode up beside Ba.s.set's gig, and taking a long pistol out of the holster, he began to examine the priming as cool as may be.

"'How are you, Nick Ba.s.set?" said Bob; "and where are you going this evening?"

'"How are you, Major?" said Ba.s.set, with his eye all the while upon the pistol. "It is an unpleasant business, a mighty unpleasant business to me, Major Bob," says he; "but the truth is, there is an execution against you, and my friend here, Mr. Hennessy--Mr. Hennessy, Major Mahon--asked me to come over with him, because as I knew you----"

'"Well, well," said Bob, interrupting him. "Have you a writ against me?

Is it me you want?"

'"Nothing of the kind, Major Mahon. G.o.d forbid we 'd touch a hair of your head. It's just a kind of a capias, as I may say, nothing more."

'"And why did you bring the dragoons with you?" said Bob, looking at him mighty hard.

'Ba.s.set looked very sheepish, and didn't know what to say; but Mahon soon relieved him---

'"Never mind, Nick, never mind; you can't help your trade. But how would you look if I was to raise the country on ye?"

'"You wouldn't do the like, Major; but surely, if you did, the troops----"

'"The troops!" said Bob; "G.o.d help you! we'd be twenty, ay, thirty to one. See now, if I give a whistle, this minute----"

'"Don't distress yourself, Major," said Ba.s.set, "for the decent people are a good six miles off at the bog, and couldn't hear you if you whistled ever so loud."