“I wouldn’t demane myself to Barry so much as to wish her out of this now she’s here. But it was along of you she came here, and av’ I’ve to pay for all this lawyer work, you oughtn’t to see me at a loss. I’m shure I don’t know where your sisthers is to look for a pound or two when I’m gone, av’ things goes on this way,” and again the widow whimpered.
“Don’t let that throuble you, mother: av’ there’s anything to pay, I won’t let it come upon you, any way. But I tell you there’ll be nothing more about it.”
Mrs Kelly was somewhat quieted by her son’s guarantee, and, muttering that she couldn’t afford to be wasting her mornings in that way, diligently commenced weighing out innumerable three-halfporths of brown sugar, and Martin went about his own business.
Daly left the inn, after his interview with Anty and the Kellys, in anything but a pleasant frame of mind. In the first place, he knew that he had been signally unsuccessful, and that his want of success had been mainly attributable to his having failed to see Anty alone; and, in the next place, he felt more than ever disgusted with his client. He began to reflect, for the first time, that he might, and probably would, irretrievably injure his character by undertaking, as Martin truly called it, such a very low line of business: that, if the matter were persevered in, every one in Connaught would be sure to hear of Anty’s persecution; and that his own name would be so mixed up with Lynch’s in the transaction as to leave him no means of escaping the ignominy which was so justly due to his employer. Beyond these selfish motives of wishing to withdraw from the business, he really pitied Anty, and felt a great repugnance at being the means of adding to her troubles; and he was aware of the scandalous shame of subjecting her again to the ill-treatment of such a wretch as her brother, by threatening proceedings which he knew could never be taken.
As he got on the car to return to Tuam, he determined that whatever plan he might settle on adopting, he would have nothing further to do with prosecuting or persecuting either Anty or the Kellys. “I’ll give him the best advice I can about it,” said Daly to himself; “and if he don’t like it he may do the other thing. I wouldn’t carry on with this game for all he’s worth, and that I believe is not much.” He had intended to go direct to Dunmore House from the Kellys, and to have seen Barry, but he would have had to stop for dinner if he had done so; and though, generally speaking, not very squeamish in his society, he did not wish to enjoy another after-dinner tête-à-tête with him—“It’s better to get him over to Tuam,” thought he, “and try and make him see rason when he’s sober: nothing’s too hot or too bad for him, when he’s mad dhrunk afther dinner.”
Accordingly, Lynch was again summoned to Tuam, and held a second council in the attorney’s little parlour. Daly commenced by telling him that his sister had seen him, and had positively refused to leave the inn, and that the widow and her son had both listened to the threats of a prosecution unmoved and undismayed. Barry indulged in his usual volubility of expletives; expressed his fixed intention of exterminating the Kellys; declared, with many asseverations, his conviction that his sister was a lunatic; swore, by everything under, in, and above the earth, that he would have her shut up in the Lunatic Asylum in Ballinasloe, in the teeth of the Lord Chancellor and all the other lawyers in Ireland; cursed the shades of his father, deeply and copiously; assured Daly that he was only prevented from recovering his own property by the weakness and ignorance of his legal advisers, and ended by asking the attorney’s advice as to his future conduct.
“What the d––––l, then, am I to do with the confounded ideot?” said he.
“If you’ll take my advice, you’ll do nothing.”
“What, and let her marry and have that young blackguard brought up to Dunmore under my very nose?”
“I’m very much afraid, Mr Lynch, if you wish to be quit of Martin Kelly, it is you must lave Dunmore. You may be shure he won’t.”