XLII.
LOUGH MASK CASTLE—CAPTAIN BOYCOTT AND HIS POLICY—LORD MOUNTMORRIS.
Well, my Jehu did sober up considerably before we halted at the entrance gates of Lough Mask Castle. The sharp hi! hi! of the driver brought out the gate keeper, a poor looking and sour looking woman, who admitted us into the drive which lay through some fields and beside some young plantations. In one place the driver pulled up, our way lay through a large field divided by the road into two unequal parts.
He told me to look round me, which I did. "On one side here, were the dragoons; their horses were picketed here; on the other side was the infantry. It was awful weather. What them men and their horses stood of hardships and misery no tongue could tell. The dragoons marched down here, looking fine and bowld, their horses were sleek and fat and shining, when they marched away they wor staggering with the wakeness and the men wor purty wilted looking. He made them believe he needed protection." This with a growl that had depths of meaning in it.
"He's coming back here again. Out among nagurs or anywhere else he could not find them to put up with him like ourselves." Of course I omit the strong words that were used as garnishing. I must own that this was the first time that any carman had used profane language before me—and it wasn't himself was in it at all at all but the whiskey. "The soldiers, whin they wor here," continued the old man, "cut down the trees of the plantation for firing. That went to his heart, it did. How could they help themselves, I'd like to know? Sure they would have perished with the cowld and the wet among the pelting of the snow and the sleet. Wherever they are this blessed day they don't admire the memory of Captain Boycott. What I like is behaviour in aither man or baste, and Captain Boycott had no behaviour. They killed a sheep to ate, or maybe two, and sorra a blame to them. It was ate or die wid them; but ye see the gallant Captain didn't like it." About this time a volley of anathemas was poured out against the absent Captain.
During all this we were sitting on the car viewing the field where the bivouac had been. A policeman with a questioning look on a pleasant face came along from the great house with a tin pail in his hand. "What have you got in the can!" asks this inquisitive car driver. "Milk," responded the policeman. "You would have got no milk at the big house in Captain Boycott's time."
"Oh; yes, I would," said the other, "when I paid for it." I did not like to question this man, for he did swear so, but I ventured to ask if Mrs. Boycott were equally as much disliked as her husband. "Never heard a word against her in my life. The people had no reason but to like her. Hard word or hard deed she left no memory of behind her."
We drove past the residence where Captain Boycott lived, a fine spacious house finished in plaster to imitate stone. The grounds near the house were nicely laid out, but that is the universal rule in Ireland. Drove through a gateway into the yard. In a stable loft in the yard some policemen were lodged. The driver hallooed at them, and one came down the stone steps to see what protective duty was asked of him. I asked him to show me the ruins, and he complied in the kindest manner. Across the barnyard and through a shed we made our way into the castle ruins. There are many nooks and crannies, as is the case in these ancient ruins generally, but the main body of the castle was divided into two large apartments, with the roof on the floor of course. I noticed the track of recent fire along the old walls. He said it was made by the officers who were down there on protective service for Capt. Boycott. They had one apartment and cooked there, and the police the other. These quarters open to the sky, and having stones on the floor, did not look comfortable.
We went up the circular stairs to the ramparts at the top. There is a walk round the top behind the battlements. Looking down at the remains of a fireplace in what was a lofty second story, my guide told me there was a name and a date there. The name Fitzgerald, I forget the date; so this must have been one of the Geraldine castles.
There is a fine view from the battlements. Lough Mask, which is very shallow here, a little water and a great many stones overtopping it in profusion, lies before us, and an extensive country, partly fertile, in round hills and green valleys, partly crusted over with stones.
A policeman, not my guide on this occasion, told me, illustrative of the disposition of Captain Boycott, that the hut in which the police were sheltered was very damp—water, in fact, was running on the floor under their bed. They had a small coal stove, and on the coal becoming exhausted before they got a further supply, one of the men being down sick, they ventured to ask Captain Boycott for the loan of a lump or two of coal to keep their stove going till their supplies were received, and he refused them. They were obliged to protect his ass and water cart down into the lake to draw water from out beyond the edge where the water was deep, and, therefore, could be dipped up clean. He would not allow them to get any of the water for their own use after it was drawn, or lend them the ass to draw for themselves. They had either to wade out in the lake or dip up as they could at the edge. I made a slight mistake in saying that the castle was entirely roofless; there was part of an arched roof where the fire had been. I asked the policeman if they had any night patrol duty now. Oh, yes, he said, we patrol every night, although we never see anything worse than ourselves.
Left Lough Mask, its castled ruins and modern mansion behind us, and drove through the gates again. I felt convinced that the people were not filled with an unreasoning hate against Captain Boycott. They thought they had reason, deep reason, and they scrupulously excepted Mrs. Boycott from any censure bestowed on him.
Along the road we drove, until from an eminence we could see Lough Mask in its beauty, with its bays and islands spread out beneath us. This view gave us a part of the Lough where the water covers the stones. This particular evening the water was as calm as a mirror and as blue as the sky above it, and the trees on the hills and bays around it in their greenness and leafiness, round-headed and massive, were all bathed in sunlight. We came to fields a little more barren-looking, where bare stone fences took the place of the rich hedgerows, turned up a road that lay between these stony ramparts, and drove along for a little time.
I was wondering in my own mind about Captain Boycott. Did he, in his own consciousness, think he was doing right in his system of fines? He knew how small and miserable the wages were: he knew of the poor, comfortless homes and the "smidrie o' wee duddy weans" that depended on the poor pennies the father brought home; he knew that he came out well fed and leisurely to find fault with a peasant who was working with a sense of goneness about the stomach. Did he think that increasing the hunger pain would make him more thoughtful, more orderly? Would he have done better if he had been suddenly brought to change places with his serf? If he could not help fining the people until he fined off the most of their wages, were they to blame for refusing to work for him? Was the Government right in taking his part when it had neither eye nor ear for his people's complaint? I was questioning with myself in this helpless fashion, when I heard my driver inquire in Irish of a bare-footed country girl if we were near the spot where Lord Mountmorris was murdered.
This question, and the surprise with which I became aware that I understood it, made me forget Captain Boycott for the time being and wake up to the present time. We had stopped our car and were waiting on the girl's answer, which she seemed in no hurry to give. At length lifting a small stone she threw it on the road a car's length behind us, answering in Irish that there was the spot where he was found. The murderer was hidden in the field opposite. The road was bare of the shelter of hedge or ditch, bush or tree. It was late; he was coming home alone, his police escort for some reason were not with him that particular night. Lord Mountmorris was murdered, and some one has a mark on his hand that all the water of the Lough will not wash off.
We drove along the road, a bleak and bare road, with a hill on one side of it and a steep slope down on the other, until we came to a small plantation, a lodge gate, and drove up an avenue with small plantations of young trees here and there, some grass lands, a few beasts grazing about, some signs of where flower beds and flower borders had been better cared for once on a time than now, and came to a comfortable, roomy square house finished in plaster. This was castle something, the residence of the late Lord Mountmorris. With a blessing, content and three hundred a year one could fancy that person sung of by Moore, "With the heart that is humble," being able to make out life nicely here. When a man has a title to his name with all the requirements which it implies and demands, one could imagine a constant and wearing struggle going on.
I have earnestly and constantly sought to find a reason that could possibly irritate an ignorant and exasperated peasant to the point of taking the life of this man, I have found none. He was unhappily addicted to drink, it is said, but he must have had a large majority of the inhabitants of Ireland of all creeds and classes on the same side with him in this, to judge by the number of houses licensed to sell liquor to be drunk on the premises which are required for the drouthy part of the population. He is accused of having warped justice to favor his friends in his capacity of magistrate. I have heard that accusation brought against other magistrates again and again, who were not molested. He is said to have boasted when fou that he was a spy for the castle authorities, and could have any of them he chose to point at taken up. This was mere bluster, I suppose. There does seem no reason why the poor man should be cut off in the midst of his days by a guilty hand, for there is no record of any tangible injury which he had done to any man. Here on the spot where he fell, among the common people, I did not hear anything that seemed to give a reason for any hatred that would lead to murder being entertained against the deceased nobleman.
We turned away from the house and grounds, and I felt sad enough when we passed the place where he lay in the dark night amid bare, barren loneliness until the alarm was given. Heath in full blossom of purple clung to the ditch back, foxglove in stately array nodded at us from above, flowers that creep and flowers that wave were springing everywhere, the rains of heaven had washed off the red stain, but I could not shut my eyes to it. I saw the human body, dignified into something awful by the presence of death, lying there waiting for the hands that were to take it up reverently, and bear it away for investigation and burial. I saw the dyed stones of the road that will never lose the mark of guilt that colored them with the blood shed there.
Lord Mountmorris' residence was a nice, roomy house. All these houses are called castles, and castles they are compared with the cabins. The land around it did not seem very good. There was something pathetic in the evident attempt to keep up lordly state on a poor income and off poor soil. Happy America, whose people are not compelled by the inexorable logic of circumstances to be lords, but can be plain farmers. It is really a hard thing to be a lord sometimes, when a place is sunk with mortgages, and burdened with legacies and annuities, and no means of redemption but the rents and these stopped.
We drove back the way we came. Ascending the hill we met a little beast, so small, so black and shaggy, that I thought at first it was one of our Canadian black bears. I asked what it was, and—laughing at my ignorance—the man told me that it was a Highland Kyloe, one of the famous black cattle that I have heard so much about, but had never seen a specimen of the breed before. It would have been big for a bear, but certainly was small for a cow, while a goat has the appearance of giving as much milk.