Hyacinth Part 13

Such, save for one feature, is Ballymoy, as the traveller sees it, as Hyacinth Conneally saw it when he arrived there one gusty afternoon.

The one unusual feature is Mr. James Quinn's woollen mill. It stands, a gaunt and indeed somewhat dilapidated building, at the bottom of the street, in the angle where the river turns sharply to flow under the bridge. The water just above the bridge is swept into a channel and forced to turn the wheel which works some primitive machinery within.

In the centre of the mill's front is an archway through which carts pa.s.s into the paved square behind. Here is the weighbridge, and here great bundles of heavy-smelling fleeces are unloaded. Off the square is the office where Mr. Quinn sits, pays for the wool, and enters the weight of it in damp ledgers. Here on Sat.u.r.days two or three men and a score of girls receive their wages. The business is a peculiar one. You may bring your wool to Mr. Quinn in fleeces, just as you sheer it off the sheep's back. He will pay you for it, more or less, according to the amount of trouble you have taken with your sheep. This is the way the younger generation likes to treat its wool. If you are older, and are blessed with a wife able to card and spin, you deal differently with Mr. Quinn.

For many evenings after the shearing your wife sits by the fireside with two carding-combs in her hands, and wipes off them wonderfully soft rolls of wool. Afterwards she fetches the great wheel from its nook, and you watch her pulling out an endless gray thread while she steps back and forwards across the floor. The girls watch her, too, but not, as you do, with sleepy admiration. Their emotion is amused contempt.

Nevertheless, your kitchen wall is gradually decorated with bunches of great gray b.a.l.l.s. When these have acc.u.mulated sufficiently, you take them to Mr. Quinn. A certain number of them become his property. Out of the rest he will weave what you like--coa.r.s.e yellow flannel, good for bawneens, and, when it is dyed crimson, for petticoats; or blankets--not fluffy like the blankets that are bought in shops, but warm to sleep under when the winter comes; or perhaps frieze, very thick and rough, the one fabric that will resist the winter rain.

This portion of his business Mr. Quinn finds to be decreasing year by year. Fewer and fewer women care to card and spin the wool. The younger men find it more profitable to sell it at once, and to wear, instead of the old bawneens, shirts called flannel which are brought over from cotton-spinning Lancashire, and sold in the shops. The younger women think that they look prettier in gowns made artfully by the local dressmaker out of feeble materials got up to catch the eye. If now and then, for the sake of real warmth, one of them makes a petticoat of the old crimson flannel, it is kept so short that, save in very heavy rain, it can be concealed. Unfortunately, while these old-fashioned profits are vanishing, Mr. Quinn finds it very hard to increase the other branch of his business. The fabrics which he makes are good, so good that he finds it difficult to sell them in the teeth of compet.i.tion. The country shops are flooded with what he calls 'shoddy.' An army of eager commercial travellers pushes showy goods on the shopkeepers and the public at half his price. Even the farmers in remote districts are beginning to acquire a taste for smartness. Some things in which he used to do a useful trade are now scarcely worth making. There is hardly any demand for the checked head-kerchiefs. The women prefer hats and bonnets, decked with cheap ribbons or artificial flowers; and these bring no trade to Mr. Quinn's mill. Still, he manages to hold on. The Lancashire people, though they have invented flannelette, cannot as yet make a pa.s.sable imitation of frieze, and there is a Dublin house which buys annually all the blankets he can turn out. It is true that even there, and for the best cla.s.s of customers, prices have to be cut so as to leave a bare margin of profit. Yet since there is a margin, Mr. Quinn holds on, though not very hopefully.

Hyacinth left the bulk of his luggage--a packing-case containing the books which the auctioneer had failed to dispose of in Carrowkeel--at the station, and walked into Ballymoy carrying his bag. He had little difficulty in making his way to the mill, and found the owner of it in his office. It was difficult at first to believe that James Quinn could be any relation to Captain Albert, the traveller, horse-dealer, soldier, and thief. This man was tall, though he stooped when he stood to receive his visitor. His movements were slow. His fair hair lay thin across his forehead, and was touched above the ears with gray. His blue eyes were very gentle, and had a way of looking long and steadily at what they saw. A glance at his face left the impression that life, perhaps by no very gentle means, had taught him patience.

'This letter will introduce me,' said Hyacinth; 'it is from your brother, Captain, or Mr. Albert, Quinn.'

James Quinn took the letter, and turned it over slowly. Then, without opening it, he laid it on the table in front of him. His eyes travelled from it to Hyacinth's face, and rested there. It was some time before he spoke, and then it was to correct Hyacinth upon a trivial point.

'My half-brother,' he said. 'My father married twice, and Albert is the son of his second wife. You may have noticed that he is a great deal younger than I am.'

'He looks younger, certainly,' said Hyacinth, for the other was waiting for a reply.

'Nearly twenty years younger. Albert is only just thirty.'

The exact age of the Captain was uninteresting and seemed to be beside the purpose of the visit. Hyacinth shifted his chair and fidgeted, uncertain what to do or say next.

'Albert gave you this letter to me. Is he a friend of yours?'

'No.'

James Quinn looked at him again steadily. It seemed--but this may have been fancy--that there was a kindlier expression in his eyes after the emphatio repudiation of friendship with Albert. At length he took up the letter, and read it through slowly.

'Why did my brother give you this letter?'

The question was a puzzling one. Hyacinth had never thought of trying to understand the Captain's motives. Then the conversation in the hotel recurred to him.

'He said that he wanted to do a good turn to me and to you also.'

'What had you done for him?'

'Nothing whatever.'

Apparently James Quinn was not in the least vexed at the brevity of the answers he received, or disturbed because his cross-examination was obviously disagreeable to Hyacinth.

'In this letter,' he went on, referring to the doc.u.ment as he spoke, 'he describes you as a young man who is "certainly honest, probably religious, and possibly intelligent." I presume you know my brother, and if you do, you may be surprised to hear that I am quite prepared to take his word for all this. I have very seldom known Albert to tell me lies, and I don't know why he should want to deceive me in this case. Still, I am a little puzzled to account for his giving you the letter. Can you add nothing in the way of explanation to what you have said?'

'I don't know that I can,' said Hyacinth.

'Will you tell me how you met my brother, and what he is doing now, or where he is?'

'I do not think I should be justified in doing so.'

'Ah, well! I can understand that in certain circ.u.mstances Albert would be very grateful to a man who would hold his tongue. He might be quite willing to do you a good turn if you undertook to answer no questions about him.'

He smiled as he spoke, a little grimly, but there was laughter lurking in the corners of his eyes. A Puritan will sometimes smile in such a way at the thought of a sinful situation, too solemn to be laughed at openly, but appealing to a not entirely atrophied sense of humour.

Hyacinth felt rea.s.sured.

'Indeed,' he said, 'I made no promise of silence. It is only that--well, I don't think----'

James Quinn waited patiently for the conclusion of the sentence, but Hyacinth never arrived at it.

'In this letter,' he said at last, 'my brother asks me to give you the place he lately held in my business. Now, I don't want to press you to say anything you don't want to, but before we go further I must ask you this, Were you implicated in the affair yourself?'

'I beg your pardon. I don't quite understand what you mean.'

'Well, I suppose that since my brother is anxious that you should hold your tongue, he has done something that won't bear talking about. Were you implicated in--in whatever the trouble was?'

'Certainly not,' said Hyacinth. 'In fact, it was on account of what you speak of as "trouble" that I declined to have anything more to do with your brother.'

'That is probably very much to your credit, and, in the light of my brother's estimate of your character, I may say that I entirely believe what you say. Am I to understand that you are an applicant for the post in my business which Albert held, and which this letter tells me I may consider vacant?'

'That is what brought me down here,' said Hyacinth.

'Have you any other recommendations or testimonials as to character to show me?'

'No. But there are several people who would answer questions about me if you wrote to them: Dr. Henry, of Trinity College, would, or Miss Augusta Goold, or Father Moran, of Carrowkeel, in County Galway.'

'You have given me the most remarkable list of references I ever came across in my life. I don't suppose anyone ever before was recommended for a post by a Protestant divinity professor, a notoriously violent political agitator, a Roman Catholic priest, and a--well, we won't describe my brother. How do you come to be mixed up with all these people? Who are you?'

'I am the son of aeneas Conneally, Rector of Carrowkeel, who died last Christmas.'

'Well,' said James Quinn, 'I suppose if all these people are prepared to recommend you, your character must be all right. Now, tell me, do you know what the post is you are applying for?'

'No,' said Hyacinth. 'And I may as well say that I have had no experience or business training whatever.'

'So I should suppose from the way you have come to me. Well, my brother was clerk and traveller for my business. He was supposed to help me to keep accounts and to push the sale of my goods among the shopkeepers in Connaught. As a matter of fact, he never did either the one or the other. When he was at home he did nothing. When he was on the road he bought and sold horses. I paid him eighty pounds a year and his travelling expenses. I also promised him a percentage on the profits of the sales he effected. Now, do you think this work would suit you?'

'I might not be able to do it,' said Hyacinth, 'but I should very much like to be allowed to try. I can understand that I shall be very little use at first, and I am willing to work without any salary for a time, perhaps six months, until I have learned something about your business.'

'Come, now, that's a business-like offer. I'll give you a trial, if it was only for the sake of your list of references. I won't keep you six months without paying you if you turn out to be any good at all. And I think there must be something in you, for you've gone about getting this job in the queerest way I ever heard of. Would you like any time to make up your mind finally before accepting the post?'

'No,' said Hyacinth; 'I accept at once.'

They walked together through the mill, and looked at the machines and the workers. The girls smiled when Mr. Quinn stopped to speak to them, and looked with frank curiosity at Hyacinth. The three or four men who did the heavier work stopped and chatted for a few minutes when they came to them. Evidently there was no soreness or distrust here between the employer and the employed. When they had gone through the rooms where the work was going on, they climbed a staircase like a ladder, and came to the loft where the wool was stored. Hyacinth handled it as he was directed, and endeavoured to appreciate the difference between the good and the inferior qualities. They pa.s.sed by an unglazed window at the back of the mill, and Mr. Quinn pointed out his own house. It stood among trees and shrubs, now for the most part bare, but giving promise of shady privacy in summertime. Long windows opened out on to a lawn stretching down to the watercourse which fed the millwheel. A gravel path skirted one side of the house leading to a bridge, and thence to a doorway in a high wall, beyond which lay the road. As they looked the door opened, and a woman with two little girls came through. They crossed the bridge, and walked up to the house.

'That is my wife,' said Mr. Quinn, 'and my two little girls.'

He stretched out between the bars of the window, and shouted to them.

All three looked back. Mrs. Quinn waved her hand, and the two children shouted in reply. Then a light appeared in one of the windows, and Hyacinth caught a glimpse of a trim maid-servant pulling the curtains across it.

'We shall be having tea at half-past six,' said Mr. Quinn. 'Will you come and join us? By the way, where are you staying?'

Hyacinth accepted the invitation, and confessed that he had not as yet looked for any place to lay his head.