Short Fiction · Father Giles of Ballymoy (3/3)

They got him upstairs 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 bedroom, 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 aegis 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 tonight, 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.”