Tempest-Driven: A Romance (Vol. 2 of 3)

CHAPTER XVIII

AFTER TEN YEARS

Jerry O'Brien's words had been no sooner uttered than he saw how foolishly injudicious they were. In the excitement of the moment he had forgotten what ought to have been uppermost in his thoughts-the condition of his friend.

He rang the bell. In a few seconds Madge entered the room. He briefly explained what had occurred, and then set off to summon Dr. Santley.

The doctor looked grave, and hurried back to Carlingford House. Here he stayed an hour, and left with gloomy looks and words. A relapse was possible, and a great delay to convalescence certain. There was danger, serious danger of the patient's life.

Jerry O'Brien was in despair. He had the greatest affection for Alfred, and he was in love with Alfred's sister. Yes, he might as well confess the matter boldly to himself; plain-looking, gentle, cheerful Madge was worth more to him than all the rest of the girls in the world put together. And here his impetuous rashness had brought her brother to death's door. Curses on his rashness!

Santley said he was by no means to see Alfred again that day, or until he got formal leave to do so. He would give no opinion as to the ultimate course of the disease; but there was cause for anxiety-great anxiety.

Jerry took his leave of the house with a heavy heart. He was quite alone in the world, and since he lost his mother, now years ago, he had known no trouble so trying as this. He told himself over and over again that all would yet be well with Alfred. In vain! His heart would not be comforted; his mind would not abide in peace.

When he got into town, he did not know where to turn. The idea of going to the club under the unpleasant circumstances was out of the question. Walking about alone was dull work. He did not care to call on any friend, and the notion of spending the evening at a place of entertainment was simply monstrous. There seemed to be nothing else for it but to go home, and that was a stupid programme enough.

Jerry had lodgings in Cecil Street, Strand, and thither he went. He let himself in with a latchkey, and walked upstairs in the gathering gloom of a late February afternoon. His rooms were on the second floor. He entered the one looking out on the street, and lit the lamp deliberately. There were two reasons for his proceeding slowly. In the first place, it was not yet quite dark; in the second, deliberation killed time, and he had nothing to do between that hour and to-morrow morning, when he should call to know how Alfred was.

"Killing time," he thought, "is, when one is anxious, an excellent though slow way of killing one's self."

He pulled down the blinds, drew the curtains, and roused up the smouldering fire; then, with a heavy sigh, he threw himself into an easy-chair, and looked indolently, discontentedly around.

The room at best was not very cheering or elegant. The house was old, the room low, the furniture heavy, by no means fresh, and far from new. The table on which the lamp stood had a staring crimson cover. This was a recent and outrageous addition to the chromatic elements of the place. Until that afternoon the cover had been of a dim, nameless green, quite inoffensive, except for motley stains.

In his present state of mind, this cover felt like an insult, and he rose quickly, and, having lifted the lamp, flung the obnoxious cover into a corner, and was about to sit down again, when his eyes caught sight of a letter lying on the carpet at his feet.

He stooped and picked it up.

"A letter from O'Hanlon, and a fat letter, too! What can it be, now? Nothing more about those weirs and the commissioners, I hope. Well, even the weirs and the commissioners in moderation would be better than dwelling on this wretched business about poor Alfred."

He broke the cover, sat down, and began to read a long and closely-written letter in a clerks hand. It was signed in a different hand "John O'Hanlon," and from a printed chaplet in the corner it appeared John O'Hanlon was a solicitor residing at Kilbarry.

Jerry O'Brien read on resolutely. The only sign he gave of perturbation while mastering the eight pages he held in his hand was now and then crossing, uncrossing, and recrossing his legs. When he came to the end he threw the letter from him with an exclamation of annoyance and disgust. Then he sat awhile motionless, with his elbow resting on the table, his cheek on his hand, and his eyebrows drawn low down over his eyes. At last he muttered:

"It is my unfortunate weirs again-or, rather, it is the weirs of unfortunate me. They'll end by tearing up my weirs and leaving me to graze on the parish. I'll make a nice pauper-splendid! I don't think paupers have numbers like convicts; but if they have, I shall be number naught, naught, naught recurring. Confound those commissioners eternally! Obstruct the navigation of the Bawn! My salmon weirs obstruct as much the navigation of the Bawn as they do of the Euphrates or the Mississippi! If I had my will, these infernal, meddling commissioners would be drowned first in the Euphrates and then in the Mississippi, after which I'd give them a roasting alive in Vesuvius for a change. This will take eight hundred a year out of my pocket, and hand it over to-the Atlantic, and parts adjacent! That's a nice way to help a struggling country!"

He paused for a while, and began walking up and down the room hastily, angrily. Presently his thoughts took another turn.

"It's fortunate I said nothing to Madge. She must know by this time how I feel towards her, and I don't think her people would have any objection if this infernal affair was not hanging over me. But I could not speak to her father if I had to say: 'Will you, sir, be good enough to bring your daughter over to Kilbarry, and see her married to me in the poor-house?' It would not look swell. Not a bit of it! Why, 'twould look quite squalid and ungenteel. Never mind, Madge. I'll fight them, darling, to the last. I won't leave a stone unturned, and every one I turn I'll fling at these rapacious fools."

He paused in his walk at the table.

He took up the letter again and looked at the end of it.

"He says I must go over at once-that I must start to-night. That's peremptory and but short notice. Never mind; it may be all for the best. I know the people at Dulwich will not think I am running away from them after bringing this fresh trouble upon them. They are the most generous people in the world. My honour is perfectly safe with them. I have plenty of time to catch the mail. This letter must have come at noon, and fallen off the table. I'll write a letter to Carlingford House explaining matters, and then when I have packed a portmanteau I shall be all right for the road." He sang in a low voice:

Adding: "I wish to heavens the days were not gone for 'pistols cocked' and 'the road.' Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to bag these accursed commissioners on the road, or in the water, or on the wing. Unfortunately, 'old times are changed, old manners gone,' as the poet says, and shooting even ruffianly commissioners is against the law of the land, or the sea, or the air."

He got writing materials, gave Mr. Paulton a short account of the reason for his unexpected departure from London; then he ordered his dinner, packed his portmanteau, ate his dinner, and caught the mail train for Holyhead easily.

He slept half the way from Euston to Holyhead, and nearly all the way from Holyhead to Kingstown. In Dublin, at an hotel close to the Westland Row Station, he got his breakfast, and then drove to Kingsbridge, where he booked and took train for Kilbarry, an important town in the south of Ireland.

A railway journey in the early part of the year from Dublin to the south of Ireland is far from exhilarating. Half the way may be performed at a fair, but the second half is done at a funereal pace. The country looks damp, and is ill-clad with trees. It has not yet donned its summer vesture of astonishing green. The towns are small, far apart, and generally invisible from the train. Few people are on the platforms, and the stations of even important towns are paltry and forlorn. There are occasionally lovely mountains and pastoral streams, but the whole effect is dulling, depressing, from the absence of trees and the melancholy thinness of the population. It is a country empty of its children, and desolate at the loss of them.

Jerry O'Brien was of a mercurial nature, and when he was down he was at zero, and when up, at boiling. This last stage of his journey plunged him into the profoundest gloom. Overhead there was a sick, watery sun, which gave a feeble white glare more dejecting than a pall of thunder cloud. Tobacco was powerless to ameliorate the chill influence of that changing landscape. He tried to read a newspaper, but found he could not fix his attention on one word of what he read. After ascertaining there was nothing in it about Fishery Commissioners, he gave it up as a bad job, and laid it with resignation on the rug which covered his knees.

When he arrived at Kilbarry he was in the lowest and most desponding state of mind. He was firmly persuaded that nothing could save his weirs, and was almost convinced that the first news he should hear was that his weirs had been destroyed, and that the commissioners had resolved to lynch him if they could lay hands on him before he died of hunger.

He left the station in an omnibus and drove along the mile of broad quays beside the noble river Bawn to the "Munster Hotel." Here the prospect was more cheering than on the bleak, cold journey down. The river was thick with shipping; the quays noisy with traffic; the stores, warehouses, wharfs, and shops alive with people. Sailing vessels were discharging corn and coal, and steamers taking in cattle, and cases of eggs, and bales of bacon, and firkins of butter. Here the stream of humanity was vivid and strong. Moderate prosperity asserted its presence blithely. The weather had cleared and brightened, and the sun hung in the clear western air, a pale golden shield of light.

O'Brien was well known at "The Munster," and as he went up the steps of the hotel, was greeted cordially by the cheerful landlord and a few loungers with whom he was acquainted. He did not see a trace of the hated Fishery Commissioners, and by the time he had eaten a light luncheon, he began to think they were little more than an amiable fiction of a jovial Government. No one he met seemed to think his fortunes were in peril. The manners of John, the old waiter, were respectful and joyous as though the traveller had just returned from far distant lands, after an absence of many years, to enter into possession of a princely patrimony.

There was no time to be lost if he wanted to catch his solicitor, O'Hanlon, at the office. Accordingly he set off at once in that direction, and, having gone through two or three streets, found himself in the presence of his legal adviser, agent, and friend all in one.

John O'Hanlon was a man past middle life, tall, a little stooped in the shoulders, black-haired, neither fat nor lean, dark, ruddy, with whiskers just tinged with gray, loud-voiced, and aggressive in manner, and owning a pair of enormous brown hands. One of the peculiarities of O'Hanlon was that no matter how well prepared he might be for the advent of any one who came to him he was always at that moment busy, or about to be busy, with something or somebody else.

As the young man entered the private office of the solicitor the latter rose hastily, pointed to a chair, and said rapidly:

"A minute, O'Brien-a minute. Sit down. I want to tell Gorman something."

Gorman was the head clerk-a red-haired, restless little man, who was always to be found in the front office, and who never seemed to have anything more important to do than lean against the folded window-shutter and look out into the street, but who was reputed to be more wily than any two fully sworn-in attorneys in Kilbarry.

After a short absence, O'Hanlon came back.

"My dear O'Brien, I'm delighted to see you."

He took both his client's hands, and shook them most cordially. He had the reputation of being the most insincere man you could meet on a summer's day; but no one had ever been able to point out any one act of insincerity in his conduct.

"I got your letter," said O'Brien, after replying to the greetings of the other, "and here I am. I came post-haste."

"Right, right, my boy! Those rascally commissioners will be the death of me. They'll be the death of every man in the neighbourhood who takes an interest in salmon, except the net men."

"Well, what is it this time? The same old story, as well as I could gather from your letter."

"The same old story over again. The same old three-and-fourpence-(a professional sum, which, I am sorry to see, has grown into a saying, although a colourless and unmeaning saying). The facts are these."

Here the solicitor gave a long and energetic account of the vile proceedings of these rascally commissioners, and wound up by saying that they hadn't a leg to stand on, and that "we" were sure to win in the long run, but that to insure success it was absolutely necessary for O'Brien to be in town or within very easy call for a month or two, as petitions and declarations and so-ons had to be considered, drawn up, and attended to generally and particularly.

When Jerry heard the whole state of affairs, he felt considerably relieved on the score of his salmon weirs on the lower Bawn. Upon telling this to his friend, the latter became hilarious, slapped Jerry on the back, and said that he'd prove the commissioners were the greatest fools in Ireland, and, moreover, make them confess it themselves in their own little dirty hole-and-corner court.

These and other gallant words and brave assurances served to put Jerry in good spirits, and when he rose to leave he was as buoyant as though he already held the proofs of triumph in his hand.

As he was about to quit the office, O'Hanlon took him by the hand, and mysteriously said:

"You were in London while that Davenport inquest was going on?"

"Yes."

"Do you know anything about it?"

O'Brien's good spirits instantly took flight.

"Too much! I know everything about it."

"You read a good report of the inquest?"

"No; I was at the inquest."

"Ah-h!" It was a long-drawn, deep breath. The eyes of the solicitor became suddenly introspective, and he lolled his head over his right shoulder as if in deep thought. "Why did you attend that inquest?"

"Well, for two reasons. First, I, as you of course know, was acquainted with the Davenports; and second, because the dearest friend I have in London was greatly interested in Mrs. Davenport. It's a long story."

"Is it? Ah-h! I am greatly interested in that story too."

"Are you? Why? I didn't think you knew the Davenports."

The solicitor straightened his head on his shoulders. His eyes were still turned inward.

"You are right so far. I did not know the Davenports. But do you remember a client of mine named Michael Fahey-commonly called Mike Fahey!"

"Let me see. That's a good while ago?"

"Ten or eleven years ago," said the solicitor, shaking his head in accord with his private thoughts rather than with his words.

"I do. He was drowned near Kilcash, wasn't he?"

"At the Black Rock."

"An awful death. I never think of any one being drowned there without shuddering. Wasn't there something wrong with that man-that client of yours?"

"Yes. The police were after him."

"Why do you speak of him now?"

"Don't you remember that when seen by the police who were in chase he was in the neighbourhood of Davenport's house, and that he ran like a madman until he got to the Black Rock, and then threw himself in?"

"Yes; it makes my flesh creep," said O'Brien, with a shiver.

"He left some documents in my possession. They are in my possession yet. They show he had some connection with Davenport. I had forgotten all about it until-"

The solicitor paused, and suddenly the eyes, which had been so long turned inward, flashed out their light, and blazed into those of the young man standing opposite.

O'Brien started back in vague dread.

"Until when?" he asked, in a low, constrained voice.

"Until this day week."

"And then" – O'Hanlon's eyes dilated-"I saw-"

"In the name of Heaven, what?"

"His ghost."

CHAPTER XIX

SEEING NOT BELIEVING

For a moment the young man looked at the other in amazement and doubt. But it was impossible to resist for any great length of time the conviction that O'Hanlon had spoken sincerely. O'Hanlon himself looked troubled, scared, affrighted, as though scarcely able, and wholly unwilling, to believe his own words. O'Brien was the first to recover his composure.

"I will not," he said, "question what you say; I will go so far as to assure you I am fully convinced you saw the ghost of that unhappy man. You want me to tell you a story which, as I said, is a long one, and I want you to tell me your story at length. Dine with me at 'The Munster' this evening at seven, and we can chat the matter over."

The reference to the hotel and dinner drew the mind of the lawyer back once more into its ordinary groove. With a shrug of his shoulders and a forced laugh, he said:

"Right-you are right, O'Brien. This is not a good time or place for our little private theatricals. I'll join you with pleasure at seven. Here I have been holding you, which is an assault, and detaining you against your will, which is false imprisonment-both punishable by law. I ought to be too old a stager to be guilty of either offence. But I cry mercy, and will do my best to wash away my offences in your claret this evening. Till then, adieu."

So they parted.

O'Brien resolved to stroll about until it was time for dinner. He knew every street, almost every house in Kilbarry. He had lived in the neighbourhood the most part of his life. He had no relative alive, nor any place he could call home. When in this neighbourhood he usually stopped at "The Munster"; but of late years he had spent much of his time in London. He owned the land close to which his salmon weirs stood on the Bawn; but there was no house for him on them-only a few rude, primitive farmers' houses.

He was now thirty years of age, and had been a rover most of his life. He had always made it a point to spend a month or two of the summer at Kilcash, a sea-bathing and fishing village ten miles by road from Kilbarry. Here it was that he learned what he knew of the Davenports, for Mr. Davenport's place, Kilcash House, was only a mile inland from the village whose name it bore. He had been personally acquainted with the Davenports, and had often seen them, and knew all about them.

O'Hanlon's words, now that he was from under the influence of the manner which accompanied them, filled him with wonder more than anything else. He was only nineteen or twenty at the time that man Fahey was drowned-or, rather, committed suicide-and he could not recall all the particulars of the case. When it occurred, he had been living with his widowed mother at Kilbarry, and had not, like other young men of the city, gone out to the scene of the tragedy. He knew every nook of the coast for miles around Kilcash. It was a bold, bad, rock-bound coast save at the village, where there was a bay and a strand fatal to ships. He remembered that, from the first news of Fahey's death, there had not been the least hope of recovering the man's body. It was a tradition of the coast that the body of no one who had been drowned there was ever recovered. Who or what Fahey was he did not know, and so he resolved to banish the subject from his mind until O'Hanlon reopened it that evening.

The great feature of this day was O'Hanlon's assurance that his weirs would not be torn up. If that were true, and Alfred Paulton recovered, then he would have to think of building a house somewhere near the weirs for-Madge.

He got back to the hotel a little before seven, and wrote a letter to Mr. Paulton, announcing his safe arrival, asking for news of Alfred, and sending his kindest regards to the others in the order of their seniority. It was a little comfort to be able to send even kind regards to Madge through her father. But if he had the commissioners by the collective throat at that moment, he could have throttled them with great comfort to himself, and an assured consciousness that he was a benefactor to mankind.

Seven o'clock brought O'Hanlon and the dinner. The latter was served in a small, snug, private room overlooking the broad white river. When at length they were alone and had lighted their cigars, the guest reverted to the Davenport affair, and asked for the full and true history of the case as far as it was known to Jerry.

Then O'Hanlon's turn came:

"Since I saw you I have hunted up and glanced over the documents left in my hands by the dead man Fahey. They are, I find, unintelligible, as far as my lights now lead me, and I think we may dismiss them from our minds for the present. I shall, however, keep them safe. I will say nothing more of them than that in whatever portions of them Mr. Davenport is mentioned, they always speak of him in terms of gratitude and respect. It is plain that at one time the relations between these two men were very close, but of the nature of these relations there is no hint. At the time of the death of Fahey he had been hovering about Kilcash for months. No one exactly knew who or what he was. He had taken a mean lodging in the village, and given out that he was poor, and had been ordered to the seaside for his health, and recommended to get as much sea air and boating as possible. He often went out with the fishermen, and at last bought a small punt, a mere cockleshell, and kept it for his own exclusive use. In this he put off at all times of the day and night, and the fishermen predicted that he would be drowned some time or other; and so he was, but not in the way anticipated by the people of the village. They made sure his boat would be swamped one day, and that would be the end of him. An additional reason for their fears was that he never swam, and said he was too old to learn.

"On the day of his death he was followed from a distance by two policemen in plain clothes. They watched him leave the cottage in which he lived at Kilcash, take to the downs, and make straight for Kilcash House. They were not able to get near him until he had just gained the house. He then became aware that he was followed, and ran straight for the cliffs. The rest I have already told you. There never was an inquest, for, as you may know, the bodies of people drowned there are never found.

"A week ago I was in the neighbourhood of Kilcash House. I had left my horse and car at Kilcash, and was walking over the downs to the village, when on the cliffs, just over the Black Rock, I cast my eyes down, and there, on that large shelf of rock, as plain as I see you now, I saw him. The same coat, the same Scotch bonnet, the same trousers-not a thing altered since the first day he stood in my office, going on eleven years ago."

"What time of the day was it?"

"Broad day. About three o'clock in the afternoon."

"It must have been some one of about his stature dressed identically."

"Must it?" cried the lawyer, scornfully. "You have not heard all yet. I made up my mind to be sure. I ran-I ran to the top of the path, and went down to the rocks below. There was nobody there. You know the place. Tell me how a living man could get away alive, except up the path that I went down? It was Michael Fahey's ghost, as sure as I am a living man."

"I confess," said Jerry, in perplexity, "I cannot explain away what you say, except upon the supposition that you were suffering from delusion. How do you account for the appearance yourself?"

"This is my way of reasoning it out. I either saw the ghost of Michael Fahey or I did not. If I did, I account for it by the fact that Davenport and he were associated together in something while they were alive, and now that both are dead, one of them has to come back and see that something left undone-a wrong unrighted, a debt unpaid, an explanation unmade-is put straight."