In those days Captain Clayton spent much of his time at Cong, and Frank Jones was often with him. Frank, however, had returned from London a much altered man. Rachel had knocked under to him. It was thus that he spoke of it to himself. I do not think that she spoke of it to herself exactly in the same way. She knew her own constancy, and felt that she was to be rewarded.
"Nothing, I think, would ever have made me marry Lord Castlewell."
It was thus she talked to her father while he was awaiting the period of his dismissal.
"I dare say not," said he. "Of course he is a poor weak creature. But he would have been very good to you, and there would have been an end to all your discomforts."
Rachel turned up her nose. An end to all her discomforts!
Her father knew nothing of what would comfort her and what would discomfort.
She was utterly discomforted in that her voice was gone from her. She would lie and sob on her bed half the morning, and would feel herself to be inconsolable. Then she would think of Frank, and tell herself that there was some consolation in store even for her. Had her voice been left to her she would have found it to be very difficult to escape from the Castlewell difficulty. She would have escaped, she thought, though the heavens might have been brought down over her head. When the time had come for appearing at the altar, she would have got into the first train and disappeared, or have gone to bed and refused to leave it. She would have summoned Frank at the last moment, and would submit to be called the worst behaved young woman that had ever appeared on the London boards. Now she was saved from that; but,—but at what a cost!
"I might have been the greatest woman of the day, and now I must be content to make his tea and toast."
Then she began to consider whether it was good that any girl should be the greatest woman of the day.
"I don't suppose the Queen has so much the best of it with a pack of troubles on her hands."
But Frank in the meantime had gone back to Galway, and Mr. Robert Morris had been murdered. Soon after the death of Mr. Morris the man had been killed as he was mending the ditch, and Captain Clayton found that the tone of the people was varied in the answers which they made to his inquiries. They were astounded, and, as it were, struck dumb with surprise. Nobody knew anything, nobody had heard anything, nobody had seen anything. They were as much in the dark about poor Pat Gilligan as they had been as to Mr. Robert Morris. They spoke of Pat as though he had been slaughtered by a direct blow from heaven; but they trembled, and were evidently uncomfortable.
"That woman knows something about it," said Hunter to his master, shaking his head.
"No doubt she knows a good deal about it; but it is not because she knows that she is bewildered and bedevilled in her intellect. She is beginning to be afraid that the country is one in which even she herself cannot live in safety."
And the men looked to be dumbfoundered and sheepfaced. They kept out of Captain Clayton's way, and answered him as little as possible. "What's the good of axing when ye knows that I knows nothing?" This was the answer of one man, and was a fair sample of the answers of many; but they were given in such a tone that Clayton was beginning to think that the evil was about to work its own cure.
"Frank," he said one day when he was walking with his friend in the gloom of the evening, "this state of things is too horrible to endure." The faithful Hunter followed them, and another policeman, for the Captain was never allowed to stir two steps without the accompaniment of a brace of guards.
"Much too horrible to be endured," said Frank. "My idea is that a man, in order to make the best of himself, should run away from it. Life in the United States has no such horrors as these. Though we're apt to say that all this comes from America, I don't see American hands in it."
"You see American money."
"American money in the shape of dollar bills; but they have all been sent by Irish people. The United States is a large place, and there is room there, I think, for an honest man."
"I'll never be frightened out of my own country," said Clayton. "Nor do I think there is occasion. These abominable reprobates are not going to prevail in the end."
"They have prevailed with poor Tom Daly. He was a man who worked as hard as anyone to find amusement,—and employment too. He never wronged anyone. He was even so honest as to charge a fair price for his horses. And there he is, left high and dry, without a horse or a hound that he can venture to keep about his own place. And simply because the majority of the people have chosen that there shall be no more hunting; and they have proved themselves to be able to have their own way. It is impossible that poor Daly should hunt if they will not permit him, and they carry their orders so far that he cannot even keep a hound in his kennels because they do not choose to allow it."
"And this you think will be continued always?" asked Clayton.
"For all that I can see it may go on for ever. My father has had those water gates mended on the meadows though he could ill afford it. I have told him that they may go again to-morrow. There is no reason to judge that they should not do so. The only two men,—or the man, rather, and the boy,—who have been punished for the last attempt were those who endeavoured to tell of it. See what has come of that!"
"All that is true."
"Will it not be better to go to America, to go to Africa, to go to Asia, or to Russia even, than to live in a country like this, where the law can afford you no protection, and where the lawgivers only injure you?"
"I know nothing about the lawgivers," said Clayton, "but I have to say a word or two about the law. Do you think this kind of thing is going to remain?"
"It does remain, and every day becomes worse."
"An evil will always become worse till it begins to die away. I think I see the end of things approaching. Evil-doers are afraid of each other, and these poor fellows here live in mortal agony lest some Lax of the moment should be turned loose at their own throats. I don't think that Lax is an institution that will remain for ever in the country. This present Lax we have fast locked up. Law at present, at any rate, has so much of power that it is able to lock up a Lax,—when it can catch him. As for this present man, I do hope that the law will find itself powerful enough to fasten a rope round his neck. No Galway jury would find him guilty, and that is bad enough. But the lawgivers have done this for us, that we may try him before a Dublin jury, and there are hopes. When Lax has been well hung out of the world I can turn round and take a moment for my own happiness."
Yorke Clayton, as he said this, was alluding to his love affair with Edith Jones. He had now conquered all the family with one exception. Even the father had assented that it should be so, though tardily and with sundry misgivings. The one person was Edith herself, and it had come to be acknowledged by all around her that she loved Yorke Clayton. As she herself never now denied it, it was admitted on all sides at Morony Castle that the Captain was certainly the favoured lover. But Edith still held out, and had gone so far as to tell the Captain that he could not be allowed to come to the Castle unless he would desist.
"I never shall desist," he had replied. "As to that you may take my word." Then Edith had of course loved him so much the more.
"I don't think this kind of thing will go on," he continued, still addressing Frank Jones. "The people are so fickle that they cannot be constant even to anything evil. It is quite on the cards that Black Tom Daly should next year be the most popular master of hounds in all Ireland, and that Mr. Kit Mooney should not be allowed to show his face within reach of Moytubber Gorse on hunting mornings."
"They'd have burned the gorse before they have come round to that state of feeling. Look at Raheeny."
"It isn't so easy to destroy anything," said the philosophic Clayton. "If the foxes are frightened out of Raheeny or Moytubber, they will go somewhere else. And even if poor Tom Daly were to run away from County Galway, as you're talking of doing, the county would find another master."
"Not like Tom Daly," said Frank Jones, enthusiastically.
"There are as good fish in the sea as ever were caught. Tom Daly is a first-class man, I admit; and he had no more obedient slave than myself when I used to get out hunting two or three days in the session. But he is a desponding man, and cannot look forward to better times. For myself, I own that my hopes are fixed. Hang Lax, and then the millennium!"
"I will quite agree as to the hanging of Lax," said Frank; "but for any millennium, I want something more strong than Irish feeling. You'll excuse me, old fellow."
"Oh, certainly! Of course, I'm an Irishman myself, and might have been a Lax instead of a policeman, if chance had got hold of me in time. As it is, I've a sort of feeling that the policeman is going to have the best of it all through Ireland." Then there came a sudden sound as of a sharp thud, and Yorke Clayton fell as it were dead at Frank Jones's feet.
This occurred at a corner of the road, from which a little boreen or lane ran up the side of the mountain between walls about three feet high. But here some benevolent enterprising gentleman, wishing to bring water through Lower Lough Cong to Lough Corrib, had caused the beginnings of a canal to be built, which had, however, after the expenditure of large sums of money, come to nothing. But the ground, or rather rock, had so been moved and excavated as to make it practicable for some men engaged, as had been this man, to drop at once out of sight. Hunter was at once upon his track, with the other policeman, both of whom fired at him. But as they acknowledged afterwards, they had barely seen the skirt of his coat in the gloom of the evening. The whole spot up and behind the corner of the road was so honeycombed by the works of the intended canal as to afford hiding-places and retreats for a score of murderers. Here, as was afterwards ascertained, there was but one, and that one had apparently sufficed.
Frank Jones had remained on the road with his friend, and had raised him in his arms when he fell. "They have done for me this time," Clayton had said, but had said no more. He had in truth fainted, but Frank Jones, in his ignorance, had thought that he was dead. It turned out afterwards that the bullet had struck his ribs in the front of his body, and, having been turned by the bone, had passed round to his back, and had there buried itself in the flesh. It needs not that we dwell with any length on this part of our tale, but may say at once that the medical skill of Cong sufficed to extract the bullet on the next morning.
After a while one of the two policemen came back to the road, and assisted Frank Jones in carrying up poor Clayton to the inn. Hunter, though still maimed by his wound, stuck to the pursuit, assisted by two other policemen from Cong, who soon appeared upon the scene. But the man escaped, and his flight was soon covered by the darkness of night. It had been eight o'clock before the party had left the inn, and had wandered with great imprudence further than they had intended. At least, so it was said after the occurrence; though, had nothing happened, they would have reached their homes before night had in truth set in. But men said of Clayton that he had become so hardened by the practices of his life, and by the failure of all attempts hitherto made against him, that he had become incredulous of harm.
"They have got me at last," he said to Frank the next morning. "Thank God it was not you instead of me. I have been thinking of it as I lay here in the night, and have blamed myself greatly. It is my business and not yours." And then again further on in the day he sent a message to Edith. "Tell her from me that it is all over now, but that had I lived she would have had to be my wife."
But from that time forth he did in truth get better, though we in these pages can never again be allowed to see him as an active working man. It was his fault,—as the Galway doctor said his egregious sin,—to spend the most of his time in lying on a couch out in the garden at Morony Castle, and talking of the fate of Mr. Lax. The remainder of his hours he devoted to the acceptance of little sick-room favours from his hostess,—I would say from his two hostesses, were it not that he soon came to terms with Ada, under which Ada was not to attend to him with any particular care. "If I could catch that fellow," he said to Ada, alluding to the man who had intended to murder him, "I would have no harm done to him. He should be let free at once; for I could not possibly have got such an opportunity by any other means."
But poor Edith, the while, felt herself to be badly used. She and Ada had often talked of the terrible perils to which Yorke Clayton was subjected, and, as the reader may remember, had discussed the propriety of a man so situated allowing himself to become familiar with any girl. But now Captain Clayton was declared to be safe by everybody. The doctors united in saying that his constitution would carry him through a cannon-ball. But Edith felt that all the danger had fallen to her lot.
In the meantime the search for the double murderers,—unless indeed one murderer had been busy in both cases—was carried vainly along. The horror of poor Mr. Morris's fate had almost disappeared under the awe occasioned by the attack on Captain Clayton. It was astonishing to see how entirely Mr. Morris, with all his family and his old acres, and with Minas Cottage,—which, to the knowledge of the entire population of Cong, was his own peculiar property,—was lost to notice under the attack that had been made with so much audacity on Captain Yorke Clayton. He, as one of four, all armed to the teeth, was attacked by one individual, and attacked successfully. There were those who said at first that the bars of Galway jail must have been broken, and that Lax the omnipotent, Lax the omnipresent, had escaped. And it certainly was the case that many were in ignorance as to who the murderer had been. Probably all were ignorant,—all of those who were in truth well acquainted with the person of Mr. Morris' murderer. And in the minds of the people generally the awe became greater than ever. To them it was evident that anybody could murder anybody; and evident also that it was permitted to them to do so by this new law which had sprung up of late in the country, almost enjoining them to exercise this peculiar mode of retaliation. The bravest thought that they were about to have their revenge against their old masters, and determined that the revenge should be a bloody one. But the more cowardly, and very much the more numerous on that account, feared that, poor as they were, they might be the victims. No man among them could be much poorer than Pat Gilligan, and he had been chosen as one to be murdered, for some reason known only to the murderer.
A new and terrible aristocracy was growing up among them,—the aristocracy of hidden firearms. There was but little said among them, even by the husband to the wife, or by the father to the son; because the husband feared his wife, and the father his own child. There had been a feeling of old among them that they were being ground down by the old aristocracy. There must ever be such an idea on the part of those who do not have enough to eat in regard to their betters, who have more than plenty. It cannot be but that want should engender such feeling. But now the dread of the new aristocracy was becoming worse than that of the old. In the dull, dim minds of these poor people there arose, gradually indeed but quickly, a conviction that the new aristocracy might be worse even than the old; and that law, as administered by Government, might be less tyrannical than the law of those who had no law to govern them. So the people sat silent at their hearths, or crawled miserably about their potato patches, speaking not at all of the life around them.
When a week was over, tidings came to them that Captain Clayton, though he had been shot right through the body,—though the bullet had gone in at his breast and come out at his back, as the report went,—was still alive, and likely to live. "He's a-spending every hour of his blessed life a-making love to a young lady who is a-nursing him." This was the report brought up to Cong by the steward of the lake steamer, and was received as a new miracle by the Cong people. The fates had decreed that Captain Clayton should not fall by any bullet fired by Lax, the Landleaguer; for, though Lax, the Landleaguer, was himself fast in prison when the attempt was made, such became more than ever the creed of the people when it was understood that Captain Clayton, with his own flesh and blood, was at this moment making love to Mr. Jones's youngest daughter at Morony Castle.