Conquest

Front matter

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Part One

The old white pony, wall-eyed but sure-footedi ambled slowly down the hill. On Thursdays for twenty-two years he had borne Father Pat Daly to the market at Lisgeela. When Father Pat had controlled the pony they covered the four and a half miles from Drisheen in half an hour; but for many years the pony had taken control, and drew up at the door of the Presbytery at Lisgeela exactly an hour after Father Pat had made his sole oontril3ution to the journey in a jerk of the reins and a "Go on, will you, Whiteyl" in the yard of his house at Drisheen. At eleven they started; at half-past eleven Whitey had finished his drink at the stream by Phooca cross-roads, and Father Pat had appraised his cattle out on grass on Devoy's farm beyond the stream; at Devoy's farmhouse the old, crazy, open weighted dock in the kitchen, which through the week was roughly set by the son, was corrected to the infallibly right time as Father Pat shouted, in passing, a stem "God save you all," to tiie open doorway; and as the Cathedral bell tolled the Angdus at twdve Whitey was licking a tired fetlock beside the kerb in front of the Lisgeela Presbytery, while Father Pat, standing on the fobtwalk, his white head bared and bent, said the Angdus.

To-day, till Whitey was at the foot of Hill Street, the most bedraggled of all the frowsy approaches to Lisgeela, nothing very unusual happened.

Father Pat's old housekeeper, Julia Feeney, had harnessed the pony, renewing the splice on the left trace with a fresh piece of string, ''for fear it'd give on the way."

"It's a queer turn-out for a man of God," she said, her arms akimbo, including, with a single disapproving sweep of her hard grey eyes, the pony, the harness, the trap, and the priest himself.

"Whist, woman!" Father Pat said sternly.

His eyes wandered slowly over his once black clothes, now green and threadbare from much wear — ^the clerical coat and waistcoat yellowed in front by snuff, the trousers baggy at the knees, and shrunk at the frayed ends almost to the tops of the patched and shapeless elastic-sided boots. He took off his silk hat, discoloured a greenishbrown, ruffled where it was not napless, looked at it whimsically and rubbed it with his sleeve.

"What the dint of brushing could do for it, I done," Julia said reproachfully. " 'Tis I'd turn you out clean and decent if you'd only put it in my power. But what can a woman do and you not getting a stitch of new clothes this twenty year? Don't I put a shine on your boots that you could see yourself in? And your shirt and collar is as white as the driven snow; and sorra one'd know they're badly gone without looking dose at 'em."

"Amn't I well enough?" he said, with a shrug of his broad shoulders.

" Is it with that old garron of a beast ? " she said, shrilly contemptuous.

"Poor old Whitey," he said gently, patting the pony's neck. " He's almost as faithful as you are, Julia — and — and he's dtmib," he added hesitatingly, with a wry smile.

'* You grudge me the bit o' blacking I put on your boots and the trifle of starch for your collars, and now you're grudging me my tongue, that don't cost you anything,*' she said angrily, wiping away an imaginary tear with a comer of her apron.

He winced, and gathered up the reins preparatory to mounting into the trap.

" Maybe to stumble, and you getting into the car with them in your hand," she said, snatching roughly at the reins. " Let me hand 'em up to you. The poor dumb beast!" she went on. ''It's well for him that it's dumb he is, for if he had the use of the tongue like a Christian, he couldn't contain himself at all at all, meeting the whole world within the market of Lisgeela, with them winkers and a crupper that's tied up with tin-tacks, and his collar all patches with me striving to keep the hair inside it, and a piece of rope and string here and there; and never a clippers put near him in the memory of man, and only a lick of a currycomb when I'm not pressed. And he to have trapesing behind him that jingling skeleton of old iron and dirt, that a tinker wouldn't misname by calling it a car. You poor animal, you! it's ashamed you'd be to be seen dead in a ditch with it, let alone passing a throng of decent people in and out of the market, and you alive."

"It is a bit outlandish," the priest said moodily, rubbing his chin with his forefinger. * ' I must get it repai — ' ' He hesitated, and added, "I must throw a few budkets of water on it when I come home."

'' Is it to expose the nakedness of it by taking the blessed mud off it you'd be? And it hiding the shame of the old pieces of tin cans I nail't on to the sides and to the dashboards till they cried out against it and wouldn't hold another nail. Glory be to God, you're that dose that you'd noake two meals off a wren. Wouldn't I wash it myself only for the shame I'd bring on it ? "

A swarthy flush overspread his face. His lips twitched. He straightened his heavy body to its full height of over six feet and frowned at her sternly. She faced him resolutely, her hands again resting on her hips.

"And you a priest of God, tool" she threw at him vengefully.

His features relaxed and the frown passed off. With a half shamefaced smile he said: " Whitey and the old trap aregoodenoughf(»:me,andthey'lllastmytime. Anyway, the Son of God hadn't even an ass and cart under Him."

"The pride of the man," she said with a gasp, "likening himself to the Lord God. But sure it's kind for you, and you with the pure blood of the Dalys in you," she add^ proudly.

" None of that," he said angrily. With a contemptuous look, he climbed laboriously into the trap.

She quailed under his eyes, but shrugged her shoulders, and muttered as he turned his back: "And him not forgetting it f (»: a minute, night or morning. There he goes now, the handsomest man in seven counties. If it wasn't for the saint he always was, it's the devil's play he'd have with the women — ^hussies they aret Him with the pride of Lucifer in his eye and the way he holds himself. Sure it's in rags he could go and not a bishop in the land could hold a candle to him. And him that big a skinflint of a miser that he'd skin a flea to sell the fat. And him, too, that wouldn't wrong man, woman or child, or the brute beast, and wears out the knees of his breeches with the dint of praying. It's a contradictory world, glory be to the Almighty, and it's Father Pat himself is the queerest

man in it." '

When he had settled himself into the seat she handed him the reins, "You nught bring home a scrag end of mutton in the car with you. I could cook a chop of it for your dinner," she said doubtfully.

''I mig^t then, if it wasn't a conference day. But 111 be dining with his lordship and all the priests. Such a waste of meat and drink," he muttered thoughtfully, "and we have to pay dear for it, five shillings a head and vail of a shilling to the servants. Enough to support a man in luxury for a week."

'* Sure we'U be in need of the meat for to-morrow," she persisted.

''Hear the woman now, and to-morrow a Friday. Is it heathens you'd be making of us, Julia Peeney?"

''There's the long week before us, and not a scrap of butcher's meat darkened the door since the bishop was here for the Confirmation," she said with failing confidence. ' ' Nine months ago it was. ' '

"We had enough then to last us a twelvemonth, feasting every day for ten days we were on what was left over."

ti

You'll have your fill to-day, anyhow," she said angrily.

"It's on the point of eleven, and I must be going," he said evasively. " I suppose I'll eat it as I'll have to pay for it," he added to himself. "But every bite'U near dioke me, knowing the cost of it."

He looked round the yard, at the tumbled-down outhouses, at the worm-eaten doors, and again at the horse.

" Whitey's been a good friend to me, Julia Peeney," he said gently, his eyes softening as he looked at the old woman. "But you've b^n a better. Pive and thirty years you have served me in fair weather and foul, and there isn't a better servant living this day."

The old woman fingered her apron nervously, curtsied, her yellow parchment face flushed. She tugged at the strings of her white goffered cap, as she said, "Sure, I never hoped to live to hear your reverence give me such praise as all that. There isn't the likes of you in all the living earth."

He looked troubled and lifted up the reins as if to give them a jerk.

He hesitated. A generous look came into the hard eyes under his white, bushy eyebrows.

" I might bring that scrag," he said.

"And why would you, your reverence?" she said eagerly. "Sure there's plenty of fine food in the house, a scrap of bacon no less. And there's sure to be an egg before the night, or maybe two."

" That's true," he said in a relieved tone. " Butcher's meat is a sinful waste, and all that fine food about. You might pull up a stalk of the new potatoes — ^they're ripe by this — ^for your diimer. And take a trifle of butter with 'em. Not much," he added, pursing his lips. "It's a rich food and goes to the head."

"You can trust me to go slow on it, your reverence," she said gratefully.

He jerked the reins. "Go on, wiH you, Whitey!" he said mechanically. The pony started after a strained pull. The old woman ran to the rickety gate and held it open.

"And Julia, as the day is hot, and there won't be much cooking to do, you might be sparing on the turf."

"Out the fire'U go, when the praties is boiled. And you'll be careful of your health, Father Pat, agra," she said anxiously. " There's a flushed look on you for some days past that can't be wholesome."

"Nonsense, woman," he said, sitting upright. "I feel as sweet as that hawthorn bush in the hedge beyond."

' 'Good luck to you, and a good price on the bullocks," she shouted after him.

"I told Devoy not to let 'em go at a penny tmder nineteen five," he said over his shoulder.

"There's a fanner for you!" she shouted admiringly. "Not another man in the barony 'd have the courage to ask eighteen pounds for 'em. But then they haven't his eye for a beast. And he'll get it too; and the odd five shillings to cover the luck penny. It's generous he always was in luck pennies."

The voice became indistinct and trailed off. The

reference to luck pennies annoyed him. HaU-a-crown

would be ample. And Devoy said he'd nm the risk of

losing the sale because of the extra five shillings. But a

pound couldn't be broken for a luck penny; and his pride

wouldn't let him give less than five shillings. The Dalys

never gave less. And wasn't he a real Daly ? The whole

world knew it. Wasn't he bom in Dalyhouse? He

fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and took out a gold

hunter watch and looked with glowing eyes on the crest, a

wolf dog, and the motto "Drum spiro spero." The

watch was nearly all that was left of three parishes and

the town of Lisgeela. But there was the motto. Aye,

while there was life there was hope. And he was only

seventy. He put back the watch in his pocket. The

pony jogged along. The soft summer air was heavy with

the scent of spirea and privet. He drew in a deep breath.

There used to be a privet hedge along the sunk fence at

Dalyhouse. How well he remembo-ed it, though he

hadn't seen it since '35, sixty-one years ago, and he only

nine years old. And his grand-nephew, Jim, was nine

years old this very June. To-morrow was it? Yes!

he must give him a present. He shu£9ed in his seat and

frowned. He sniffed the delicate scent of new-mown hay.

"You've kept it standing two days too long, Richard,"

he shouted over the hedge.

"That's God's truth, your reverence. 'Tis you have the eyes on you, Father Pat. And how is the health, sir?"

' Never f dt yoimgesr or better in my life. A good crop to you.'*

''And the best of every good luck to your reverence. Sure 'tis you that deserves it."

Whitey kept his even pace, raising a trail of white dust on the soft limestone road. The priest flicked neatly a horse-fly off the pony's neck and replaced the whip in its rest No, he wouldn't give Jim a present. There was nothing good enough for him in Lisgeela, and Dublin was too far away, and a present would cost too much. He couldn't afford it. Besides, Jim would have everything one day. He had the Daly nose and chin, and was a fine upstanding lad. But had he the spirit? The boy's father had it. If Jim only turned out to have the go and courage of his father, Theobald! He was a man for you, a Daly of the Dalys. If Theobald had only had a fair chancel But he hadn't — and to die at thirty-four! Thank God he died Uke a gentleman, broke his neck taking the sunk fence in the Dalyhouse demesne, and he following the hounds on a spavined horse. And they called him a peasant. Scovdl had sneered at him in the coffee room of the Daly Arms at Lisgeela, and at his mount, had called him "the peasant Daly." Scovell, the grandson of the upstart who had foreclosed the mortgage in '35 and taken Dalyhouse and every acre and chattel that the Dalys had to their name, except a hundred acre farm Pierce the Rake's wife was able to hold on to — Scovell, a mere Cromwellian settler.

He leant forward in the trap as Whitey climbed the short hill at Culleen. It would be a bad job if the harness went; but there was the hanuner and tacks and bundle of string in the bottom of the trap in case of accidents. How cool the Lissyfad woods looked. The day was a scorcher to be sure. And he was f eeUng the heat. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with a red

Conquest ii

bandanna handkerchief. That was a queer throbbing in his temples. He looked at his hat with a wry smile. He had seen better on a scarecrow. And all his scraping and gathering had been for Theobald ; and Theobald was dead. He hadn't given ^^rjn the money, but he would have, had Theobald not been killed. A furtive look crossed his face, and he shrank from the thought as if he were afraid. He would have given it the moment it could have been useful. Theobald was a man. Hadn't he snatched Arabella Levin of Lissyf ad from under Derek Scovell's nose? Eloped with her to Dublin, where she became a Catholic and married him. How the Orange pack raged and shut their doors on her — left her to stew in her Papist peasant muck was how her father, Dick Levin, put it. Arabella might have been a Daly in blood she held her head so high in the little house in Scarty. And the Levins had only come to Ireland in the train of Dutch William — upstarts of yesterday.

According to custom, Whitey stood for a few minutes on the level, and nibbled at the lush June grass on the roadside. Away on the left, in the woods, beyond Lisgeela, a great whitish-grey limestone house faced the srm. The old man's eyes blurred. He took out his Book of Hours. As there was a conference he would anticipate Vespers and Compline. He held the book open, but he could not read the print. What matter, he knew it aU by heart. He mumbled the prayers till Whitey started again, but his mind was back sixty-one years. From that time to this, except from the top of Culleen Hill, he had never seen Dalyhouse. What had come over him to-day? The house seemed gaunt and forbidding. Had he heea wrong in his attachment to it? • . . His grandfather had begun the trouble by breaking the entail. But it was his father. Pierce the Rake, who mortgaged everything and played the fool. He was Pierce the Rake at Dalyhouse, and he was Pierce the Rake afterwards at Scarty; only instead of getting drunk on wine, he got drunk on poteen whisky. He used to sit in the shebeen near Scarty and sell the trees, one by one, for drink, and boast of the days when he rollicked with the Regent. And his poor mother stuck in the house, ashamed to be at home to the few callers who remembered her in misfortune, spending her time praying at the little altar in her bedroom, or sitting in the parlour discussing the inferiority of the Scovells. . . .

Whitey had his drink at the Phooca cross-roads. Father Pat, without looking at the house, said, "God save you all" in passing Devoy's. Mrs. Devoy ran out into the road and shouted after him, " Tom got the nineteen five for the bullocks, your reverence"; but he never turned his head. "That's two hundred and eleven pounds dear profit on 'em," he murmured listlessly to himself; and in a moment he was thinking of his brother Pierce, who was only five when they left Dalyhouse. Young Pierce had no memories of the place after a few years and worked at Scarty like a farm hand. By the time he was sixteen he was running the farm, weighed down by his father's debts and his, Pat's, expenses at Maynooth. It was que^ that Pierce, who hadn't a drop of peasant blood in him, had no pride in his Daly blood, took naturally to the ways of a peasant, and married Ann DriscoU, the daughter of a tenant farmer; while Theobald, in spite of his mother's blood, was a throw-back to the pure-bred Daly. . . .

And now up at Scarty were his brother Pierce, Arabella and Jim. Three generations of 'em without maybe a thought of the Daly name. Theobald had it. But Theobald was dead. Jim must have it — ^he must be made to have it. He mustn't grow up a peasant and be led astray by his grandfather. ...

He had intended to help Theobald. Who was it saying that he hadn't helped him? It was true that he had refused to lend him fifty pounds to buy a horse, although he encouraged him to htmt. But it was all for his good. He was to have had all the money one day when he could strike a blow for the Daly name. What was the cold sweat on his forehead? And Theobald had been killed by an old spavined horse gone ia the

KTiCCS. • • •

He wasn't a miser. Careful maybe. And who wouldn't with such an end in view ? Maybe to make the Dalys once more a power in the land ? Jim'd do it. Jim must do it. And he'd help him. Not at once perhaps. But when the right day came there'd be all the more for Jim to get. There was no use in wasting money. And Jim'd have it all one day or another — every penny. There were still things he could cut down. Piles and piles of money he could make by saving — enough to buy back Dalyhouse, to keep twenty horses in the stables. • . .

Whitey ambled slowly down the hill. The priest's eyes were fixed on the grass and wild mustard that crowned the dilapidated thatched cottages on his right — a sea of gold they seemed to his gloating eyes; a sea of gold coins rolling in billows to his feet. . . .

At the foot of the hiU there was a check on the reins. Whitey hesitated. It was opposite Mallon, the grocer's, where he had sometimes stopped on the way home. There was no repetition of the check, so he ambled on and halted at the Presbytery door.

The Angelus bell tolled. A priest on his way to the conference stood and prayed beside the trap. His eyes strayed to Father Pat still seated, his head thrown slightly back. He stared at him as if fascinated for a few seconds, muttering a "Hail Mary," then jumped forwardt

H Cbnquest

caught his hand, and turning round, said, ''May God have mercy on his soul/'

II

The Most Reverend Dr. Deehan, Bishop of Lisgeda, knelt on the dining-room armchair in which he was afterwards to preside at the conference. The priests of the conference district knelt in varied attitudes on chairs all round the long dining table, now merely a desk for tattered copies of Gury's Theologia Maralis. The lower end of the table, farthest from his lordship, was congested. The bishop had finished the Angdus and had begun to call on the Holy Ghost to assist at the conference when the door of the room was violently shoved open. A priest rushed in, pale of face, and in a scared voice said:

"My lord, my lord, Father Pat Daly is dead in his car at the door."

Every eye in the room was fixed on the herald of death. Mouths hung open. Father Tom Nulty fdt that for once he had gained the ear of the bishop who always snubbed him, and of his fellows who treated him as a butt. His face flushed with exdtement.

"The Angdus bdl caught me — ^I'm sorry I was so late, my lord — ^beside his car, and I off with my hat and I hadn't 'The Angd of the Lord* out of me when I saw there was something wrong. There he was leaning bade like a drunken man, and he doesn't take a sup, the pale face of him as purple as your lordship's soutane, and his eyes staring out of his head. I thought at first it was only a fit, but when I caught hold of him he was stone dead."

The florid face of the bishop went pale under the eyes. He put his hand to his heart. Reassured, he said solemnly:

" May the Lord have mercy on his soul/'

"Amen, Amen, Amen," responded from all over the room.

There was a clattering of chairs as the priests hastily got to their feet. The bishop dropped heavily into h^ chair at the head of the table. The younger priests at the end of the table crowded round the two front windows and gazed at the dead man in the trap.

"That puts the lid on any work at this conference, thank God," Father Dunphy said, in a low but relieved tone.

"Aye, begannies," Father Qrehan said, rubbing his hands. "And the lord'd have downed me to-day in the Justice tract as sure as a gun. He fixed me with his glary eye as soon as he came into the room. How funny old Pat Daly looks with his old topper cocked like that."

A tall, thin priest, in a caped soutane, his thick brown hair turning grey at the temples, pushed Father Crehan aside, saying:

" If you have no feeling, at least have some dignity — if you can," and he pulled down the thin hoUand blind. As he made his way, with difficulty, to the second window, Crehan looked at him malevolently and said:

"Lysaght is too big a boss."

"He's the Administrator anyway, and it's his house," Dunphy said, good-humouredly, " and no doubt he wants to get into the lord's eye so as to be in the running for Drisheen. Anyhow, tp give him his due he was a friend of old Pat's."

"Friend in my eye," Crehan said bitterly. "Could anyone be the friend of a man who never proffered a soul a glass of punch except at a Confirmation — ^when he had to? You hit the right nail on the head at first, Dunphy. It's after .Drisheen Lysaght is."

"You're a bitter devil, Crehan," Dunphy said amiably.

"Lysaght isn't that kind, and old Pat Daly was as straight a friend as ever walked. No doubt you're after Drisheen yourself."

''And if I am, who has a better right?" Crehansaid, drawing himself up pompously. **Lysaght is only an Administrator and I've been a P.P. for seven years — in a poor parish with only half the dues of Drisheen, and I've the right of grass for only nine bullocks agin thirty-five in Drisheen. If there's any fairness in man I'll get it."

''Let old Pat get cold first anyway," Dunphy said, with a shrug.

"If you take your seats, gentlemen," Father Lysaght said firmly, "I*U see to poor Father Pat. Would you come with me. Father Breslin and Father Brophy?"

Three priests left the room. The others took their seats.

"Poor, indeed— and him with the grass of thirty-five bullocks," Father Crehan mumbled.

The bishop drummed the table tmconsciously with the fingers of his left hand while he tugged his limp Roman collar away from his wet neck with his right. His face was as purple as his stock. His undershot lower jaw hung open, exposing gaps in his big yellow teeth. His eyes were fixed vacantly on an engraving of Robert Emmett making his dying speech.

" Father Pat had the better of me Ji^y three years — I'm only sixty-seven and a young man yet," a fat, undersized priest said querulously, adding hastily, in afterthought, "God rest his sotil."

"Oh, but. Father Lynch, the corpse, God give him a soft bed, was two stone lighter than you, and near a foot taller," a spare old man with grizzled hair said brutally. "There's death, maybe, for a fat man in every step he takes," he added, with a calculating glance round the table.

There was shuffling of many feet. Father Ljmch's pendulous cheeks shook. His protuberant waistcoat rose and fell to his short pants for breath.

" There's no fear of me — not for ten years to come," he quavered valorously, wetting his lips with his tongue. He looked round for sympathy and found the spare old man's eyes fixed on him appraisingly.

''A watched pot takes a long time to boil," he wheezed, pulling himself together. ''Father Griffin always had a liking for my parish, my lord. But sure it's the lean men often goes first — ^the heart it is. A sort of worm gnawing at their innards — and flop, oflf they go."

This cryptic excursion into physiology relieved the tension. There was a general laugh.

The bishop sighed, rapped the table loudly, and said: "Order, order, gentlemen."

"You're a fine, full man yourself, my lord, may God bless you. But there's little fear of you yet," Father Lynch said ingratiatingly.

"Tut, tut, I'm a young man," the bishop said, in an annoyed tone, opening the top buttons of his soutane, and mopping his forehead with his handkerchief.

"He's fat and red about the gills," Father Griffin muttered gloomily to the table. " I wouldn't give much for the chances of a man of fifty-nine with his lining. ' '

"What's that. Father Griffin?" the bishop said sternly. " Only that you're likely to live down the youngest of us, my lord," Father Griffin said morosely.

"Hum, hum," the bishop said, drumming the table nervously. "The sudden death of Father Daly, gentlemen, in the fulness of years and priestly virtue though it be, is a lesson to all of us. Death comes like a thief in the night — ^but I needn't labour the point to men who always live in the presence of God. Father Daly died in harness."

There were sounds of much trampling of feet in the hall, as of men bearing a burthen.

" He had thirty-five bullocks in the market this mom* ing," Father Grecian murmured enviously.

''As I said/' the bishop resumed, ''he died in harness, doing the work of God. Father Daly came to the conference and has gone to his reward. He was an example to all of us. A man of very old family, he had all the humility of the humblest of us. In his obedience to my slightest wish he was a true son of holy church. In his, ahem, frugality of life he was a beautiful example of holy poverty."