by George Moore
My questions seemed to vex him, and we might not have spoken again during the journey had it not been for the rashers. It was their succulence that prompted him to address me again on the advantage a bacon factory would be to Castlebar and to Mayo generally, and wishing to hear his views I assumed so pleasant an air of acquiescence that before long the bacon factory was lost sight of and we were talking of the great changes that had come over the country since we were young men.
In former times, my traveller said, there was the big house, and the villagers always coming and going on some errand or another; the women coming up at midday with their husbands’ and sons’ dinners. A poor one, it is true, five or six potatoes tied up in a cloth, and a noggin of buttermilk which they would get from the dairy-maid. But in those days the people were contented with very little, they never tasted meat but once a year and that at Christmas time, which they boiled in a pot, the only knowledge of cooking they knew. When the potatoes rotted in the famine years, the people had nothing, there never having been any factories for the making of cheese in Ireland. For some reason or another the Irish are not cheese eaters. The Welsh, I believe, are, and work all day nourishing themselves from time to time with a bite of cheese and a sup of beer. And then the Welsh are dissenters and radicals, whereas the villagers here are Catholic and like the big house for the hum of life always going on: the smithy with its clanging anvil and snoring bellows; the carpenter’s shop, its threshold heaped with shavings — Micky Murphy in the background making a door or a window sash, and more ready than the smith himself to pass the time of day with whosoever might have a moment to spare. And I mustn’t forget the sawyers, one of them in the pit and the other above him, sawing some balks of timber for Micky Murphy, who wanted timber for gates and door-posts. Always something going on, you see. And as likely as not some of the house servants had come up from the village: their fathers and mothers and their sisters and brothers were all welcome. And then there was the landlord hanging about the stable-yard with a couple of setters at his heels, and he always willing to speak to the tenants on Saturdays, hearing all their complaints, and when they had no complaints, which very often happened, they came up just for the sake of a talk. You see with all those things going on the country was never lonely, but now all I am telling you about has passed away and the people are beginning to feel the loneliness of the country very sore upon them.
But it was the tenants who wished to get rid of the landlords, I interjected. Yes, that is so, my friend replied, but you see the rents in former times were too high and they couldn’t pay them. But they’d like to have their landlords back again, with smaller rents, mind you. Yes, they would and leppin’. They’d sooner be bringing up their notes as in old times to the big house than sending them to the Board, which is a harder task-master than ever Clanricarde was, and altogether without consideration of special cases and circumstances. The way it is now is that the tenant just pays and if he fails to pay he goes, eviction in Ireland being easier than ever it was, without police and sub-sheriff. For you see if the Bishops agree, and there are a dozen on the Board, that a man must be put out, out he is put, for there isn’t a man in Ireland that would dare to raise his voice against a Bishop. Out he goes and there’s an end of it. Well, all that is contrary to the spirit of the Irish people, who have no taste for offices and clerks and routine work, and who like to know with whom they are dealing, as they have always done, and as their fathers before them: a clannish people, sir, who have not yet forgotten the chieftain they have gone to battle for. As I was saying to you, sir, the people miss the hum of life that was always going on around the old country houses. In exchange they’ve got the land.
Well, a very fair exchange, I interjected. But how long will they keep the land? Isn’t it always passing from them again and again, for the Irish are a religious people and every man will leave a sum of money to the priest to say masses for his soul to keep it out of purgatory, though this much must be said, it isn’t the peasant class that gives away to the priest but the small shopkeeping class; and the land it has gotten from the peasant goes in masses for the repose of souls.
The news that the land of Ireland had been wrenched from the landlords with so much trouble and was passing into the hands of the clergy interested me deeply, putting into my mind the thought that a third of the land of England was Church property in Reformation times. It was, I said, the riches of the clergy that had set the people saying — the kingdom of heaven may be for us, but the kingdom of earth is for them. On that they began reading the Gospels, and it would be a wonderful thing surely if the avarice of the clergy turned the Irish into Protestants, the same as it did the English. Be this as it may, what Ireland needs is a new religion, and I pray that she may get one. Which? It matters not, but let her get one quickly, I muttered, and almost immediately after my traveller’s voice awoke me from my reverie, and the truth became apparent that all the while I had been dreaming he had been telling a story.
It behooved me to reconstruct the first half from the beginning, for it was beyond my courage to say: what you told me about the passing away of the Irish land from the tenants to the clergy interested me so profoundly that I missed a good deal of the story you are telling! would you be kind enough to repeat it all over again? He might very well answer my request: if you didn’t care to listen you must go without, and return to his paper, leaving me looking out of the window at the landscape regretting I had entered into conversation with him. All the same, I said, it was stupid of me to miss the beginning of his story; and it will be more stupid still if I do not give my ears at once to what he is telling about Joseph Appley.
CHAPTER 7.
I’M SURE I heard him say that Joseph Appley was from Wiltshire, my fellow-traveller repeated, and I tried to look as if the evidence pointed to Wiltshire. I have often heard Sir Hugh say that he picked him up in Wiltshire. Joseph was a boy at the time, he said, and a boy is picked very much like a berry from a hedge, like a berry; I’ve often heard Sir Hugh say that he picked him from the hedge and that he became immediately after the best cab-boy in London. No matter what time Sir Hugh came out of a theatre his cab drove up, Joseph on the box ready to hop off it on the instant to open the door for Sir Hugh. I have heard Sir Hugh say that he couldn’t understand by what process of thought Joseph divined his movements. He seems to know them instinctively, were Sir Hugh’s very words to me.
But not having heard the beginning of the story I did not know who Sir Hugh was; an Irish landlord, I judged him to be by inference, but could not tell in what county till my fellow-traveller mentioned that Sir Hugh had won the Chester Cup with Tomboy, and the Cambridgeshire with Makebelieve. You must have heard of these horses, he said, and I answered that the names recalled a past time to me. A few moments after I remembered that Makebelieve had won the race carrying nine stone, which was considered in those days an extraordinary performance for a three-year-old. In those days, my fellow-traveller continued, Sir Hugh was coining money on the race-course. There was Chimney Sweep, another great horse of his, and Bayleaf was a fast mare, that won a great deal of money, and would have won a great deal more if she had been able to get the mile, but she always began to stop at the three-quarters. Joseph Appley was doing pretty well too, not a long way behind his master, not farther than a valet should be; a great pair surely in the old days, looked out for at the cock-pit, the prize-ring and the race-course. Sir Hugh thought the world and all of Joseph Appley, who began, as I have told you, as a cab-boy and afterwards became the best valet Sir Hugh ever had in his life. A little extravagant, Sir Hugh would say, Joseph’s maxim always being that the best was good enough for me. Nor was Joseph quite satisfied even with the best; he’d always tell the tradesman: now if you do this extra well, I’ll give you a little more. But, said my fellow-traveller, at the time I am telling of, a little extravagance more or less didn’t matter; a few pounds one way or the other make no difference when you’re winning big handicaps. But the day came when Sir Hugh�
��s horses were not so fast as they used to be, and perhaps that was the reason he took to himself a wife; her fortune paid some of his debts and allowed him to run horses again, for at the time of his marriage he hadn’t paid off his forfeits: he owed money to Weatherby; and after his marriage — well, there were politics, and in those days elections cost a lot of money; Sir Hugh’s politics were not very popular, and he had to spend a great deal in making himself popular: the stud was expensive, and his lady wasn’t content to live at Muchloon alone while her husband was away in England. She had people staying in the house all the time, and with Joseph running the house on the principle that the best of everything was good enough for Muchloon, it is easy to imagine the great hump of debt that began to rise up on Sir Hugh’s shoulders. At last the day came. I’m going back to London, Appley, to economise. Joseph muttered (he always muttered a little) that he had never heard of anyone going to London to economise before. But wouldn’t you like to come to London with me? he asked. Joseph said he was too old. But I should have thought that he would have liked to return to his own country, I interjected. My fellow-traveller rapped out that England was far behind Joseph by this time and Ireland as far as ever ahead of him, though he had married the lady’s maid, a Catholic, who, of course, couldn’t marry him unless he promised to bring up his children Catholics, which he did; and when the family left him alone in charge of Muchloon he made the last effort to become an Irishman that an Englishman can make: he became a Catholic; but this change didn’t alter matters, for I think he was more English after the change than before it.
What sort of woman was his wife? I asked, for Joseph’s unfortunate life began to interest me. A long, melancholy woman, my fellow-traveller answered, and her daughter as lank and melancholy as herself. The son was a bit podgy like his father — well-meaning but good-for-nothing. I think Joseph was always ashamed of his family, the females especially: for I remember it always seemed to irritate him if his wife and daughter were met on the kitchen stairs on their way to the pantry. A pair of long-faced, cringing women were the two of them; and the wife couldn’t have been different from the daughter; yet Joseph was mad to get her. A strange infatuation that refusals couldn’t cool. Propinquity I suppose it was, she being the lady’s maid at Ardath and Sir Hugh always going to Ardath — Master after mistress and valet after maid, I jerked in. Something like that, my travelling companion answered. I don’t want to revive old scandals, but there was a story going that one of the ladies there loved Sir Hugh in his bachelor days, and this I know for certain, that she was the only untitled lady at the great dinner he gave after winning the Cambridgeshire.
A curious piece of evidence to adduce, and altogether insufficient it seemed to me to be; I should have liked to put a few questions, but withheld them, afraid to lose the tale of Joseph Appley’s misfortunes.
Well, one of his misfortunes was this: you see when Sir Hugh died, the heir was a minor and wanted money to spend on his pleasure in London, and to get this money he applied to Joseph, who negotiated a loan from one of the tenants, and when her ladyship heard that Joseph had done this, she sent him packing into the village, and Joseph in an Irish village was a sad spectacle. Everybody liked Joseph, but an alien he was, never was there such an alien before as Joseph, and to this day I’m wondering how he endured the two years he spent in the village, and he was fully two years in Ballyholly before the heir, who was then the owner of Muchloon, restored him to his pantry. It was pleasant to see him back in it; he put him back into his pantry, paid him his wages, and these were spent on the farm, which was a failure, for his two sons were, as I have said, helpless boys, wastrels I suppose you’d call them. Some sort of misfortune was always falling upon them, and it was always some new misfortune they had to tell. The Irish are very fond of sad stories, and the Appleys could tell how the mare and foal had died on them, but they always forgot to tell they were leaving their old father to starve in the great Georgian mansion. Poor boys, they were starving themselves; and it was fortunate that I went there one day else Joseph might have died of hunger. What’s the matter, Joseph? says I. You’re looking thin and pale. I’m starving, sir, was all he answered. What could I do but put my hand into my pocket and give him five pounds? But, on looking closer, his face told me he needed food at once, and remembering I had brought some luncheon with me I sent down to the stables for it and shared it with him in his pantry, on the table on which he used to brush his old master’s clothes and clean his boots. He wanted to open up the dining-room, but I wouldn’t let him. We’ll just have a snack together, said I, and a talk about the horses and the spring handicaps. Have you seen the weights for the City and Suburban? Joseph said he hadn’t seen a newspaper for a long time, and I took one out of my pocket, a copy of The Sportsman, a paper he knew nothing about. Joseph’s paper was Bell’s Life. If I came into the pantry unexpectedly he’d put the paper into his press, into his wonderful press, out of which everything seemed to come. You couldn’t ask Joseph for anything he couldn’t produce from that press. His press was a great wonder to me when I was a boy; I used to try to peep over his shoulder when he opened it. But Joseph was careful never to allow anybody to look into his press. He’d just give what he was asked for and lock the press abruptly. But one day I espied a packet of newspapers, not one packet but many, and all tied up with string very carefully. So you keep the file, Joseph, if not all of it of the time when you and Sir Hugh were about together and when you very nearly challenged the Game Chicken to a fight you not knowing who he was? You see I remember everything you tell me. Even Joseph could be flattered, but it required a little pressure to get him to admit that he had a complete Bell’s Life; why he kept it God knows. I’ve often imagined him reading the prize-fights and the race-meetings and the cock-fights all over again in the long evenings at Muchloon. I suppose that was it, but he never told me that was why he kept them, the most secretive little man ever known: you might tell him anything and be sure that he would not repeat it.
A little man? I said. I imagined him as a tall, lean hungry man. You got that idea, my fellow-traveller replied, from what I told you of his wife: a tall, melancholy woman. No, he married the very opposite to himself. Joseph was a short-necked, full-bodied, whitefaced little man, rotund in later life. Don’t I remember, my fellow-traveller continued, the short fleshy nose and his running walk? And did he live all alone in Muchloon?
Did all the servants go away with Sir Hugh to London?
I asked. Not all, my fellow-traveller answered. The old cook and housemaid remained with him, but they were very old and died a few years afterwards, blessing the master because he left them on board wages. Servants were very grateful in former times and thought a great deal was being done for them if they were not left to starve. And there were no complaints about the dinners they were given, nor the rooms they were put to sleep in. The servants always slept in large roomy subterranean dwellings in Muchloon, at the end of the kitchen passage; the eighteenth century in Ireland, and perhaps elsewhere, did not look after their servants as well as the nineteenth.
Is Joseph still alive? I asked, for my imagination was now filled with the personality of the old servant, whom I could see in my mind’s eye taking the air on the weed-grown terrace, and in my mind’s ear was the peacock, the last of a hundred, uttering doleful cries from the branches of a great cedar.
No, said my companion, Joseph is dead; he died in his pantry five years ago. I saw him three weeks before his death; he was then eighty but still thinking of the autumn handicaps, and as he fancied a horse for Cesare-witch I said: Joseph, I’ll put you on ten shillings. The horse won, but Joseph was not here to receive it. I’m sorry, for I’d have liked him to have won his last bet, I said. It didn’t matter. The ten shillings that I put him on at twenty-five to one illuminated the last day of his life, and perhaps he died seeing in a vision his horse passing first beyond the post. An honest death-bed vision that would be. A man’s death should be part and parcel of his life. So Joseph died En
glish to the last? Yes, my companion answered, Ireland failed to assimilate him, and then, anxious to make amends at the end of the story for my inattention at the beginning, I asked for news of Joseph’s sons, and learned that they had sold their interest in the farm and purchased some cars and horses. They were now car-drivers in Athenry, and Muchloon stands empty on its green hilltop, the present owner not being rich enough to live there. The most he can do, continued my fellow-traveller, is to keep a caretaker in the house. When he goes the next man will sell the lead off the roof, and Muchloon will be added to the ruins of all sorts that encumber Ireland. The finest assortment of ruins the world can show. From the fifth century onwards every century is represented; English and Irish ruins, ruined houses and ruined lives.
At the next station I was bidden good-bye, and lay back in my seat with a very vivid impression in my heart of a man that lived in the world unhappily.
CHAPTER 8.
ATHLONE WAS THE destination of my travelling companions, and when they were gone I had the carriage to myself, but only for a few minutes. Just before starting a man entered, and he came in so quietly that I did not raise my eyes but continued my meditations. Neither cough nor sneeze nor shuffle of feet nor rustle of newspaper nor match was struck to disturb me: it was the silence that awakened me from my dream of the old English servant who had always remained a stranger, an alien in the country whither chance had carried him.
My new travelling companion was a frail old man of seventy: a priest, I said, grown old in his craft, and I began to scrutinise his face, reading in it only obedience to rule: like one asleep in his instinct, I added; and asked myself if he were ordered by his Church to commit some act that raised his conscience in revolt would he accept his conscience as his guide or would he place his Church above his conscience? The answer my reason returned to this question was that the dilemma I had formulated could not arise, for it was plain from the man’s face that he had long ago accepted the Church as his conscience.
