"He'd send me to the dispensary at the workhouse."
"I'll take you there then."
"It's not open until tomorrow, d'ye understand. It's the same doctor. I thank you now, but it'll be well."
The man took a lot of convincing that it would not be well unless it was stitched; and when John said that he would pay, there was a further argument. In the end, the man agreed to take a loan of two shillings and John's card, and he promised to send repayment when he was next in funds. John got him to sit facing backward in the saddle, resting the foot on the horse's rump.
The man's fastidiousness over money marked him as one not belonging to the mendicant class, and on the way to the doctor's, John asked him about himself. He was a small farmer, with three acres and a stone house, plastered walls within. His name was Conroy. His rent was thirty-six pounds a year, which was very hard on him. Some of the landlords had reduced or cancelled the rents this year; but his, a near-bankrupt squireen in a mouldering mansion with half its roof gone, could afford no abatement. Conroy had had to sell his entire grain harvest of last summer and the family's pig, to raise the money.
"It's on the navigation there this very minute," he said.
If he had eaten the grain instead, he and his family would not now be starving, but they would be homeless and the remains of the grain would have been seized for the debt. They would be beginning to starve; and once they had dropped to the level of homeless, destitute paupers they would never again rise. He had had no choice but to ignore the whimpering of his hungry children and take the grain to market.
"I can bear it all," he said, "but the keening of the little girls is hard…hard."
For John it was hard at that moment to remember the calm imperatives of economic law.
It was even harder the following day when he and MacMinimum rode north out of Waterford along the proposed route of the other railway, the Waterford & Kilkenny. It was only 31¼ miles, with a branch of 6¼ to Kells, so they expected to finish within the day. They covered barely a third of that distance. As he wrote to Nora:
We had gone through Mullinavat and came to a village whose name I do not know—if it ever had one. If it did, it will surely live forever in the annals of infamy; but for the mapmaker it has ceased to exist.
When we came to it, the militia had been there already for about an hour. They had come in support of the constabulary, who had come in support of the agents of the landlord, a certain Mrs. Pedelty. The village, comprising forty-nine houses, solidly built and dry, with plastered walls, was upon her land and she wished it cleared. The tenants were not in arrears with their rent and they had, entirely by their own industry, cleared and reclaimed more than two hundred and fifty acres of bog.
When the landlord's agents and the militia arrived, the tenants offered the whole of next year's rent in advance if only Mrs. Pedelty would leave them at peace; it had taken half-an-hour to get word to her of this offer and to bring back her refusal. Then they asked for compensation for the land they had cleared and she sent back to say if they persisted in the claim she would sue for delapidation and waste. The sergeant of the constabulary said that any change in land or buildings by a tenant, even an obvious improvement, was, in the eyes of the law, a "waste" and entitled the landlord to compensation.
The villagers then, seeing they had no defence anywhere, rushed indoors and put up what pathetic barriers they could. It was at this moment when MacMinimum and I arrived. He was for going on at once, but I would stay; so he said he would return to Mullinavat and wait for me in a bar there.
The officer in charge of the militia refused to let his men take part in the eviction, saying they were there merely to prevent disorder. Neither he nor his men had stomach for such business. The implication that the constabulary were fomenting disorder angered the sergeant, but he commanded his men to assist the bailiff and agents in evicting the tenants. The scenes that followed were so piteous that even now, two days after, I tremble to recall them; and the screams of the women and frightened children are with me day and night. They were dragged, shrieking and weeping, from their homes and hurled like so much old clothing into the middle of the road. They were not even allowed to take such belongings as they had—pots and stools and the like.
I saw one young boy, of thirteen I would say, have his leg broken by one agent—a brute of a man who grinned when the lad cried out. I actually heard the bone break though I was ten paces away. I went to the sergeant and told him this, but he ordered me to be on my way. I then said I was a friend of Sir Randolph Routh and that if the agent was not immediately taken in charge for assault, I should send in the strongest adverse report on his conduct of this entire vile business. The agent then walked away with a constable, ostensibly in arrest, but whether they spent the day over the brow of the hill twiddling their thumbs I cannot say. At least I have the man's name and have written to the Inspectorate of Constabulary at Dublin Castle and to the Sheriff of Kilkenny County.
As soon as they had a family got out, they rushed indoors with poles and burst out the slates near the ridge tree of the roof. Then a man would go up on a ladder outside and put a hook on a chain around the ridge tree. The other end was already harnessed to a team of horses, so it was easy work pulling off the entire roof in one smack. Forty-nine houses they wasted in this way. On some, the roofs were so flimsy they could pull them off with rakes alone.
You may imagine the anguish of the people as this was going on. The men and women were on their knees, begging the agents and constables not to persist with the evictions. And then the wailing that went up and the curses that fell as the roof came off. I confess without shame I was unmanned—choked with dust and tears both. I spoke to many of the soldiers, they were of the 72nd Highland, and they answered to a man that they detested the business. I saw several give money to the people. I gave them all I had too, which amounted to 5l. 2s. 4d.
Shortly after two, when all the roofs were off, they stopped for a bite and a drink. Then the people were allowed back in to salvage what they could of their possessions. Which was precious little (yet precious to them, for all that). I saw one woman standing at the door of her ruined home, crying and bewildered, with dried blood on her forehead. She had in her hand a broken china plate, and I asked her what it was. "It's my life away," she said.
Yet such is the fortitude of these people (remember they were not destitute paupers but were, by Irish standards, in a fair prosperous way) that before evening, they had built shelters of furze and stone out along the wayside. And such is the ruthlessness of authority here, that they were hunted out even from these rude shelters and scattered far and wide over the country. Three constables went along with torches, firing the furze. There was one crippled young girl did not get out in time and had her hair and neck and face badly burned. There is no poor law infirmary nearer than Waterford, so I took her there, and that was the last I saw of that dreadful day. When MacMinimum and I rode through the next day, they were pulling the walls down and even uprooting the foundations.
A little way on we came to another village, where some of the evicted had been taken in and given shelter. The constabulary was hard at work driving them out again and giving out cautions that whoever took in any of the evicted would himself be turned out.
So Mrs. Pedelty (who collects 11,000l. in rent and has not subscribed one farthing in relief) has regained several hundred valuable acres, while the British Treasury has acquired two hundred and fifty more mouths that can be fed only through relief. And Ireland has another cause to detest us—and rightly, I say. The tolerance and friendly hospitality that greets me everywhere baffles my comprehension.
When I told Flynn of this, he said, "Oh, that's been going on for centuries, did you not know?" And when I showed him a list of names I had collected (why, I do not know, I had some notion of an appeal or inquiry), he read: "Lynch, Connally, Egan, Kelly…etc." and then he looked at me and added, "I was looking at the lists of those who died in the recent great victories
of General Gough at Aliwal and Sobraon in India. I'd swear half of it was Lynches, Connallys, Egans, Kellys…etc. 'Roll of honour,' it said, 'of those who died for their country'."
My dearest, I tell myself—what you will certainly say—that it is a landowner's inalienable right to do what he wishes with his own land. I know all this—yet it does not stifle the cries of terrified children and the weeping of their parents. It does not efface the picture I have of that young cripple I carried ten miles before me on my horse, she mad with pain, blistered from her shoulder to her temple; and the cloying smell of her burns is there now in my nostrils. I am too wounded still to say what is right. I know that all I saw was wrong.
Three days later this letter was followed by another, scribbled in great haste:
After sending my last I felt compelled to turn about and go back to Waterford for news of the little burned girl, whose name is Mary Coen. Since I had taken her from her people, I felt in some degree responsible for seeing them together again. I have searched high and low and cannot find them. I have sent others out, two dozen, also seeking, and they cannot find them either. The constabulary have also (they claim) made inquiry, to no avail.
What shall I do? What must I do? I am minded to bring the child, Mary, back to England with me. We may surely find her a place, even though she is crippled. She could no doubt be taught to sew or clean things. She hardly needs the use of a leg for that. Her family were decent folk. I cannot leave her in this bastille. I wish you were here. Could you come and see to the arrangements? I will await you here.
If rage had been a fuel, Nora would have been in Waterford within the hour. As it was, she steamed from Liverpool that night and was with John the following evening. Her way to Liverpool ran through the Pennines via Summit Tunnel on the Manchester & Leeds—Stevenson's first contract. As the train drew near she looked out for Rough Stones, the house up on the hillside where they had made their first home; but it was night, and all she saw was a glimmer that could as well have been a shepherd's lantern. And then the train swept into the tunnel.
She was glad not to have seen the place. It had held too many of her hopes, too much optimism, to suit her present anger and despair.
She was furious at John's neglect of the rest of the business—she told herself. He was behaving in a secretive, high-handed way—the way that had led to their disastrous partnership with Beador. This had all the signs of that same flawed judgement. That was another good reason to be angry. And he was going soft. He was losing his grip on reality. He was even assuming that she was a willing accomplice in all of this…this madness. He did not even consider that she might hold the contrary viewpoint. Yet hadn't she been the one who pulled them out of the mess, his mess, last time? And she still hadn't got much in the way of new property to recompense her loss—yet here he was behaving in this lofty, inconsiderate way, as if she didn't count at all.
Well, she would show him!
She did not pause to marvel that she had so many reasons for anger—as if the anger grew first, and grew tall, before any reason came along to prop it up.
The ready smile of welcome left John's face the moment he saw her. "Eay, ye look badly," he said.
"I'm fit," she answered curtly. "Fit for what has to be done here."
It had never once crossed his mind that she would take exception to what he had done. Even now, when her anger was plain, he could not at once adjust to the notion. "You're not…vexed, are you?" he asked incredulously. "Surely not."
She let him see what effort it cost to stay calm. "I am vexed, John. And so would ten thousand others be if they knew of this…what can we call it? Escapade? Escape, anyway. Escape from your duty."
"Duty?" The word stung him.
"Plain duty. Duty to a dozen railway companies. Duty to every man who works for us. To every man as trusts you and has tied his fortune to yours. I don't know what sort of weighing scale you've found to make one child heavier than all that."
He smiled at her when she said the word "child" and held out his hand. "Come and see her," he said.
"I'll do no such thing." She saw the hotel porter preparing to carry her bags from the post chaise. "Leave it all there," she said sharply.
Her meaning was not lost on John, but still he held forth his hand. "Come on, love. At least see the child."
She was adamant. "I've come here to restore your judgement," she said. "Not to be swayed out of mine. I'll not see her."
"You must," he said and began walking away down the street. He did not look behind him until he reached the corner. When he saw she still held her ground, he had to turn and come back. "Afraid you might, after all, see my side of it?" he taunted.
She had to go with him then. On the way he explained that he'd paid to have the girl moved out of the workhouse into the direct care of a nurse in the parish. "But they'll not let her beyond the parish-union boundary except by way of proper apprenticeship," he added.
Daylight was quickly fading as they walked up the street to the nurse's house. The nurse, a sprightly, middle-aged woman, full of nervous good humour, was set for half an hour's good jawing before she would think of showing them the girl, but John cut her short.
The girl lay stiffly, half sitting on top of her bed, a gaunt little scarecrow in patched and threadbare workhouse reach-me-downs. The room was low, and precious little of the falling day crept in at the one small, grimy window.
"Hello then, Mary," John said. "Here is Mrs. Stevenson come to help us."
The girl's head was swaddled in dressing made from torn sheeting. She kept as still as possible; every slight movement made her whimper. Nora thought she might be dying. The nurse left them alone with her, one on each side of the little bed.
Nora had not needed to see the child in order to understand what had moved John to behave as he did. But to her mind it still did not excuse his neglect of everything else. She looked around the room. "Well," she said. "It's clean. It's dry. It's not cold. Where is the difficulty?"
He stiffened angrily and was about to speak when she cut him short. "See thou—I came through Summit Tunnel last night. It put me in mind of the man I met there, and I'll tell you for free, you're nothing like him. There was a man who'd just lived through an explosion underground, who turned round and sawed off Pengilly's injured leg smack smooth, who passed the night forging a banker's letter of credit, and who spent next day drawing wool over the eyes of the Manchester & Leeds directors. That was a man who knew where the main chance was—and how to take it. He'd never have spent a week milksopping around this godforsaken backwater on account of—one little bag of bones." She smiled at Mary, who smiled wanly back.
John pressed his knuckles into his eyesockets, trying to contain his anger in front of the child. "You cannot have read my letters," he began.
"What?" she asked. "About the evictions? They weren't the first. Nor will they be the last, I daresay. Why you had to go and involve yourself…"
"But I was involved. I was involved because I was there. I was involved because they were people, not animals, that were treated so." He gestured at Mary.
"Well, where do we stop, John? Why don't we shoulder all the burdens of this wretched country? Eh? And what about England? Things every bit as bad happen there too. Any day of the week."
"At least you agree it's bad."
"Of course I do. I find Mrs. Pedelty despicable. I hope all doors are barred against her. I hope she's denounced from the pulpit."
"And? That's all?"
"Is it not enough?"
"Certainly not. At the very least the law on evictions must be changed."
Nora could not believe it. She began to shiver and she felt her heart hammering in anger. "You must be mad!" she said.
"You did not see what I saw."
"I could see a hundred evictions and still keep a level head on that subject. It's a hard fact of life, but a landlord must be free to do as he likes with his own land. If the law were to curtail that right in any way, the value of lan
d would fall. If that happened, then people of enterprise would stop putting their money into land. And agricultural progress would halt. Or even decline. Think of the destitution and misery that would cause. Not in one village but in thousands. You can't cure one evil by bringing in another a thousand times more pernicious." What an absurd discussion, she thought, to be having in front of this child!
He laughed mirthlessly, despairing of her understanding. "You can't expect those who are evicted to see it like that."
"I do," she said stoutly. "I've been evicted too, you know. When our dad died, we were turned out by the Bridgewater agent. I screamed murder at him but I never questioned his right, though I had the rent in my hand."
"It's different here in Ireland. You can have no idea…"
"I believe they must have different water or different air or something. It seems to rot the backbone out of good men."
The Rich Are with You Always Page 32
